Schools Banning Homework? 534
theodp writes "Alarmed by indicators of student stress like cheating and substance abuse, some SF Bay Area schools are reducing an education staple: homework. Homework is mostly banned at Menlo Park's Oak Knoll School, but some teachers apparently have higher 'expections' [sic]."
higher expectations? (Score:5, Interesting)
Um. 15 what?
Ballpark estimate: 15 minutes (Score:4, Interesting)
Given the order of magnitude of what is expected of my little cousins, the 15 probably refers to 15 minutes.
Re:Ballpark estimate: 15 minutes (Score:5, Funny)
Or 15 minutes, whichever comes first.
Re:Ballpark estimate: 15 minutes (Score:5, Insightful)
By assigning units to the number 15, you stifle the individuals self-determination and possible hurt the individuals self worth, which is not the goal of the San Francisco area schools. Students attending San Francisco area schools should not have standards in place that can make students feel that they are unsuccessful. To that end, requiring specific units such as sentences, words, minutes, letters, seconds, etc., can only hurt the self-esteem of those who cannot achieve the 15 unit minimum.
First, I am not a proponent of unneeded homework. However, in all seriousness, I lost all respect for the San Francisco Bay area schools in the mid-nineties. At one point, there were complaints that the schools had no standards for graduation. The schools came up with standards such as "Graduates shall be able to solve problems through compromise", without any hard, measurable standards, such as being able to read, write, add, or recite any history. I remember thinking "Wow, if one kid thinks 2+2=4 and one thinks that 2+2=6, do they compromise and select 5 as the solution?" Around the same time, the teachers across the Bay were trying to get Ebonics recognized as a language so that more teachers could collect an extra 10% salary for being bilingual. And a professor at Berkley was seen on the news protesting against a bill for removal of minority hiring preferences, saying that she would not have "gotten the job" if it wasn't for those preferences. I was happy that I was moving soon, so my newborn daughter wouldn't be raised in that educational environment.
Hopefully, those educated in the Bay Area can tell me that I just heard all of the bad press, and the schools are much better than I believe.
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Re:Ballpark estimate: 15 minutes (Score:4, Insightful)
Incidentally, this is a great part of what is wrong with American thinking these days. That play-to-win attitude fosters cheating on exams, lying during interviews, taking steroids before participating in athletic events, etc. Morality and integrity lie dead on the side of the road traveled by the winners.
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If that's the case, you could have both a teacher and a parent who want to turn the middle east into glass, regularly lynch homosexuals and abortion doctors, and think that FDR destroyed the country, but the parent says "Fuck you, you're not failing my kid, I'll get you fired and make your life hell if you even try", and a teacher who says "Fin
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8. Special Projects - occasionally there will be projects that the children will work on at home with instructions as to when they need to come back to class.
Teacher, teacher can I have a special project so I don't have to come back to school until it's done?
Re:higher expectations? (Score:5, Funny)
Sure brat, just make sure you don't write anything that takes me more than 15 seconds to correct.
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Fifteen words. To go with their fifteen second attention span, and their fifteen minutes of fame for being the dumbest of the dumb on the next generation of reality television shows. It could also refer to the resulting IQ of perfectly intelligent people passing through that particular gem of an educational system, after 12 (maybe 15?) years of concentrated dumbing down.
To each their own (Score:4, Insightful)
Homework works for you, that's great. Homework was a waste of childhood for me. If I could do the last three math problems (always the hardest) why did I need to do the other 30? If I got an "A" on the test who cares how much or little of the homework I did? And if some child does every last bit of the homework but bombs the test, they are still not learning the material, and need a different way to learn it. We need to get rid of any attachment of social value to grades and get back to teaching the kids the skills need to get along in the world.
Re:higher expectations? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure. And shooting hundreds of free throws is nothing more than endless repetition designed to break your spirit, and not at all about making you a better basketball player, or doing scales over and over is designed to make you a better piano player.
Here's a quarter; buy a clue. Practice helps. I have two daughters, 13 and 10, who have been in the Kumon program for the last five years. Kumon is just organized drill, but it has helped my girls get straight A's in math and reading since Grade 2, and both are now in the gifted program. Just like weight training reps help build strength, math reps help build brains. I've stopped being surprised by the number of university graduates I meet who can't figure out a 15% tip without a calculator. My girls are numerate as well as literate, and I ascribe that to Kumon, as well as our family support. My older daughter is in Grade 7, and in Kumon, she is working on quadratic equations, while in school, they are doing elementary algebra. She is so far ahead of her peers, her biggest problem is dealing with boredom at school. Your whining post suggests you were pissed off that you couldn't play video games due to homework. Tough.
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Learning the scales is partly to help you learn finger position and help you give you speed when movi
My two cents (Score:3, Insightful)
That was a problem for me in school as well, however for me the boredom manifest as discipline problems because I didn't respect my teachers, because they were assigning me (in my perspective at the time) remedial work. It lead to huge amounts of anger, frustration, etc. for me, my parents, and my teachers. Life would have been much better for everyone involved if could have spent that time in class learning something. I don't mean to tell you how to r
Re:higher expectations? (Score:5, Insightful)
This applies to the issue of drills. It is true that drills help, but only up to a point. Focus on more "big picture" kinds of work helps -- to a point.
I once heard this piece of advice from an experienced coach. If you want an athlete to reach his potential, you have to find the balance between repetition and stimulation. Ideally, working on basic skills and working on new skills reinforce each other. The basic skills provide the vocabulary in which new skills are described and acquired. The new skills inspire a sharper, more purposeful focus on basic drilling. This came back when I heard Nadia Comaneci interviewed for one of those "where are they now" articles. If you remember, she was the first Olympic gymast to get a perfect score in competition. The journalist asked, "How do you go about getting a perfect score?" Comaneci answer that you did it by working on a routine that is difficult and risky. Do a routine that is too easy, and your mind wanders and you make mistakes in little things.
That's what works for athletes, and a student is simply a mental athlete.
Watching my kids do school, I am struck by how much more project oriented work they do than I did in the 60s, which was very drill oriented. There is much more focus on projects and collaboration, which is a overall good thing. But this can be taken to an extreme, where it becomes a vice. Sometimes teachers make an attempt to replace drills with more "fun" projects, and fail. They end up assigning pointless work, which is actually more dull than doing a moderate list of drills and are flabbergasted when the students don't find them "fun".
The problem of homework should not separated from the issue of the quality of homework.
If a student was in the right zone, then a marginal increase of quality homework tends to produce a reasonably corresponding benefit. If the homework is bad, then doing more of it only wastes more time. The significance of this is what the time would have been used for. If the time would have been used for watching television, then there's not much loss. But kids education does not begin and end with school work. The other things they do have educational value, even its just hanging out with friends.
My fifth grade daughter is an avid reader during vacations. But her teachers are very bad at budgeting their homework time. She often has three or more hours of homework a night, which means she doesn't get to read much, or do her other hobby which is making jewelry. This year we cut out music lessons and sports to make room for homework. One night I caught her up at 10:30, working on homework. She was coloring an extremely elaborate drawing of a scene from a book which had been assigned by her reading teacher. I told her thta she probably didn't have to color it, and she assured be she had to. I suggested she didn't have to draw every single individual rock in the fireplace, and she told me that if she didn't show sufficient effort, her teacher would keep her in from recess until she had done it over again, and recess was the only time she got to do anything with her friends -- because they have so much homework.
Now this drawing wasn't assigned by the art teacher. It was assigned by the reading teacher. Why is the reading teacher assigning art? Because it's easy for her to grade (which seems to be a huge factor in a lot of homework). Allegedly this is supposed to be "fun" for students, although it takes two of my daughter's favorite things in the world -- reading and drawing -- and turns them into pointless drudgery.
So finally I put my foot down: I got a conference with the teacher and told her that I was capping homework at 90 minutes a night, and that if there were ever
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Education (especially math education, I think) should not be about learning isolated chunks of data, but about understanding concepts. All a person gains by memorizing that 15% of 61 is 9.15 is a bit of saved time. That's great if what you want to do is do well on tests or save a bit of time when calculating the tip in restaurants, but if your goal is to actually learn, it's better to
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The dinner bill for the dinner party was 1234.56. Do you expect kids to memorize that by multiplied by
Anyone who delves into breaking down simple problems instead of recalling from rote learning is just being lazy.
NOT breaking down problems into simpler problems is just being silly. This is a key method in problem so
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Slashdot article discussions?
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Expections (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Expections (Score:4, Interesting)
Lucky you. You obviously have the luxury where you live of being able to choose which school your kid goes to, and have a wealth of choices available so you can move him/her from school to school at a whim.
I'm not sure either that your kid would thank you for flipping his/her learning and social life on it's head so quickly.
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We military brats did/do it all the time, every 2-4 years... What, your kid's head will explode if he/she's faced with a new environment?
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It's no excuse for bad schools, but it does mean brigth kids are capable of learning a lot *even* with bad schools.
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The reason a lot of elementary and middle school students are bad at math and writing is that their teachers absolutely hate those subjects. If y
Re:Expections (Score:4, Funny)
Cheers.
Didn't work when I was in school (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Didn't work when I was in school (Score:5, Funny)
Now, I wouldn't ordinarily expect this sort of tactic to work, but this is San Francisco we're talking about...
Helicopter Parents (Score:5, Funny)
Is this a new thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this a new thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Homework isn't the problem, US currucula are! (Score:5, Interesting)
When I arrived in the US, I realized my fellow 5th graders had no idea about geometry, sets and a whole bunch of other mathermatical concepts that I thought were completely basic. In 9th grade geometry, they basically made me repeat the math I learned in 4th grade. And I'll admit it: I was totally baked in very many of my geometry classes and it was still an easy A.
But what I really wanted to say is this: I don't dispute the results of the study. I can easily imagine that homework doesn't help American students do better at the American grade school curriculum. That's because in America, the slowest kid in the class sets the pace for everyone else, and that kid dosn't do homework anyway. No wonder it takes no work to keep up! But we absolutely can aim higher standards. Kids are capable of learning a lot more than people expect. Many can learn Calculus before they enter high school. Homeschooled kids with competent mentors do this all the time. My dad was teaching calculus when he was 16 (his dad taught math and there was no other qualified sub in their little town).
If doing homework doesn't show any benefit in how kids do in school, that screams to me that whatever they're doing in school is messed up. I suspect they dumbed down everything so that doing homework doesn't teach you anything you didn't already learn in class. Now (surprise, surprise!) they release a study showing that doing homework doesn't help you perform in class, and they react to it by cancelling homework. How stupid! Why don't they instead set higher goals in school, so that you would learn something important when doing homework?
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Of these schools, only Cragmont had heavy homework loads or emphasis at any point. I think that the problem with that, however is that I never formed th
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12th grade = 17-18 years old
11th = 16-17
10th = 15-16
9th = 14-15
8th = 13-14
7th = 12-13
6th = 11-12
5th = 10-11
4th = 9-10
3rd = 8-9
2nd = 7-8
1st = 6-7
Re:Is this a new thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
1. The teacher spends N lessons teaching the kids something new (N usually is between 1 and 5)
2. The students get homework repeating what was done in class (It is known that repetition is an important part of learning)
3. The teacher spends N lessons exploring the deeper areas of the current topic (N between 1 and 3)
4. The students get homework that either repeats the new stuff and/or requires them to apply their knowledge to problems that don't follow the scheme seen so far
5. UNTIL test GOTO 3
Some teachers, however, do it like bad university professors:
1. The teacher spends one lesson talking about the subject, boring the students to death
2. The students get a ton of homework where they do the actual learning
3. UNTIL test GOTO 1
hippie school (Score:3, Interesting)
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on-line porn?
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I have these issues with homework:
1. Giving homework that the child can't do and that the parents have to do for them. (I see this a lot.) (Or that the child will get a bad grade for if they do it on their own.)
2. Homework that will take too long to do properly.
3. Too much too young.
There may be others, but that is off the top of my head.
all the best,
drew
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zotzbr o&search=Search [youtube.com]
Re:Is this a new thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is pathetic (Score:2, Insightful)
How about we wipe their tushies and tell them they won't have to work hard to make something of themselves? Howabout just have them skip college (whole lotta more school work plus paying work)? Just tell them that a real work day is only about 6 hours, and you never have to take some work home with you, or stay late to finish that work so you don't have to take it home?
Why does it seem that the USA is progressively skimp
Re:This is pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes I agree, but remember, these are kids, they also have a childhood to live. Performance and the rage to be the first in everything should be something they gradually come to expect as they age, otherwise you get kids that are stressed out, mis-adjusted and nerdy.
What I mean is, there's a balance to find between too much homework, with parents on their kids' back all day long, and lazy kids who don't do jack squat. But at any rate, kids shouldn't be expected to work they butts off like adults do.
Re:This is pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
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Thing is, in childcare and primary-school you don't have any *choice* you're put in a group, and those are your friends (or not!) no matter what you think of it or them.
This changes in the late teenages, once you're in university, you don't really *care* if you don't get all that well along with everyone. There's bound to be *some* groups that you get along with well, and that's enough. You have a very important choice that are simply
Balance (Score:2, Insightful)
What I'm curious about, is how have things changed since I was growing up (I'm 35) for an average child, and how much the day-to-day school experience differs from what I was brought up in (I went to private, Catholic schools)?
I will say that I recall having a low work vs. play and recreation ratio i
Re:Balance (Score:5, Insightful)
You say your parents and teachers encouraged you to try your hardest, and it gave you a willingness to be better. That's great, and ideally that's what should happen. My parents on the other hand pushed me so hard I just didn't do anything outside schoolwork. If I didn't get the best grades, I was punished, "good" grades didn't exist for them, just "best" grades. I can remember those moments vividly, even today as an adult. How did that help me? it didn't, it just ruined most of my childhood.
The other thing is, when parents drive their kids into a success death march, they end up missing totally what the kids might or might not be good at. I for example did advanced studies in math, physics and CS. I hated every minute of it (apart CS) but I completed the studies because my parents would be "so disappointed considering my abilities" (so they said). In reality, I wanted to work with my hands, and I realized only very late in life that that's what I really wanted. Not "could do", but "wanted to do". The end result is, today I'm a metalworker because *I* chose to.
The challenge for parents is to make their kids understand that they have a duty to perform well at school, while at the same time cutting them enough slack to let them be happy during their childhood and find their own way, and realize that a good student and happy student in "lowly" studies like woodworking or metalworking is better than a bad or stressed out student in Harvard or MIT.
Re:This is pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
But you ignore a key statement of the article:
"A University of Missouri study found high school students benefit tremendously from homework. In middle school, the results were not as strong, but homework was still found to be beneficial. But on the elementary school level, the same study found homework had no effect on students."
What is your rebuttal? And are you comparing yourself in highschool to kids in elementary?
Personally, I do think life is getting awfully institutionalized. And remember, we're not just talking about what's ideal, but what the state should force upon our kids. School is mandatory.
Re:This is pathetic (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know about India, but I do know about Japan. Kids study their nuts off to learn exactly what they need to pass university entrance exams, which are really tough. The university courses that follow are, with a VERY few exceptions, exercises in mediocrity with degrees that are trivially easy to do well in. No wonder there are two generations of extremely frustrated people, birth rate dropping, marriage age rocketing, the part time labor sector expanding rapidly. Most people below 30 know they've had a bad deal. Those above were already employed when job-for-life-in-exchange-for-industrial-servitude was ripped away from them. So Japan's not a good comparison, it's in its own little education and workforce hell right now.
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It's so bad that the train companies charge the family for clean-up after somebody jumps in front of a train...
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You assume that the more work gets done, the more learning gets done, which I would argue is not always the case for grade-school homework, especially in mathematics and spelling. Most of the tasks assigned are repetitious beyond what most students require. Why write words down hundreds of times if you can spell them correctly after 10? Mathematics is even worse, because once you discover the pattern that an arithmetic operator takes, all of the problems being asked become special cases. More than once I si
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Spoken like a true leftist high-school idiot who has never learned from their homework.
When you go to college, if you study (for example) Computer Science, and if your school is any good at all, you will have assignments requiring you to write programs which use particular data structures and which perform certain algorithms to work with them. You will probab
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Things are different in highly competitive private schools and top public school districts these days. I see my little cousin in fourth grade doing 2-3 hours of homework, having 2 hours of after-school activities every evening, and a tu
The wrong solution (Score:5, Funny)
Ob. Simpsons (Score:2)
Why on Earth... (Score:3, Interesting)
contact information (Score:2)
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Boy, I do not follow that reason at all. Most people graduate from high school at age 18 or so, so a 40th reunion would make someone 58 years old. I see no reason at all why someone who is only 58 necessarily should be retiring. It's a perfectly reasonable age to retire if you've already saved up enough money not to need to work, but then so is age 35, but there is no reason someone shoul
Alarmist headline... (Score:2)
Please note that TFA says they're only reducing homework to near zero for elementary school students:
So if there's really no measurable benefit to doing homework in elementary school, why give them hom
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Explaintions. (Yes, I spelled it wrong on purpose) (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder how they are going to explain the drop in grades? Probably blame it on the teachers or some such.
Homework exists to reinforce the learning from the schoolday. It is not punishment, and it is not surplus work to keep the devil from taking over their souls.
As much as I hated homework (even moreso because I learned very well during the class), I have to admit that it does reinforce the learning. It's the 'doing' that reinforces the 'learning'.
Re:Explaintions. (Yes, I spelled it wrong on purpo (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh hell no...they'll blame it on being "underfunded."
Re:Explaintions. (Yes, I spelled it wrong on purpo (Score:2)
Well, if so, how about this:
maintain an A average and you can choose to do your homework or not, turn it in late if you like, or whatever? Doing it will give you a cushion should you have a bad test result - a bit of insurance so to speak.
You have demonstrated that you do not need the reinforcement as you are getting it in class, you get a bonus.
all
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Since you're the only one that disagreed with me that showed any ability to debate at all, I'll respond to you.
There's 2 types of homework: Busywork, and learning reinforcement. (Despite the other response that says learning can't be reinforced, this not true. If you do something over and over, you remember it easier.)
For young students, how much is there really to reinforce? It's pretty much all just memorization, and you either memorize it or you don't. I suspect the '
About the Teacher (Score:2)
I grew up in central Connecticut. I graduated with a B.A. from Elmira College in Education and Psychology. After several years of teaching and then working in the Rare Book Room at Syracuse University, I decided to return to graduate school, receiving a M.L.S. from Syracuse University in Library and Information Technology. In 1978 we moved to Boston and I was accepted into a Master's program ar Harvard University where I received a Ed.M. in R
Moo (Score:5, Interesting)
It used to be that there were three groups of kids in a clasroom. One was average, one was above average, and one was below average. The teacher taught to the average group. The above average kids got bored, but hopefully were given more work if they enjoyed it. The lower than average kids did work at home in order to keep up with the average. All was good.
Then we decided to be nice. So, instead of letting the lower-than-average kids deal with being such, we'll teach to their level so everything can be done in school. Well, that left most of the kids bored, and the nostalgic feeling of homework was going away. So, they started giving homework to everyone.
Parents liked homework too, because it occuppied their kids time for them. So teachers gave more, and than the kids complained or rebelled. It's just plain sad.
One of my teachers did it best. He wrote an assignment on the board every day at the beginning of class that was due the next day, and then proceeded to teach it. As soon as you understood it, you stopped listening and started on the work. The lower-than-average kids needed help, so the higher-than-average helped them when they were finished with it themselves. There was rarely homwork for anyone, unless they needed it to keep up with the class (and that was known by whether they could do the work in class.) I consider that teacher the best one. He gave work for learning it, not just to give it.
Only for younger kids (Score:2, Insightful)
Kids are under increasing stress to outdo their peers in the rush for university places. I'm feeling the pressure at A Level, and I've no doubt that kids younger than me are sick of it as well. It's not just homework,
5th grade teacher weighing in.... (Score:5, Insightful)
A better system would give students time each day, or at least a few days a week, in supervised study hall. Staff it with student teachers or assistants capable of helping with questions (which parents often can't). A longer school day with me would work too.
The real issue is that all too often homework is given because it is expected by parents, and is just busywork. The "I had lots of homework as a kid so my kids should too" attitude of some parents is not beneficial. Homework shouldn't be a punishment or given just because teachers are supposed to. The question is, what do students need to learn what they are supposed to learn?
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While I think children need to learn and homework helps reinforce their in-class education at home, I also think they need to
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Menlo Park alum weighing in.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I went to second grade in the Menlo Park school district, the location of Oak Knoll School, which is described in the article. I went to Willow School. I don't know how much has changed since 1973, but back then, it was a low-income area, with really horrible schools. I remember learning to flake loose paint off of the buildings with a pin at recess. They had a government-subsidized breakfast program, and my parents offered to pay for it, but the school thought they were just being proud, and told them it was really OK. There was not much learning going on. The teacher would play records, read books to us, and give us toys and comic books as prizes for good behavior. There was no homework. One big reason we moved after that year was to get me out of that school. However, even though the next place we landed was much more affluent (I went to Forest Grove School in Pacific Grove, Ca.), there was still no homework.
Today, I have two kids in grade school, and I do think they get too much homework. (A lot of it is busywork, like word searches, or 50 arithmetic problems when 10 would have done it.) My impression is that the school assigns a lot of homework because the parents expect it. Real estate has tripled since we bought our house here, and I think large amounts of homework reassure affluent parents that their kids are getting a good education. Also, the area is majority Korean, so the culture leans that way too.
Should go the other way instead. (Score:5, Insightful)
So reducing homework and maybe making teachers actually teach sounds good at first though but then I remembered all the busy work. So how about instead of making our kids waste a full 40 hours a week sitting in class snoozing we give them less school and actually make sure they do their learning at home at their own pace.
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Homework has never been proven to improve grades (Score:3, Interesting)
ttyl
Farrell
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Homework has never been proven to improve grades
Yeah and practice has never been proven to improve skills either.
When you "get" a subject and know you understand it, you need to sit down and practice for a while. Understanding how a math problem is solved is very important, but actually sitting down and solving 4 or 5 samples of increasing complexity nails it down for good.
Otherwise you end up like some people in my class who, at the age of 18, did not "remember" how to solve 2ng grade equations while everybody else was discussing calculus.
Sweden (Score:2, Interesting)
While this particular instance is more than... (Score:3, Informative)
Homework is useless for my son (Score:2)
So we have a system in place. He earns time on the computer by studying. Currently this study is classical physics, previously it's been history, mathematics, animation (via blender) anything we felt is useful to know. By this method we manage on average five to eight hours independant study for him a week, most of which relates to scho
Homework can be useful (Score:2)
Everyday tasks can be assigned, and the point should be for the pupils to open their eyes to everyday applications of their skills. Reality is an intermix of skills, and that means that even though the task may be for biology it will require writing skills to actually document.
They should still assign homework (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't grading by both testing AND homework implying that people cheat on homework? If you believe that everyone is honestly do their homework, then the homework should show whether or not they trully understand(not MEMORIZE per se) the material. Or if you have tests then don't collect homework because the students will have to prove their mettle on the test anyway. I think it would be great if classes had either only test or only homework/discussion grades. Each would work better in certain situations, but the whole idea of having to be perfect all the time without being able to consult reference materials or collaborate with others against the spirit of education. Also, it doesn't represent the "real world" at all. I know bridge makers aren't allowed to make mistakes, but all bridge designs have to be signed off by several people and they are allowed to collaborate with co-workers and several people have to inspect the design and put their own reputation and even wallets on the line when they sign off on the design. This isn't allowed on tests or even homework theoretically. So why grade it?
As a teacher... (Score:4, Interesting)
Homework should be used for practice, but not count for the final grade.
-CGP [colingregorypalmer.net]
Kind of a dumb suggestion, but why not change ... (Score:3, Interesting)
C'mon! We are not fragile as a species. (Score:2)
People are begininng to treat kinds (and themselves) as if they were fragile. We are not damned fragile as a species. If we had been so mentally fragile we would have not survied so long --we would have curled up and died many millen
Homework helps very few... (Score:5, Interesting)
We've come to expect that our kids do tons of homework each and every night, and I have many colleagues who parrot that idea. When I press them as to why, they basically tell me that they need to practice doing homework. Rarely is the question answered that the lesson needs to be reinforced or whatnot.
We're in the day and age of "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB), the current incarnation of educational reform that has been around since the sixties. I live in an average-to-slightly-upper middle class neighborhood, and the vast difference among my students academically is astounding. 1/3 of my kids in the classroom have IEPs (Individual Educational Plans, which have goals tailored to the individual, and you must follow them, even if it was written in another district before the student moved to yours), and gathering homework on a regular basis from everybody is time consuming due to the amount of kids not doing it to the different expectations NCLB has forced.
The reality is that very few parents are willing or able to help at home. Kids are overextended with activities (kids are doing extra-curriculars at an all-time high), or they're latchkey, or they're in daycare for extended time. I usually get done in FIVE minutes one-on-one what could be done in half an hour at home, and of course I take that route when I can. I've moved on to pushing some work back to the next day instead of giving it for homework (yes, I still give homework, just not nearly as much as when I started, and now it's mostly reading), due to the fact that while they are learning skills they should have an opportunity to learn it from a person that is getting paid for teaching it, and it highly qualified to do it (yes, there are teachers who are not highly qualified, or highly motivated, but that's for another thread I think).
Kids who don't finish something in a reasonable timeframe in the classroom will have more homework than those who do. It's easy to tell, once you get to know the kids, whether they don't understand or are malingering. I do, however, like to give reading homework for many reasons. For one, it helps them become better readers, and they actually DO IT, especially if they self-select the reading. Another reason is that, in my grade, I encourage the kids to read with parents or siblings. I get a lot of feedback about how that has been good for the family as a whole over time.
I can't speak to the upper grades, but I know many teachers who see the same thing (the kids who can do it already, the kids who can't at home, and the middle ground) in middle school and high school. There's no easy answer, but looking back at the history of education, there was an extended period (covering DECADES) where there was virtually no homework for the kids. I wouldn't say a blanket "no homework at all" for the upper levels, but I'd certainly be in favor of limiting it to an hour or less. Just food for thought.
Yeah, probably switched topics too much, but I have no time to re-read this because I have essays to grade...
from a certain point of veiw (Score:2)
Homework (Score:3, Funny)
That homework link is ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems as though the school has outsourced reading, handwriting, math, and spelling to mom and dad. What exactly are they doing all day in school?
coming from a new graduate (Score:4, Insightful)
Homework, I feel, is essential in some areas, especially in mathematics and science. I found myself earning higher grades on tests and quizzes when I did the homework. It's a great way to practice the material studied in class. What didn't help is my parents did not know the material. I had to go online a lot and research tips and other educational materials on my own to help me understand better.
This may be a little off topic, but I feel it needs mentioning. The school system nowadays, as I have experienced it, are focusing more on getting students to pass the yearly standardized state test. The HSPA (NJ) and TAX (TX) tests were all we were prepared for as well as the AP* exams in my advanced courses. Granted, it is in our best interest to pass, but when you're in AP English IV looking for grammatical errors in sentences for two dittos/sheets, back and front, and you spend two days on the material, all because it's on the state test, there's definitely a problem.
*AP stands for advanced placement which is the equivalent to one college semester of that course; see Advanced Placement [wikipedia.org], College Board [wikipedia.org]
Homework does not do what you think it does. (Score:4, Informative)
The teachers are in a hard place. Teachers will have parents complaining about giving too much homework, while parents in the same class will complain about not enough homework.
Student stress is GOOD (Score:3, Insightful)
US public schools suck as it is. If they also abolish homework they'll be even more of a laughing stock for the rest of the world and in 10-15 years US of A will be paying dearly for this decision. I bet kids in China, India and Russia don't dare to open their mouths about getting too much homework.
Seven lesson schoolteacher (Gatto) (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt [worldtrans.org]
"After an adult lifetime spent teaching school I believe the method
of mass-schooling is the only real content it has, don't be fooled into
thinking that good curriculum or good equipment or good teachers are the
critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the
pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the
lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments
with themselves and with their families, to learn lessons in self-
motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love and
lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home
life.
Thirty years ago these things could still be learned in the time
left after school. But television has eaten up most of that time, and a
combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or
single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family
time. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human, and only thin-
soil wastelands to do it in. A future is rushing down upon our culture
which will insist that all of us learn the wisdom of non-material
experience; a future which will demand as the price of survival that we
follow a pace of natural life economical in material cost. These
lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is like
starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the
only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it."
Homework only makes the problem worse!
damn (Score:4, Funny)
It's funny, actually. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, this is the high school level I'm talking about, an age group that generally doesn't "wake up" until midday anyway. I know *I* was a zombie until about 10:30 AM. Actually, I still am...
But anyway, the only "homework" I can see as being necessary is studying, and learning to study, which is absolutely necessary when the college/university level hits. When I went through school, I don't think - or at least, I don't recall - that it was ever actually taught (or it was taught in a backwards way), and as a result, I never developed good study habits - I'm guessing my classmates, excepting those who developed their own, were in a similar boat.
Stress is normal. Live with it. (Score:3, Informative)
Stress is part of working in the real world. If they don't learn how to cope with stress when they are kids, what are they going to do when they try to make it in the workforce?
While I don't think that kids should be put through unnaturally highly stressful conditions with unrealistic expectations, the pressure of dealing with deadlines with serious consequences for failure is just how the real world works, and to not give children the opportunity to develop their own mechanisms for coping with the stress of being in such circumstances is setting them up for probable failure in the future.
If you don't try to get a person to stretch a person past their own comfort zone, they cannot reasonably be expected to grow. Homework accomplishes this.
No Child Left Behind (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No Child Left Behind (Score:5, Funny)
Let's first try criticizing something that doesn't give us as many cheap laborers. I mean, you're threatening someone's bottom line there, you communist.
Note for the humor-impaired: The above post was satire pointed at the legal system being systematically fucked over to increase corporate profits.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No Child Left Behind (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Expections? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:or perhaps... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Way to go... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell yes. This article isn't talking about high school, or even junior high school, it's talking about freaking elementary school. When you're 8 years old you damn well shouldn't have to be stressed out every day, and only a sociopath would think otherwise. These are not the ages to start teaching kids about the "real world". They can stress out for the next 70 years of their life, why can't we let them be a kid for just a few years?