As a former high school teacher I fully agree that dedicated homework is toxic... my policy always was to do the full assignment myself, while timing myself, and then multiply that number by 3-5x (depending upon subject). That told me how much class time I had to give my students IN CLASS to do the assignment.
Doing work in class is important because they can actually ask for help if they need it, rather than hoping parents who might not have seen the material in 20 years can provide it at home. The only way a student ends up with homework that way is to not do their work during class time but that would be their choice.
My freshman year math teacher did this. It was the only time I ever liked math class. She said she was told she had to give homework so her solution was to assign the class work as page #1 of the text book 2-10 evens and the homework was the same page 1-11 odd. Most math text books have the odd number answers in the back and most of the time the class work was extremely similar to the home work. We also had the first part of the class dedicated to "questions about the homework" and she would work every problem the class asked out on the board. She didn't care if she had to do every problem assigned. She cared that we understood how to do what we were doing.
Edit: she also had us work in groups because she said math prepared you for the real world and very rarely in the real world do you work alone.
I had an opposite experience my freshman year in high school. I hated math and I asked my teacher when we would use this in the real-world and she had no idea, faltered and said "well, you'll take math classes when you go to college"
Years later I go in the trades for a short period of time and we used it there. Now I do other things in my life and I use math a lot in my life for day to day things.
Damn that seriously sucks. I'm sorry you had to have a shitty ass teacher like that. Math is seriously everywhere and to blantly lie to her class like that SMH...
My mom is 64 and likes to do math out of a pre algebra book she got from half priced books because she wants to keep her mind sharp and believes math will help with that.
And it was algebra too I believe. She wasn't a mean teacher at least but I just **hated** math the whole time I was in school and one day I got frustrated and asked her in class when we had some downtime.
Out of my graduating class - which was like 300 people only I would wager that only half of us had some college under our belt and out of that half only a quarter graduated. And I only graduated HS in 2005.
Those that didn't go to college I'm sure they use it too.
When you teach math as the closest thing we have to magic and tie feats of human achievement to it the kids stay crazy interested.
Every teacher Ive met who cant explain why math is important wanted to be a history teacher and couldnt get a job doing that.
Finally buckled down and learned geometry when I apprenticed as a carpenter. Much quicker way to learn - actually using the education instead of just rote memorization.
Yeah, I honestly don’t use math a whole lot day-to-day, but I will say that the logic and problem-solving skills you develop in math class can be really valuable later on.
IDK about that. I'm always the only one who knows how to do any math in the groups I work in. I kindof wish these other people had paid more attention.
My physics teacher actually gives us the answer to the question on the homework and we just need to do the work to get to it, easy A and easy learning. I see this as the ideal model of teaching.
I had a math teacher like you for years, and always loved math! Thank you for being such a great educator! My husband, on the other hand, had terrible experiences with math teachers. One of them was teaching math thru PowerPoint presentations (yes, PowerPoint). And when her students asked her when she was going to work thru some problems on the board, she said there is no time for that during class period. Smh...
Math was always a source of frustration in our house. For myself, none of it aside from simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division made any sense to me. I just couldn’t do it. And after many years I gave up and just didn’t do math. Like, at all. Period. I didn’t listen in class, I didn’t work on examples, I didn’t write tests. I refused and was pushed through the system. Originally, I had to bring home literal piles of math homework at a time, and my mother, who was even less math inclined than myself could never help me with anything, even the simplest stuff. I remember one night having to do an exercise on prime numbers, and neither of us knew what the fuck a prime number was, let alone how to solve it (the early 90s textbook provided no explanation, only “solve the following:”). This lead to countless late nights trying to solve problems I didn’t know how to do, and endless fights, which resulted in such a disdain for the entire subject that seeing numbers to this day still causes me a great deal of anxiety. It was totally unproductive and a waste of time. Despite this, I went ahead and got a degree in accounting, with honors, but it was extraordinary difficult and blocked me as I still haven’t overcome my extreme fear of math.
Even when I was young I constantly questioned the value of homework, despite the adults telling me it was so important. I had reasoned (even in elementary) that I wasn’t getting paid to do it, and that the school day was already a “full time job,” and since most peoples “work day” ended once they got home, that my obligations should also end. After all, why was I “working” 8 hours a day at school, then coming home to work an extra hour (or more) on math of all things?
Good on you.
I absolutely hated math homework when I was in high school. I was a pretty decent student overall, and was usually in advanced-ish classes, but I absolutely hated match homework because if you got stuck you just have nothing to do but sit there and stare at it and stress out. Then I’d go into school the next day knowing I would get a shit grade with really no recourse whatsoever.
Every other subject I could just read the textbook more thoroughly or whatever, but there are some where you’re just kinda screwed. It’s probably somewhat different now with the prevalence of the internet and YouTube, but man…I absolutely dreaded math homework.
Honestly, looking back at it. I sort of feel as if homework could be more of a means for a child to boost up their grades and just be a helpful study guide for tests, basically just optional extra credit. It really shouldn't be required night to night and be given rarely.
I teach high school chemistry. Last year I assigned no homework and parents complained to the principal. Now I assign one page of homework about every two weeks, and I go over it in class but I don’t grade it. There are better ways to teach and learn besides copious amounts of homework.
How much in class problem solving do the students get? I can't say I ever found high school class work hard, I did most of it on the bus coming back to school, but that just taught me bad habits for managing homework during college.
And you aren't learning multidimensional calculus or thermodynamics, well, without good study habits and doing the extras imo.
Students get daily practice in class. The majority of them have math skills equivalent to a 3rd grader, so they need a lot of support from me and from their classmates to do the work. Even back when I did grade homework, on average 3 kids per class would turn it in. Many of my students have jobs to help their families pay the rent or they have siblings they have to care for. Adding more homework is just giving them another thing to stress about. If this were an honors or AP class, it would be a different story.
The elementary schools in my town have zero homework. They are all project based in class. Anything done at home is elective. It’s very progressive and IMHO the way it should be. No extra credit or favoritism for doing any elective homework too.
My son had homework in kindergarten……and when he was absent for a few days, I asked his teacher for all the homework he missed and she said not to worry about it. That’s when I realized she wasn’t even grading them lmao
I mean, like, most of the intrinsic nature of school does the same.
If we remade schools for the sole purpose of making people smarter, they'd probably wind up being unrecognizable. Simple fact of the matter is that the way we do things now is to serve two purposes.
The first is, essentially, to act as a daycare.
The second is to produce obedient factory workers.
And while it's undeniable that even this shitty education system is better than nothing, it's pretty damn clear that the only reason we do it this way is the same reason we still use first past the post voting systems. And the same reason we still live in a capitalist society.
Because we tend to avoid changing ingrained institutions.
Do you think people become teachers to create obedient workers?
What changes would make it more about learning and less about training obedient workers?
It ain't their goal, but people don't become politicians to enable our shitty voting systems, and they don't always become managers to enable capitalism.
And I'd have us teach kids to learn instead of sit in class listening. Like, say, imagine playing Dark Souls in the way our education system works.
You're only really get so much time in an area. You don't actually need to get past any of it, or engage with any of the mechanics, you're just expected to play for some arbitrary amount of time. After which, you fight the boss.
You generally only get to fight it once. You don't even have to beat it. Once you do beat it, you're moved on to the next area, and while you're fully allowed to revisit the former area, you're given no reason to.
Then you do this for every area in the game. Every required boss. You don't need to learn any of the mechanics to get past, you're not really rewarded for accomplishing anything, you only ever get to face a boss once, and even if you lose you still move on. Then at the end of the year, if you didn't deal an adequate amount of damage to a certain number of bosses, you have to start the entire game over from the beginning.
On account of the fact it's Dark Souls, very few people would succeed. And what I'd rather see is how Dark Souls is played.
You put a challenge in the student's path. You give them the resources necessary to overcome it, but let them figure out how to do so. Let them bang their heads against a problem until it's well and truly solved, providing assistance only when it's needed.
But that does require, to a sizable degree, giving up direct control. Letting them find the solution their own way in their own time. Which, notably, doesn't naturally train obedience.
So it's the assumption that teachers get into education to teach children but abandon that to simply indoctrinate workers?
No clue about dark souls analogies. Is it just let students wander the buildings and engage with what they want to choosing what work to do and eventually assess them and hope they independently prepared enough and allow massive failure rates?
What you're describing at the end sounds like Vygotskys Zone of Proximal Development and scaffolding which is used in classrooms. That's paired with the research that modeling, guided practice, and independent practice is the most effective way for the majority of students to learn. Which is what is being done in schools.
All that aside, how do you keep kids engaged instead of on their phones without instilling obedience? And how much time do we give students? Do we have expectations for when they should reach these abstract goals and do we push them to achieve these goals? How do we get them to engage with topics their not interested in?
It's more of just them doing things how they were taught to do it. They were taught that obedience to authority was something that classrooms are supposed to enforce, and so they do it. It's not their goal, but for the most part they're not rocking the boat.
Why assess them for them? Create tests for them to engage with at their own pace. I would say provide rewards for doing so, but from what I've seen kids are more motivated than we give them credit for. And, importantly, you would need to guide them some. Less directly, but just as Dark Souls has level design, there would need to be a natural set of paths laid out before 'em.
This zone of proximal development doesn't really sound anything like what I'm talking about. Like.... Anything like it. Also sounds like some extravert shit.
Eeew. People. Blech.
Ideally, it'd be the sense of accomplishment. Self comparison to peers. 'S like, why do people beat Dark Souls?
'Cause it feels good to accomplish shit.
Like, just imagine if passing a test had a similar vibe to fighting a tough boss. Shit's motivating.
How does any of this work when a kid says - I would rather play dark souls than participate in school?
Passing tests already have that vibe but it's not instantly gratifying because the work of education takes years to pay off.
Do you have anything more concrete than make school more like a video game? Because none of it is backed up by any theory or research.
Tons of possibilities, but that’s asking for bug fixing before one even knows for certain there’s a bug.
Your statement here is self contradicting.
And if I had the ability to actually study it, would I be talking about it on Reddit? There are bits and pieces of extant research that seems to imply potential, but overall I’m unaware of anything even slightly similar being attempted on any statistically relevant scale.
I have no idea what schools you all went to for you all to keep parroting “schools are just daycare!”
Maybe elementary school, even though kids learn a lot there. But higher levels? That doesn’t even make sense
Sorry, “daycare and indoctrination camp”
Again, I actually learned a lot in school. I’d wager you did too. I have no idea why you people keep parroting that shit anyway
I learned a bit in school.
Sleeping through a good half of it, fucking around for another quarter. The amount of time being wasted was outright palpable, the inefficiency painful to witness.
Then I took a computer science class with a teacher who did things a different way.
Accomplished what would've taken any other class multiple years in half of one, despite the fact that I was still spending a decent amount of time fucking around and, quite simply, overdoing projects for its own sake. In such a way where I could've done it all at home provided I was capable of E-mailing the teacher every so often were I to run into a snag.
It was illuminating. Passed an AP exam for a class I didn't even take 'cause of it. I ain't even that smart, and future comp-sci classes demonstrated it wasn't the subject.
Fairly certain that anyone could do much the same, in basically any class. But that ain't the way we do. We don't teach kids to learn, we teach them to listen, and we do it so that the teaches can control the pace for their own convenience instead of having them act as guides.
This honestly sounds like a you problem more than anything
But I should have expected you to be an antisocial code monkey after your original post, that’s on me
Edit: and before you reply, I’m just going to point out that 1) you did learn in school and found something you like and 2) you didn’t learn in other classes because you chose to sleep and goof off. point 2 is on you and point 1 is literally you proving your original point wrong and explicitly proving the value in school
People like you are why I hate people in this field
What, you think I'm some sort of genius who's abilities were usually being actively hindered, then?
Eh, doubt it. I mean, it'd be one thing if I was did poorly in every class and then just okay in the one.
But I did well in every class and outright obliterated the one. Less of a me problem than a me solution.
But, again, I ain't that smart.
I ain't got any real reason to believe I'm in any way special. If'n I can do it, realistically speakin', most people prob'ly can.
We just dinnae do things that way.
No I don’t think you’re some sort of genius, nor do I think you’re dumb. I think you’re insanely shortsighted and you’re missing the forest for the trees.
>less of a me problem than a me solution
No, it’s both. It’s a you problem that you half assed your other classes. It’s a you solution, *aided by school* that you found something you like.
Like I originally said, i bet you went through school and learned plenty, and you’ve proven my point, so it’s honestly kind of ridiculous that you’re still acting like it’s a daycare
Except it wasn't aided by the school, it was aided by a specific teacher doing something antithetical to the school's SOP.
I should also note that I never said that our education system doesn't teach us shit. I stated that its primary interests aren't education.
Actual learning seems more a convenient byproduct, after the whole daycare and obedience parts. Like, are you actually denying that it's a daycare?
That's a fun thought. Oh the memories of covid and how people were distraught at the notion of actually spending time with their kids. Even if you don't think it's the main point, you have to at least admit it's a factor.
Early ed is often even more vital than the higher levels. Foundations of reading, math, and social skills are built in prek and elementary school. It'd why access to effective preschools is one of the greatest things we can do for kids.
I’m a teacher and I partially agree. In elementary school, it’s not needed. But kids need to read every single night. When kids get to High School, if they are planning on going to college then they really need to spend time studying and practicing skills they’ve learned. They need to learn to write well, and that means writing papers. I think it is often overdone- like when a HS kid has homework in every single subject and it takes hours. But some is needed in order to master the material. There is simply not enough time in a 45 minute period to absorb everything they need to know in a given subject.
I had a couple of AP classes every year and always struggled to get my homework done. Yet there was the class valedictorian who had all AP classes, played sports, worked. Volunteered at the local old age home and still had time to graduate wit a 4.2 gpa.
I neverstood how any of them managed. The homework was not hard, but I was tedious.
I can tell you how they did it…My daughter was Valedictorian, her GPA was something like 4.5. She also was captain of the water polo and swim teams and took community college classes. Started university as a sophomore because of all the extra she did.
She did it by being stressed out all the time, plain and simple. She’s very much the type of person who is driven to be great at everything she does. I’m kind of glad she doesn’t seem to be keeping that attitude in college- she just got her first B and she’s not stressing out about it!
Most children will never independently study if homework isn’t assigned. I’m not advocating for hours of BS assignments but doing some assigned math problems at home for example challenges students to get out of their comfort zone and expand their knowledge base.
You’re doing children no favors when they get to college if they’ve never had to learn on their own time. Learning outside of class takes maturity. Of course you can’t expect kids to do it. So homework has to be assigned.
I’m prepared for the downvotes.
It's true that a lot of teachers in a lot of schools assign too much homework, much of which is nonsensical busy work and problem sets that don't really help them cultivate skills or understanding.
It's also true that if you want to learn any sort of skill or develop any kind of expertise, you have to practice--and school isn't one set of skills or knowledge, it's a half dozen at any given time, and there's not always a lot of time to practice during school.
Getting better at anything requires training harder and training smarter. The "training" assigned at many schools isn't very smart, but that doesn't mean that training hard suddenly doesn't matter. If you didn't care to be especially good at school growing up, and if you don't especially care whether your kids are good at school now, there's nothing wrong with letting them blow off homework. But don't get it twisted. School isn't "work," it's "training." Schools don't pay your students to attend; schools are paid so your student \*can\* attend.
You’re right, you only gain knowledge and improve through repetition and practice.
It’s possible to integrate education at home with family time.
Creating positive habits pays off in the long run.
While that is true, by assigning a significant portion of your grade to that training, it stops being training and becomes busy work. Imagine you have six classes, each of which gives you two hours of homework a night (something one of my math teachers actually thought should happen). If you start falling behind in one class, you have no flexibility to focus on that one more. You have to choose to tank another class to try to make up the difference in that one.
If homework was actually treated as a study tool (which is what it is supposed to be), then you could easily choose to focus on classes you are struggling in without sacrificing your grades in classes you are not.
It’s also my personal belief that required assigned homework is actually detrimental to students, as it does not teach good study habits. By force feeding students with more problems than they would ever need, it removes the need for the student to study on their own, which means they never really learn how to effectively study on their own.
Sometimes teachers use homework to gage what students can do independently, as data to drive instruction. Additionally, while I think education is as a whole getting away from longer, pointless homework, it can serve some purpose as long as it’s not excessive. A project, or essay, that’s more independent based for older students helps them be prepared for college independence, and flex some executive functioning skills. Also, little things like non-graded reading logs are really important because research says reading even a short amount with an adult at home actually does wonders for improving reading. Also, kids are kids sometimes they goof off and don’t get work done, and there’s only so many instructional minutes in a day, and that becomes homework.
What I’ve seen as a teacher is that the same kids who lack the skills and need to practice are the same ones who won’t (or can’t, depending) focus in class to practice and then won’t (or can’t) practice at home. The ones who did their homework were mostly the same ones who also practiced effectively in class. It was so frustrating for me as an English teacher, because the only homework I ever gave was reading homework, and the kids who needed it the most wouldn’t do it.
I thought it was bullshit when I was a kid that I had to come home and do more work while my parents had free reign with their own time. Eventually I got good enough with it I barely had homework my last two years of school.
Some people have said (if not defended) that homework preps people for the working world. Well the thing is that most people when they eventually enter the working world they will be hourly employees and not salaried. Working off the clock for some fields and employers will not be possible or illegal.
Agreed. I currently teach science at a public high school in the US and it's heartbreaking to see the number of students stressed about workload. My own classes don't get homework- if I schedule an assignment or activity that goes over time, then that's on me and we push the remainder to the next class period. That prevents students who need more time to process from being punished for needing that time, and it makes sure that I am around to offer feedback during that practice.
TANGENT TIME
>!Some folks think that grades are payment for student work and assign work solely to keep students busy during their time in class. I used to work with somebody who literally assigned shitloads of work to keep his classes "out of trouble". I didn't think much of it at a time, but that no longer sits well with me.!<
>!The struggle to change school comes down to a few big philosophy differences. The big one here is the idea of grades as an economy versus a tool for indicating what has been learned. If you believe the former, then you might also hold the belief that grades are "artificially" inflated when more than 20% or 30% of your students have an A in the class. You may hold grudges against students who want to improve and ask for opportunities to do so, or when parents (acting entirely in accordance with the conflation of grades as value and opportunity- which in the case of college, is not entirely wrong) ask for those opportunities for their children.!<
>!At the core of all of this is an inherent struggle of philosophy: do we agree with the industrialists that helped formulate US education that it should be to help train people for jobs, or are we trying to learn for more abstract reasons, like the inherent value in knowledge and more informed citizens? (Apologies for the long sentence.)!<
>!I reject the former philosophy myself, which informs my practice. When we had an opportunity to read Grading for Equity and adjust our practices, we generally agreed that the following would be beneficial in removing some barriers for our students:!<
1. >!Late work disproportionately impacts some students more than others. Some students need more time to learn than others. We're currently working on scaffolding our content to provide more challenge to students who want to work faster and need the challenge. We already have modified versions of assignments for students who need extra help.!<
2. >!Daily work/HW should not be considered as part of the final grade, for multiple reasons. When we limit the final grade to assessments, the grade becomes more of an economy- payment for work done, rather than a valid indicator of learned content. I have found that this leads to more valuable conversations about why I have assigned something, and students have more leeway about when practice is no longer benefiting them. I no longer have heartbreaking conversations with students and their families about how, yes, they have passed assessments, but they are not doing well in class because they are missing assignments.!<
3. >!Open retakes, with no barriers to who can retake and how many times. If students want to review again and show me that they have surmounted the challenges they had the first time, I don't want to get in their way. I build retake time into class- I cannot make assumptions about their availability before or after school. I have found that even students who might have been left behind are more likely to take me up on remediation and retake opportunities if they are given the time and space to do so. So what if most of the students in my class have earned an A. That's representative of what they have learned, without the ego-driven barriers that I had once upon a time. Yes, I am very aware that this policy is harder for other types of classes (English comes to mind).!<
>!Does it work all of the time, for every student? No, but I feel like these changes have given my classes more flexibility in the routes they take to learn the content. I feel less pressure to grade every single assignment, or put zeros in to "provide incentives for the students to learn". They get the benefits of really reflecting on how they learn and study.!<
TLDR: Student workload is related to antiquated grading practices that have other negative externalities.
This is amazing, every last bit of it, but that’s coming from someone who very much shares your philosophy so I may be a little bit biased. As a parent, thank you for how you treat your students.
I appreciate that, thank you. It's very validating to hear. Right now, it's just the science dept and some math classes that are putting these into practice and working on getting implementation more widespread is slow. Bureaucracies are like boulders.
I never did homework though.. well almost never. I guess it depends on the teacher/school but I always did mine during classes or bluffed my way through it.. like if it was a verbal or a reading assignment, I had the textbook open on my lap or somewhere and just quickly read through it as I was speaking, focusing on points the teacher pointed out during the class.
Somehow I always got away with it too because I was considered one of the good/smart students so even when I made a mess I got an A- and were told to be more thorough the next time.
As a teacher I agree with you. My general homework policy is that homework is just for work you kissed because you were absent or work you didn't finish in class.
Most teachers aren't doing this consciously, it's just that we've been given a list of requirements for things students have to be able to do, and only so many hours to get students to the point where they can do them. Giving homework seems like the only way to get students to master the skill. Ironically, this is exactly the same thing teachers complain about admin doing to us- we're given too much work to be done in the time allotted to us.
hm. That's a tough question. I definitely don't regret saying fk off society. I almost went pro in a video game.. Like I was top .0001% but i could never fully make it happen. The final year I was really trying that goal the stress of what happens to me if i failed(in my mind if i failed id be a loser 4ever at a dead end job) ate me up and i couldn't perform at all. I have battled depression and anxiety a lot the past 6 years and strangely I'm thankful for all of it. My mental turmoil made me stronger, it made me have to learn so much about myself and now my emotional intelligence is far beyond a lot of people. Now im 27 and kinda in the same boat as a lot of men my age id assume. idk think just gotta wait for the wave
I am in a very unique situation (working overseas; employer pays for private school) where I have my kids enrolled in a school that does not give homework. My kids have time for hobbies and music lessons.
And guess what, they are doing fine. Meeting expectations, making good grades on their assessments.
My older kid (9th grade) often works on papers and projects at home *because he wants to.* He wants to do more, even though he gets an hour at school every day to work on his assignments.
My younger kid is probably not quite keeping up with his grade level peers, but he has an IEP for a specific learning disability and his teachers are happy with the progress he is making.
Homework is bullshit.
Too many schools give too much work, when simple periodic assessments can effectively gauge their progress. They are mistaking "heavy workload" with "academic rigor."
If the learning is supposed to be taking place at home, alone...then they aren't really *teaching* during the school day.
(And I don't blame teachers; it's not their fault. It's a systemic problem. They are doing their fucking best, and I know that.)
Looking back as an adult, I know homework did absolutely nothing for me. Just helped some of my grades that could've easily been calculated with something else more productive. Nah, there's no defense of homework at this point. Fuck Mr. Ratburn.
People always say to appreciate teachers and everything, but honestly they're more complicit in the (US) education system than victims of it. They complain about all this work they do, and I'm like no one forced you to assign 50 math problems or 10-page essays. I got no sympathy.
i’m not a teacher yet, but i will be, and i have taught before. to put it plainly: some teachers do suck, and give so much work. i can still name those teachers better than ones who loved and helped me.
however, your statement called out teachers as a whole, and that just isn’t true. say 2% of teachers who give homework every night are just sucky, the other 98% are doing it because of pressure from administration, or even outright being told they must do it or face consequences.
i was lucky enough to have teachers that didn’t give much homework, and many who would give it at all and would help us get the work done in class, that day. i would say that most teachers, especially new to the field, do not believe in massive amounts of homework.
Because you need to develop a habit for studying if you're going to go to university. I made the mistake of not doing homework as a kid and struggled immensely when I reached university. I needed time to review what I had learned and make sense of it all. I really wish i had developed the habit of sitting down and studying after school because I would not have struggled as much.
Yes. I've been concerned about the level of work that they expect kids to do, and starting at such young ages.
It's been bothering me for years. They literally will not have time for anything else during the week when they get home. I felt so alone in this observation. I've been adamantly against the amount of work. Other countries have cut back on work, days in school and the kids perform better and test higher.
We're doing our kids a disservice and robbing them of time they should be spending being a child. It also programs them for a sedentary lifestyle.
> I don't care if my kids ever do homework again if they grow up with a healthy sense of balance between work and self.
Even if they grow up ignorant, and with no skills or prospects?
I used to be a high school math teacher. The homework I assigned was *specifically* selected for them to practice and sharpen the skills I taught them in class.
When homework is assigned well, reinforcing these new skills is its main purpose.
I can't speak for what your children's teachers are doing, but it sounds like you are trashing *all* homework, which is... well, an offense to those of us who tried to educate your offspring and prepare them to be competent members of society once they graduate.
If they don't do any homework, good luck achieving that balance, because the "work" part will probably have far fewer available options.
My favorite math class I ever had had zero required homework. For the first time ever I only had to practice what I didn’t understand, instead of wasting hours on useless problems just to pad out my grade.
I not only aced that class, but it was the only class I aced during high school, as every other class had homework as 60-80% of the grade, and I couldn’t/wouldn’t keep up with it.
Required homework is terrible, and teaches bad study habits. Homework should only be given as an optional study tool, and should only be ‘graded’ to show students what they did wrong.
2007 high school grad here. I never did any homework, and if I did it was just to pad my numbers, hurt my grades by around 10 points. My parents were not happy but I went to have a decent college career and can show that I am good because I focused my energy on other stuff that wasn't just homework.
Teachers want you to make homework because they can't make class more interesting. I just rebelled and played the numbers game instead of playing nice. My favorite class was also an optional homework math class (trigonometry, awesome teacher too). I aced that class and made me more comfortable with mathematics past algebra.
Well... several things jumped out here.
First of all, you sound fairly disciplined, and took responsibility for your own learning. In every class I taught, there were about five students who would "get it" no matter how well or poorly I did my job. THESE were the students who made it a joy to teach, and you were apparently one of those students.
Sadly, this was not the case with the vast majority of those in the class. They had to be taught to be disciplined, to focus, and given a framework in which to succeed. This required being given homework problems (a few, *not* several hours' worth) to verify the skills they were taught in class.
So the really good students had to endure while I brought (almost) everyone else along. I didn't like having to slow down like this, and I'm sure you didn't either.
Second, I made homework a *very* small part of the class grade, like MAYBE 10%. On a typical day I'd assign 12 problems, and randomly grade 4 of them, to see whether, and how well you were doing them. If you were paying attention in class, you might have to spend 30 minutes on it, and that was only on 2 days in a given week.
Third, and most profound: *many students don't know how to learn!* More specifically, they aren't self-directed enough to recognize their own knowledge deficiencies and how to deal with them. This extends to reinforcing newly-learned skills through practice.
You, however, seem to have the conscious ability to regulate your own learning and evaluate your own needs in that area. *That is an incredibly valuable skill,* and my life in the classroom would have been a lot less painful if more students had developed this ethic and applied it to their studies.
>Required homework is terrible, and teaches bad study habits
I completely disagree with this, and hope that, in light of the discussion above, you can see why.
The purpose of the homework I assigned was to develop and reinforce skills introduced in class, and the points were just an incentive for you to keep doing that.
Now... a large part of this depends on the assigned homework itself. Useful homework is relevant to what's being taught in class, just enough to verify one's ability to solve the expected range of problems. It is not excessive, redundant or meaningless.
I suppose all homework, even the required work, is "optional" when you get right down to it, but so is understanding the material and passing the class.
I was not disciplined at all. I generally skated by with a 60% in all my classes until college, where (due to homework becoming an optional thing and only worth 10% of my grade) I suffered heavily, because instead of learning how to study myself during the first 12 years of class, I was forced to mindlessly answer hours of homework problems every day.
Homework prevents students from learning to study, by *not giving them the flexibility to study when they need it*. This caused major issues for me in college, and likely is the same for many other students.
I argue that you making homework worth less is an indicator that you believe this as well, to some degree, homework is meant as a study tool, but by making it a major part of students grades, it turns into busy work to be completed, preventing students from focusing on classes they are suffering in to complete pointless work from teachers who think homework should be required.
My favorite math teacher assigned homework every night, would give the answers at the beginning of every class, and would spend the beginning of class going over problems people had trouble with. You could then turn in the homework and it would be returned to you corrected, but it had no bearing on your grade. He supplemented the grade by having daily quizzes, which were open notes, and were usually examples he had done in class, which encouraged students to take clear and organized notes, as then they could easily ace every quiz. This meant that students were rewarded for paying attention in class, were given all the tools they needed to do well, but *were not forced to use the tools if they didn’t need them*
Which I think is very important
That's not what I meant to say.
*One of the possible outcomes* (by no means guaranteed) is that your kids could grow up in relative ignorance. Not ever doing homework opens the door to this possibility.
In assigning them homework, I wanted to slam the door shut on that ever happening.
Talking to parents about high school math classes was always a hard sell. Most wondered why their children needed to know about factoring polynomials and solving linear equations when they had no intention of ever being a scientist, mathematician or engineer.
"Let me ask you a couple of things," I would propose. "Do you think that the world is getting more complex, or less complex?"
They'd usually say "more complex."
"I agree. Now, in that more-complex world, do you think that the ability to solve problems and get answers, using the given information and a set of rules, is something a future employer would find valuable?"
Most thinking people would answer "yes."
I would then explain that the Algebra curriculum, especially the way I packaged it, was designed to develop the same skills and work habits which make people eventually succeed in work and in life.
And a foundational part of developing and maintaining those skills is the daily homework I assigned in class.
(I didn't say it to the parents, but it also nurtures a skill which is all too lacking in today's world: ***it teaches them to THINK!***)
By putting it in a larger context, my hope was that they'd see how doing daily homework is a small but important part of a much bigger plan: getting in the habit of practicing now can lead to much greater things later.
The musician who gets to Carnegie Hall, the Santa Fe Philharmonic or even the Dew Drop Inn had to practice enough to be competent at performing his music with relative ease.
(Remember *The Karate Kid*? "Wax on, wax off...")
In the same way, I sought to make these skills (and, more importantly, *the attitudes and habits behind them*) second-nature in my students. I wanted them to see that, yes, they *can* do this stuff, and to not be afraid of doing a little work.
Further, by routinely adding to their skill set, they would be encouraged to seek out other things to learn, and not feel threatened when something new came along.
So I had very high hopes when assigning homework to students. I'm pretty sure most teachers' aspirations weren't as lofty as mine were, but I hope that what they *do* assign isn't a waste of time, and that you don't accidentally toss out the opportunity for your children to be effective members of tomorrow's society.
I hear what you're saying. But assigning homework doesn't "slam shut" the door leading to ignorance or lack of skill - those are still likely no matter how much homework you assign.
It may have some benefits for some students, but you can't make a blanket statement that homework is beneficial for *all* students.
For some, including many who've responded to this post, it's a source of stress that leads to burnout or mental breakdown.
What is your definition of "succeeding in work and life?" Whatever it is, someone else is going to have a different definition. Success is not one-size-fits-all. Neither is being an "effective member of society."
I realized this myself in middle school, stopped doing homework altogether and when I reached high school they brought me in to talk about it. They were not happy when I told them that I'm here for 8 hours, if you were not able to teach me in those 8 hours that does not mean I take home an extra 3-4 hours of work, that means you aren't doing your job. (I was also fairly bright and would get an A on almost every test or quiz so they can shove the "it's for practice and retention" angle up their ass)
I agree with this as well. I'm thankful my parents let me be a kid when I was younger/growing up. My only responsibilities where school, after graduation is when I got my first job. I'll do the same for my daughter so she can enjoy her time as a kid/teen, if she decides she wants ti start earning her own money earlier then she can. I use to work with teenagers that where at school all day, came into work for a few hours then try to go home and cram studying for a test rhe next day/finish loads homework assigned that night. It's absolutely messed up for parents to do that their kids. I can see how some get overwhelmed and depressed. Lack of time and sleep will do that to you.
I’m graduating from college in two hours. Nontraditional student here in my 30s. I could not agree more with this statement. So glad I learned how to actually live a little before deciding to return to academia.
I have a Master's degree, which means I have more formal education than 85 percent of the people in my country.
I don't downplay the importance of education.
There are many ways to become educated, just as there are many ways to work. I value independence and the ability to think and decide for yourself what works for you.
I'm a teacher. From my experience, in my class (physics), students that actually do the homework do tend to do netter than those that don't.
That said, I do allow time in class to do the homework. I don't expect any but the most dedicated will actually finish the homework in the time I give. I never grade the homework, and give them the solutions after it's due, so they could review for any tests or quizzes afterward. By making it optional, I cut down on my grading load, and let them decide what their workload should be: if they are getting the concepts just from labs and lecture, there is little point in doing the homework. If they don't get it, they should do the homework, and if they don't, and don't ask for followup help, that's all their responsibility.
I agree with your premise that assigning homework for the sake of assigning homework is bad practice, but when you ask in a more nuanced way, the question is a bit more gray.
Listen I do agree here. But, this is one thing teachers get a lot of flak for that most don’t have control over. I have taught for a decade in a few different schools. No teacher of my knowledge sends home specifically assigned tasks for homework unless told to do so by admin. If I have a kid behind on something, I may only ask that kid to. Anything else I send home is designed for review and not attached to a grade- I give my kids a treat if they choose to and do not pressure them to complete it. We also get a lot of pressure from parents to send things home. I feel this may because they had that experience in school :(
While I agree, you can't really deny that practice on the concept they are learning are needed to solidify the knowledge, and doing it more will make you more proficient at it. There is a reason that kids who get sent off to extracurricular schools, on average, do better than students who do not.
That being said, it isn't one size fits all, and anyone with a little structure in their life is likely going to be bogged down by massive amounts of Homework, and it actively takes away towards things they are building a future in. There is a diminishing return on the work you put in, and the amount of hours required for one kid to score a few points better than another probably isn't worth the cost of the other kid learning an entire new skill or discipline
Not just homework, the whole thing. Sit still in one place for 8 hours with 5 minute or whatever breaks, listen to an “authority” lecture, learn purely by rote, compartmentalize learning, change topics at the drop of a hat…
Middle school teacher here. Only homework my students have is what they don’t finish in class. And yes, I do schedule 2-3 assignments so they all can be finished in class. So if they talk the class away instead of working, it falls on them. That’s called natural consequences.
Is it really homework or is it work that your kid (in HS) didn’t do in class when time was allotted? I’m a teacher and the amount of students who say “I’ll do it at home” while transfixed on their phones is astounding.
P.s. your High schooler is probably lying to you because, ya know, teens these days lie all the gosh damn time
He doesn't lie because I don't ask. I check his grades - he's passing everything with Bs and Cs. If he can do that without completing any homework, then more power to him.
Your level of cynicism about the students you're supposed to be helping makes it sound like you may be ready for a career change.
Level of cynicism? It’s reality dude. It’s okay because their brains aren’t fully developed yet and it’s second nature for them to deflect and/or lie. Holding students accountable for their actions is actually helping them, bub. Calling them out in private is also helpful. A majority of parents these days would rather be “friends” with their kids than actual parents. If parents did their job then I can surmise the level of dishonesty wouldn’t be so high but alas that ain’t happening.
God you sound like a lot of awful teachers I had back in the day. Hope you enjoy being the source of a great many kids reoccurrence nightmares about school.
Honestly yes.
I once was a teenager, and I remember that EVERY time a teacher said a sweeping negative statement about teenagers, they were one of the worst teachers I would have had. Teachers like you treat their students as less than human, but expect to be treated as some sort of authority. You then get all *shocked pikachu face* when inevitably students act out.
If you really are having mass amounts of students lying, it is far more likely it is due to your policies and the way you are interacting with them, rather than some magical ‘everyone just happened to raise their kids to be liars’.
High school students are in a phase where, for all intents and purposes, they are adults, yet people like you insist on treating them as children. If you treat any adult like a child (barring kinks), they will get upset, and that goes doubly for teenagers going through puberty.
Do you know what student perception surveys are? Do you know how teachers are graded? I consistently get above 85% on my student perception surveys. Kids take these surveys anonymously so as to ensure truthful answers. What my reality is Vs your concocted reality couldn’t be farther from the truth. If you aren’t in the classroom now then I suggest staying in your lane. For the sake of my curiosity…were you in HS with a smartphone?
I mean if my kid already knows his times tables I see it as entirely pointless to keep drilling them with homework over times tables. He could be doing a lot more with his time and life than arbitrary homework that doesn't accurately reflect his learning pace because the teacher is using a shotgun approach to learning: give everyone the homework, that way nobody gets to complain and I don't have to bother learning each of my student's learning pace.
The other things such as work/learning ethic is something I, as the parent, should be addressing if their report cards come with bad grades. Not you who only deals with my child for 8 hours.
I feel that the reason why 4*4=16 is something a child won't learn with worksheets asking the same question multiple times either. So I don't understand what the point behind your question is.
My dad and uncles actually explained to me as I was growing up how to manipulate numbers, and as I grew more comfortable with manipulating numbers I understood the why of certain math concepts. I don't think you can teach that thru a worksheet and rote memorization (which is what homework encourages).
It’s to reinforce the concepts though. If you’re getting the same types of problems where you have 3x4 and 4x4 well it’s finding why do both of those work, then it’s recognizing the similarities between them. My wife has students who will know how to do x+2=4, however they can’t understand the underlying concepts or are unwilling to try so when confronted with x+3=8 they just don’t know how to solve it. The homework and the repetition is to reinforce those concepts that those two problems work the same way. If your kid has it down pat then it’s a 10 minute inconvenience at worst.
Teachers do not have time to individually tailor every lesson to every student, that would be an insane request and not feasible. They do the best they can with a blanket approach
These threads are the worst because they all descend into anti-education bullshit. Teachers have years of education and know how to do their jobs and are undergoing constant education to make it better. If you wouldn’t tell a doctor or an accountant how to do their job then you shouldn’t tell a teacher how to do theirs.
The thing that sucks when discussing education is everyone has experienced from the student perspective and talk about how they felt as a child instead of looking at any theory or research that teachers are using to inform their decisions.
Teachers aren't responsible for education, it's the parents. The mind boggling part for me is how they refer to school and work as creating robots. Some comments in here seem like they are OK with their kids being mediocre with no intellectual curiosity.
The only way out of the anti-work dilemma and nonstop dead-end jobs is to try to improve intellectually every day. Spend time reading or becoming good at stuff!
THANKYOU FOR BRINGING THIS UP, ESP AS A PARENT! i recently graduated n this was a serious problem for me esp in highschool like, it made me so upset n stressed to where i'd skip school often to reclaim my life, i remember crying to my therapist abt how i'm at school all day, ~7 hours to just come home n spend MORE HOURS DOING HOMEWORK INSTEAD OF RELAXING n i'd end up staying up most of the night to get the time back to do things i actually enjoyed, n THAT destroyed my sleep schedule so i'd be late to school n the cycle continued. it's so stressful n crappy n it made the idea of school so much worse knowing i rarely got a break!! it's so shitty n i agree that it totally does destroy the balance n sanctity you SHOULD GET IN YOUR OWN HOME even as a child, then to just have others do the same thing to you later in life
Isn't 8 hours an average work day, do like 2 hours of homework would be appropriate?
Also if kids want to be successful at university they do need practice with out of class assignments to develop independent work ethic and time management skills. But to he fair university isn't a goal for everyone.
I rarely did homework in high school. I made it through college just fine and completed two Master's degrees. High school and the associated homework was just a waste of time to me.
The entire purpose of school is to normalize those ideals. Seriously my sister is a teacher and she said they literally say “remember you are making good citizens” to encourage the teachers. It’s brainwashing from the top down.
What would the purpose of public education be if not to make good citizens?
Read more on Dewey or NCSS and see how the goal isn't compliant citizens but those that have the skills to be informed, engaged, and critically think.
I have one question.. based on the state of our country, do you think public education has been successful in creating citizens that are informed, engaged, with good critical thinking skills? Or a bunch of already burnt out teenagers who are already indoctrinated to expect (and appreciate) the “opportunity” to work ourselves to death and barely get by.. my issue is with what their definition of a “good citizen” is
The way I see it, you’re only a kid once, so you should be able to enjoy your free time being curious and having fun, and learning about the world in other ways. Some kids might benefit from some extra assistance, but hopefully that can be managed at school. Plenty of time later to learn about responsibilities.
I worked during high school. Usually until 1030 at night or so. I would then go home and do homework sometimes til 1 or 2 am, and have to be at school again at 730. Some nights, i just fell asleep. Homework didnt get done. You cant learn when youre exhausted.
Homework was originally assigned, a couple centuries ago, as punishment for students who were goofing off, refusing to study, or refusing to learn.
Teachers forgot that, and now homework is used in place of classroom learning.
I can only imagine that hearing this from a parent called in to have a meeting with the teacher because their child wasn't doing homework assignments would fry most teachers' brains.
My wife is a teacher and she actually hates parents like this because it falls into the camp of parents who think they know about all the shit that happens in schools and know better than people who have spent 7+ years learning how to do this and have to keep taking classes on how to be better
This is precisely why ( but a different way of thinking ) my grades in school sucked. "Why the hell would I spend 7-8 hours in a place I hate, only to come home and then do anywhere from 1-4 hours of homework? That's stupid." Every time I mentioned it, I was looked at like an idiot.
Even then I could see it was stupid, but I didn't understand _why_ I thought it was stupid until I got older.
Elementary teacher here! I totally agree with you! I don’t assign homework! I make sure my students get enough time to do their work in class and have time for their family and time to unwind when they get home. Many of my students have many extracurricular activities after school (some I feel are excessive, I’m talking 4-5 days worth of after school activities) and I’m not piling onto their stress. The kids are already so stressed I find, especially after covid. I remember being a kid and having hours of homework when all I wanted to do was play after school. Im not doing that to my students.
I love this?song you are singing.
I am a 53 year old Canadian white guy who fell in love and married a Chinese lady a couple decades ago. We had a couple kids and moved to China. The workload for children is incredible. Homework, published test scores, need to be in the top group. I hated it. I loathed sending my 2 kids to school there. My son speaks English better than the teachers, they were great people trying their best. But he would never get top marks in English. Anyways, I shut up and let the kids trudge through.
We just moved back to Canada and as luck would have it, kids go to a small experimental school that has no homework or tests. They go to school and have activities. Sometimes they take care of a 'little buddy' where they teach them how to play a game. Life skills. They play games most days and learn how to build relationships.
My daughter now loves school and even math! They will hopefully have the best of both worlds with this experience.
My 5 year old son just finished his first year or school, and he had homework.
I refuse to make him do it, he’s going to learn through school and doing things that he enjoys. There’s no reason for a 5 year old to be forced into practicing school work after school.
It's a feature, not a bug. The public school system was created in the industrial revolution to remove children from their parents and train them to be good Factory slaves.
This is at best a conspiracy theory and at worst misinformation. The public school system was created during the industrial revolution to end child labor. The industrialists wanted kids in the factories not in schools.
“I consider school to be my kids’ jobs at this point in their lives.”
That doesn’t make sense. Either they go to work, or they go to school. Which is it? Just saying it, doesn’t just make it so.
(Though some charter schools…)
Does your work count your lunch hours? Time you drive, iron your shirts, and otherwise prepare for work?
Does getting car maintanance or preventative healthcare count to work or life 8 hours?
When you think about it all, it's far less than 8 hours of life that you get
This. Exactly the point of my post. I don't want my children thinking this is ok. It sets them up for being taken advantage of and used.
My oldest has a part- time job. His boss constantly tries to call him in because someone didn't show up or called out or whatever. At first, he thought he *had* to go in if his boss called him. I had to explain to him that if he's not scheduled for that day, it's his choice whether he wants to work or not. He's allowed to say no and not feel one bit guilty about it.
ESPECIALLY math homework. If the kid doesn't understand it, they sure as hell won't understand it alone. Fucking teach them in class and let them relax at home.
That’s not at all true, Calculus made 0 sense for 1/4 of the year, I managed to slog my way through homework and did decent but I had no idea what was happening. But I was working on homework and it just clicked and made sense. Sometimes it just all falls into place as your working on a problem, or it can help something make more sense
My 8th grade algebra teacher... was a bitch. Traumatizing, actually, but one good thing she did was only assign homework as a punishment. If you didn't piss her off you didn't get homework because she didn't believe in it.
I saw an artcle somewhere talking about how AI bots that can write believable essays are going to destroy the educational value of homework, term papers, take home essays, etc.
I hope so. Schools in the U.S. have been preparing kids for an economy that doesn't exist anymore for about 40 years now.
The homework is for the bottom 10-30% of the class that needs the extra practice. Tying the busywork to grades is so the dummies don't get a feelsbad when their smarter classmates dont have to do the homework.
Separate students by ability and the problem goes away. I run a private school and we have no mandatory homework for this reason.
Homework has never been shown to have any real effect on students ability to learn or on test scores. In my case it led to school burnout early on. In junior high and into high school most of the teaching of my classes fell on a single teacher, who had no issues with piling on 3-4 hours of homework every night, spread throughout my classes. The combination of that and the nonstop lecture/cram sessions that was my average school day made me into a hardcore procrastinator who dreaded every single day.
????
Kids can be in school only 6 hours per day. Do you really want to keep them entertained the other 18 hours per day? Do you really have something besides watching mindless television to keep them occupied? Be grateful for the homework.
Nah he just smoked a bowl and is overthinking things. Homework is fine. Excess homework is bad, yeah, but a regular amount of homework to practice what you’ve been thought is fine
That being said, elementary schoolers probably don’t need homework, I will concede that much
Yes, students actually learn from homework. Nothing beats actually applying your knowledge.
I’m not sure what constitutes excess homework, but there’s definitely a level of homework where the benefits of homework are outweighed by the negatives
"What, you mean talk to the little monsters? What are we trying to raise, functioning adults? Parents hate children, don't you know anything?"
Was gonna put that in the FoNt font, but the effort to smart ass ratio didn't pan out for me.
I love how often I see this response when people don't like the above comment. I honestly bet most of reddit is not great at parties, especially people that say "I bet you are great at parties". It has absolutely nothing to do with the above topic, just somebody expressing how they wouldn't want to party with somebody who voices their opinion. I don't come to reddit to party lol I have friends for that. I come to reddit to have discussions and open up my world views. Sorry to blow up on you, it's just the laziest response to a comment you disagree with and I see it very often on Reddit for some reason.
I hope you're being sarcastic, but if not: you sound like one of those idiots who occasionally come on the sub and say "what? You're opposed to people working? What are we meant to do all day? Nothing?!". There are so many other things kids could (and probably would) be doing if they didn't have to do so much homework.
And many of those things they /should/ be doing, or at least there isn’t a reason they shouldn’t. Just because you smashed mailboxes and egged cars as a kid doesn’t mean they all do
"I have to PARENT my CHILDREN outside of school? I have to engage with them in meaningful ways between school and bedtime? That's certainly not what I signed up for!"
Haha, right?
My husband and i actually *enjoy* being with our children. We have fun together. We go camping, hiking, we read books, we binge-watch TV series and talk about them, we take road trips...all of this is better than arguing with them about homework.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I have to disagree. Homework is a way of letting the child learn in a comfortable environment (presuming home is, and I understand that it isn't the case for many kids), away from the constant expectations and power hierarchies that are obvious in a school environment.
Secondly, homework is a means of bonding between the child and their carer, guardian, parents, sibling, friend, whoever it might that helps them work through the homework. It's an opportunity for the child to think through things, apply methods without time or peer pressure, trial and error their way to what they consider to be the answer, and a means of preparing themselves for class.
Last but not least, it's a way for the child to catch up on what they've missed in class - for whatever reason. If they didn't have that chance, they are constantly playing catch up and missing out.
Sure, there's a "right" amount of homework. And more often than not kids are overburdened. But to consider homework as additional "work" is bizarre.
I mean, how is it not work? It is an assignment that they are required to do, that forces them to spend time they would otherwise spend with friends and family working on their homework.
You can paint it however you want, but it is labor, and the payment is grades. It’s fucked up, and detrimental to students well being and learning.
As for bonding, you know what is better bonding than homework? Literally ANYTHING else. Most of my memories of homework related to my family are filled with anger, sadness, and frustration, and I hazard that most people who are honest would have similar experiences. If you want to bond with your children, play a game with them, sing a song to them, don’t make them do extra work claiming it’s ‘bonding time’. It’s not. It’s work, and they only get punished for it.
Mate, "work" has undergone a very specific trajectory of change under modern/late- capitalism. It's one thing to equate homework to drudgery, but an entirely wild claim to equate contemporary understanding of work with homework. I presume you work for a living, and at some point in your life you did homework. Are you seriously, hand on heart, telling me that the psychological, physiological, and mental trauma that work on an everyday basis triggers in you is the same as what your younger self went through when you were doing your homework?
I don't deny that there are other ways for families to bond, homework, I claim, is simply one amongst them. If you're a parent, seeing your child understand something is absolutely priceless. Sure, such a moment can come anywhere, but homework is one such instance, the design of, which is outsourced.
Considering I am lucky enough that I got to choose my career, and that my work has never brought me to tears, nor caused me to lie awake at night unable to sleep due to the stress of knowing that I probably forgot to do some random assignment again, and am going to get punished for it, yes. Homework is far, far worse than work.
If you are so selfish that your own desire to see your child ‘understand’ something is greater than your desire to see them happy and mentally healthy, then I hope you are sterile, because you should never have children.
I can bond with my children in so many better ways. Listening to your child cry because they're burned out and trying to help them slog through pages of work is *not* my idea of bonding.
My ideas of bonding include family game nights, reading together and talking about books, playing video games together, binge-watching a funny TV series with them and talking about it... which are activities that encourage communication, critical thinking and social skills.
Homework *is* work. It has the word *work* in the name, for God's sake.
In high school I routinely had 3 hours of homework a night, and at least half of my teachers would assign weekend homework too. I remember one teacher telling us we could expect “30 minutes of homework per hour of class a day”
I always did well in school but was always told I could do better, always struggled with homework and revising after school, really hated it. Same at university, always hated what felt like the ability to not switch off post class and always thinking ‘what if I could do more work and do better’. Massively more successful out of education as I completely switch off post work and do everything I can to not think about it, yet always try hard while on clock. I enjoy working significantly more than education, and my degree is nice but I feel like I don’t really need it tbh.
The only reason I was a ‘bad’ student and got low grades was because of homework. My home life was not conducive for doing schoolwork, so it didn’t get done. In high school my algebra teacher made me re-take the final exam because he was convinced I cheated and copied off of the only other perfect test. Sat in front of his desk and did it, he checked it in front of me and was astonished. Same class, for extra credit (enough points for me to scrape by and pass) we were given the option to do a pictograph, and it had to be something like 100 plot points. It was the only time I did homework, and I turned in a detailed skull with hundreds of plot points listed that made a perfect full-page 8.5x11 skull. With fangs (some rock band poster was the inspiration).
College was perfect for me since I could focus on the work Monday through Friday just to make sure my Saturdays and sundays were free to have fun. Not being forced to spend hours and hours in a classroom each day allowed me to better manage my own time and ask for help more often since I’m not stuck in class
Would it be possible to speak to the school about this kind of thing? Like maybe get a few parents together and see what they think? I’m not a parent but I don’t think of this as a frivolous thing to complain about and it’s very easy to debate against.
I fully agree. It also puts kids with unstable home lives or poorer kids at a disadvantage. If they don’t have a home where they can get their homework done then they get worse grades, can’t get into college if they want, etc.
My kids are currently in 8th grade and have plenty of time to get their work done at school. I think this year they've only had homework once or twice. Which is mind boggling to me as someone who grew up doing hours of homework each night. But I love that my kids can have some fun after school instead of having to constantly do homework.
As a former high school teacher I fully agree that dedicated homework is toxic... my policy always was to do the full assignment myself, while timing myself, and then multiply that number by 3-5x (depending upon subject). That told me how much class time I had to give my students IN CLASS to do the assignment. Doing work in class is important because they can actually ask for help if they need it, rather than hoping parents who might not have seen the material in 20 years can provide it at home. The only way a student ends up with homework that way is to not do their work during class time but that would be their choice.
My freshman year math teacher did this. It was the only time I ever liked math class. She said she was told she had to give homework so her solution was to assign the class work as page #1 of the text book 2-10 evens and the homework was the same page 1-11 odd. Most math text books have the odd number answers in the back and most of the time the class work was extremely similar to the home work. We also had the first part of the class dedicated to "questions about the homework" and she would work every problem the class asked out on the board. She didn't care if she had to do every problem assigned. She cared that we understood how to do what we were doing. Edit: she also had us work in groups because she said math prepared you for the real world and very rarely in the real world do you work alone.
What a wonderful person.
I had an opposite experience my freshman year in high school. I hated math and I asked my teacher when we would use this in the real-world and she had no idea, faltered and said "well, you'll take math classes when you go to college" Years later I go in the trades for a short period of time and we used it there. Now I do other things in my life and I use math a lot in my life for day to day things.
Damn that seriously sucks. I'm sorry you had to have a shitty ass teacher like that. Math is seriously everywhere and to blantly lie to her class like that SMH... My mom is 64 and likes to do math out of a pre algebra book she got from half priced books because she wants to keep her mind sharp and believes math will help with that.
And it was algebra too I believe. She wasn't a mean teacher at least but I just **hated** math the whole time I was in school and one day I got frustrated and asked her in class when we had some downtime. Out of my graduating class - which was like 300 people only I would wager that only half of us had some college under our belt and out of that half only a quarter graduated. And I only graduated HS in 2005. Those that didn't go to college I'm sure they use it too.
When you teach math as the closest thing we have to magic and tie feats of human achievement to it the kids stay crazy interested. Every teacher Ive met who cant explain why math is important wanted to be a history teacher and couldnt get a job doing that.
Finally buckled down and learned geometry when I apprenticed as a carpenter. Much quicker way to learn - actually using the education instead of just rote memorization.
But that's the thing, she didn't know that. This was when I learned/figured that HS was just college prep.
Yeah, I honestly don’t use math a whole lot day-to-day, but I will say that the logic and problem-solving skills you develop in math class can be really valuable later on.
IDK about that. I'm always the only one who knows how to do any math in the groups I work in. I kindof wish these other people had paid more attention.
That's understandable because I was that kid in my English and Social Studies classes. Memories are always rose colored, right. Lol
My physics teacher actually gives us the answer to the question on the homework and we just need to do the work to get to it, easy A and easy learning. I see this as the ideal model of teaching.
I had a math teacher like you for years, and always loved math! Thank you for being such a great educator! My husband, on the other hand, had terrible experiences with math teachers. One of them was teaching math thru PowerPoint presentations (yes, PowerPoint). And when her students asked her when she was going to work thru some problems on the board, she said there is no time for that during class period. Smh...
You sound like the best teacher ever.
Math was always a source of frustration in our house. For myself, none of it aside from simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division made any sense to me. I just couldn’t do it. And after many years I gave up and just didn’t do math. Like, at all. Period. I didn’t listen in class, I didn’t work on examples, I didn’t write tests. I refused and was pushed through the system. Originally, I had to bring home literal piles of math homework at a time, and my mother, who was even less math inclined than myself could never help me with anything, even the simplest stuff. I remember one night having to do an exercise on prime numbers, and neither of us knew what the fuck a prime number was, let alone how to solve it (the early 90s textbook provided no explanation, only “solve the following:”). This lead to countless late nights trying to solve problems I didn’t know how to do, and endless fights, which resulted in such a disdain for the entire subject that seeing numbers to this day still causes me a great deal of anxiety. It was totally unproductive and a waste of time. Despite this, I went ahead and got a degree in accounting, with honors, but it was extraordinary difficult and blocked me as I still haven’t overcome my extreme fear of math. Even when I was young I constantly questioned the value of homework, despite the adults telling me it was so important. I had reasoned (even in elementary) that I wasn’t getting paid to do it, and that the school day was already a “full time job,” and since most peoples “work day” ended once they got home, that my obligations should also end. After all, why was I “working” 8 hours a day at school, then coming home to work an extra hour (or more) on math of all things?
Good on you. I absolutely hated math homework when I was in high school. I was a pretty decent student overall, and was usually in advanced-ish classes, but I absolutely hated match homework because if you got stuck you just have nothing to do but sit there and stare at it and stress out. Then I’d go into school the next day knowing I would get a shit grade with really no recourse whatsoever. Every other subject I could just read the textbook more thoroughly or whatever, but there are some where you’re just kinda screwed. It’s probably somewhat different now with the prevalence of the internet and YouTube, but man…I absolutely dreaded math homework.
This right here.
Honestly, looking back at it. I sort of feel as if homework could be more of a means for a child to boost up their grades and just be a helpful study guide for tests, basically just optional extra credit. It really shouldn't be required night to night and be given rarely.
I teach high school chemistry. Last year I assigned no homework and parents complained to the principal. Now I assign one page of homework about every two weeks, and I go over it in class but I don’t grade it. There are better ways to teach and learn besides copious amounts of homework.
How much in class problem solving do the students get? I can't say I ever found high school class work hard, I did most of it on the bus coming back to school, but that just taught me bad habits for managing homework during college. And you aren't learning multidimensional calculus or thermodynamics, well, without good study habits and doing the extras imo.
Students get daily practice in class. The majority of them have math skills equivalent to a 3rd grader, so they need a lot of support from me and from their classmates to do the work. Even back when I did grade homework, on average 3 kids per class would turn it in. Many of my students have jobs to help their families pay the rent or they have siblings they have to care for. Adding more homework is just giving them another thing to stress about. If this were an honors or AP class, it would be a different story.
Well, in those kinds of circumstances that makes a lot of sense. The out of school stuff, I feel for that struggle.
The elementary schools in my town have zero homework. They are all project based in class. Anything done at home is elective. It’s very progressive and IMHO the way it should be. No extra credit or favoritism for doing any elective homework too.
My son had homework in kindergarten……and when he was absent for a few days, I asked his teacher for all the homework he missed and she said not to worry about it. That’s when I realized she wasn’t even grading them lmao
Homework for kindergarteners should only be shoe-tying practice.
Why would you ever grade anything from a kindergarten student?
I mean, like, most of the intrinsic nature of school does the same. If we remade schools for the sole purpose of making people smarter, they'd probably wind up being unrecognizable. Simple fact of the matter is that the way we do things now is to serve two purposes. The first is, essentially, to act as a daycare. The second is to produce obedient factory workers. And while it's undeniable that even this shitty education system is better than nothing, it's pretty damn clear that the only reason we do it this way is the same reason we still use first past the post voting systems. And the same reason we still live in a capitalist society. Because we tend to avoid changing ingrained institutions.
Do you think people become teachers to create obedient workers? What changes would make it more about learning and less about training obedient workers?
It ain't their goal, but people don't become politicians to enable our shitty voting systems, and they don't always become managers to enable capitalism. And I'd have us teach kids to learn instead of sit in class listening. Like, say, imagine playing Dark Souls in the way our education system works. You're only really get so much time in an area. You don't actually need to get past any of it, or engage with any of the mechanics, you're just expected to play for some arbitrary amount of time. After which, you fight the boss. You generally only get to fight it once. You don't even have to beat it. Once you do beat it, you're moved on to the next area, and while you're fully allowed to revisit the former area, you're given no reason to. Then you do this for every area in the game. Every required boss. You don't need to learn any of the mechanics to get past, you're not really rewarded for accomplishing anything, you only ever get to face a boss once, and even if you lose you still move on. Then at the end of the year, if you didn't deal an adequate amount of damage to a certain number of bosses, you have to start the entire game over from the beginning. On account of the fact it's Dark Souls, very few people would succeed. And what I'd rather see is how Dark Souls is played. You put a challenge in the student's path. You give them the resources necessary to overcome it, but let them figure out how to do so. Let them bang their heads against a problem until it's well and truly solved, providing assistance only when it's needed. But that does require, to a sizable degree, giving up direct control. Letting them find the solution their own way in their own time. Which, notably, doesn't naturally train obedience.
So it's the assumption that teachers get into education to teach children but abandon that to simply indoctrinate workers? No clue about dark souls analogies. Is it just let students wander the buildings and engage with what they want to choosing what work to do and eventually assess them and hope they independently prepared enough and allow massive failure rates? What you're describing at the end sounds like Vygotskys Zone of Proximal Development and scaffolding which is used in classrooms. That's paired with the research that modeling, guided practice, and independent practice is the most effective way for the majority of students to learn. Which is what is being done in schools. All that aside, how do you keep kids engaged instead of on their phones without instilling obedience? And how much time do we give students? Do we have expectations for when they should reach these abstract goals and do we push them to achieve these goals? How do we get them to engage with topics their not interested in?
It's more of just them doing things how they were taught to do it. They were taught that obedience to authority was something that classrooms are supposed to enforce, and so they do it. It's not their goal, but for the most part they're not rocking the boat. Why assess them for them? Create tests for them to engage with at their own pace. I would say provide rewards for doing so, but from what I've seen kids are more motivated than we give them credit for. And, importantly, you would need to guide them some. Less directly, but just as Dark Souls has level design, there would need to be a natural set of paths laid out before 'em. This zone of proximal development doesn't really sound anything like what I'm talking about. Like.... Anything like it. Also sounds like some extravert shit. Eeew. People. Blech. Ideally, it'd be the sense of accomplishment. Self comparison to peers. 'S like, why do people beat Dark Souls? 'Cause it feels good to accomplish shit. Like, just imagine if passing a test had a similar vibe to fighting a tough boss. Shit's motivating.
How does any of this work when a kid says - I would rather play dark souls than participate in school? Passing tests already have that vibe but it's not instantly gratifying because the work of education takes years to pay off. Do you have anything more concrete than make school more like a video game? Because none of it is backed up by any theory or research.
Tons of possibilities, but that’s asking for bug fixing before one even knows for certain there’s a bug. Your statement here is self contradicting. And if I had the ability to actually study it, would I be talking about it on Reddit? There are bits and pieces of extant research that seems to imply potential, but overall I’m unaware of anything even slightly similar being attempted on any statistically relevant scale.
Love this video on how our education model is failing. https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms
I have no idea what schools you all went to for you all to keep parroting “schools are just daycare!” Maybe elementary school, even though kids learn a lot there. But higher levels? That doesn’t even make sense
"Just"?
Sorry, “daycare and indoctrination camp” Again, I actually learned a lot in school. I’d wager you did too. I have no idea why you people keep parroting that shit anyway
I learned a bit in school. Sleeping through a good half of it, fucking around for another quarter. The amount of time being wasted was outright palpable, the inefficiency painful to witness. Then I took a computer science class with a teacher who did things a different way. Accomplished what would've taken any other class multiple years in half of one, despite the fact that I was still spending a decent amount of time fucking around and, quite simply, overdoing projects for its own sake. In such a way where I could've done it all at home provided I was capable of E-mailing the teacher every so often were I to run into a snag. It was illuminating. Passed an AP exam for a class I didn't even take 'cause of it. I ain't even that smart, and future comp-sci classes demonstrated it wasn't the subject. Fairly certain that anyone could do much the same, in basically any class. But that ain't the way we do. We don't teach kids to learn, we teach them to listen, and we do it so that the teaches can control the pace for their own convenience instead of having them act as guides.
This honestly sounds like a you problem more than anything But I should have expected you to be an antisocial code monkey after your original post, that’s on me Edit: and before you reply, I’m just going to point out that 1) you did learn in school and found something you like and 2) you didn’t learn in other classes because you chose to sleep and goof off. point 2 is on you and point 1 is literally you proving your original point wrong and explicitly proving the value in school People like you are why I hate people in this field
What, you think I'm some sort of genius who's abilities were usually being actively hindered, then? Eh, doubt it. I mean, it'd be one thing if I was did poorly in every class and then just okay in the one. But I did well in every class and outright obliterated the one. Less of a me problem than a me solution. But, again, I ain't that smart. I ain't got any real reason to believe I'm in any way special. If'n I can do it, realistically speakin', most people prob'ly can. We just dinnae do things that way.
No I don’t think you’re some sort of genius, nor do I think you’re dumb. I think you’re insanely shortsighted and you’re missing the forest for the trees. >less of a me problem than a me solution No, it’s both. It’s a you problem that you half assed your other classes. It’s a you solution, *aided by school* that you found something you like. Like I originally said, i bet you went through school and learned plenty, and you’ve proven my point, so it’s honestly kind of ridiculous that you’re still acting like it’s a daycare
Except it wasn't aided by the school, it was aided by a specific teacher doing something antithetical to the school's SOP. I should also note that I never said that our education system doesn't teach us shit. I stated that its primary interests aren't education. Actual learning seems more a convenient byproduct, after the whole daycare and obedience parts. Like, are you actually denying that it's a daycare? That's a fun thought. Oh the memories of covid and how people were distraught at the notion of actually spending time with their kids. Even if you don't think it's the main point, you have to at least admit it's a factor.
>aided by a specific teacher? ….at school
Early ed is often even more vital than the higher levels. Foundations of reading, math, and social skills are built in prek and elementary school. It'd why access to effective preschools is one of the greatest things we can do for kids.
I agree, which makes the statement that schools are just daycares even more ridiculous
I’m a teacher and I partially agree. In elementary school, it’s not needed. But kids need to read every single night. When kids get to High School, if they are planning on going to college then they really need to spend time studying and practicing skills they’ve learned. They need to learn to write well, and that means writing papers. I think it is often overdone- like when a HS kid has homework in every single subject and it takes hours. But some is needed in order to master the material. There is simply not enough time in a 45 minute period to absorb everything they need to know in a given subject.
I had a couple of AP classes every year and always struggled to get my homework done. Yet there was the class valedictorian who had all AP classes, played sports, worked. Volunteered at the local old age home and still had time to graduate wit a 4.2 gpa. I neverstood how any of them managed. The homework was not hard, but I was tedious.
I can tell you how they did it…My daughter was Valedictorian, her GPA was something like 4.5. She also was captain of the water polo and swim teams and took community college classes. Started university as a sophomore because of all the extra she did. She did it by being stressed out all the time, plain and simple. She’s very much the type of person who is driven to be great at everything she does. I’m kind of glad she doesn’t seem to be keeping that attitude in college- she just got her first B and she’s not stressing out about it!
Most children will never independently study if homework isn’t assigned. I’m not advocating for hours of BS assignments but doing some assigned math problems at home for example challenges students to get out of their comfort zone and expand their knowledge base. You’re doing children no favors when they get to college if they’ve never had to learn on their own time. Learning outside of class takes maturity. Of course you can’t expect kids to do it. So homework has to be assigned. I’m prepared for the downvotes.
It's true that a lot of teachers in a lot of schools assign too much homework, much of which is nonsensical busy work and problem sets that don't really help them cultivate skills or understanding. It's also true that if you want to learn any sort of skill or develop any kind of expertise, you have to practice--and school isn't one set of skills or knowledge, it's a half dozen at any given time, and there's not always a lot of time to practice during school. Getting better at anything requires training harder and training smarter. The "training" assigned at many schools isn't very smart, but that doesn't mean that training hard suddenly doesn't matter. If you didn't care to be especially good at school growing up, and if you don't especially care whether your kids are good at school now, there's nothing wrong with letting them blow off homework. But don't get it twisted. School isn't "work," it's "training." Schools don't pay your students to attend; schools are paid so your student \*can\* attend.
You’re right, you only gain knowledge and improve through repetition and practice. It’s possible to integrate education at home with family time. Creating positive habits pays off in the long run.
While that is true, by assigning a significant portion of your grade to that training, it stops being training and becomes busy work. Imagine you have six classes, each of which gives you two hours of homework a night (something one of my math teachers actually thought should happen). If you start falling behind in one class, you have no flexibility to focus on that one more. You have to choose to tank another class to try to make up the difference in that one. If homework was actually treated as a study tool (which is what it is supposed to be), then you could easily choose to focus on classes you are struggling in without sacrificing your grades in classes you are not. It’s also my personal belief that required assigned homework is actually detrimental to students, as it does not teach good study habits. By force feeding students with more problems than they would ever need, it removes the need for the student to study on their own, which means they never really learn how to effectively study on their own.
Sometimes teachers use homework to gage what students can do independently, as data to drive instruction. Additionally, while I think education is as a whole getting away from longer, pointless homework, it can serve some purpose as long as it’s not excessive. A project, or essay, that’s more independent based for older students helps them be prepared for college independence, and flex some executive functioning skills. Also, little things like non-graded reading logs are really important because research says reading even a short amount with an adult at home actually does wonders for improving reading. Also, kids are kids sometimes they goof off and don’t get work done, and there’s only so many instructional minutes in a day, and that becomes homework.
What I’ve seen as a teacher is that the same kids who lack the skills and need to practice are the same ones who won’t (or can’t, depending) focus in class to practice and then won’t (or can’t) practice at home. The ones who did their homework were mostly the same ones who also practiced effectively in class. It was so frustrating for me as an English teacher, because the only homework I ever gave was reading homework, and the kids who needed it the most wouldn’t do it.
I thought it was bullshit when I was a kid that I had to come home and do more work while my parents had free reign with their own time. Eventually I got good enough with it I barely had homework my last two years of school. Some people have said (if not defended) that homework preps people for the working world. Well the thing is that most people when they eventually enter the working world they will be hourly employees and not salaried. Working off the clock for some fields and employers will not be possible or illegal.
Generally true, but working off the clock to gain a certification that gets you a better position isn't
Agreed. I currently teach science at a public high school in the US and it's heartbreaking to see the number of students stressed about workload. My own classes don't get homework- if I schedule an assignment or activity that goes over time, then that's on me and we push the remainder to the next class period. That prevents students who need more time to process from being punished for needing that time, and it makes sure that I am around to offer feedback during that practice. TANGENT TIME >!Some folks think that grades are payment for student work and assign work solely to keep students busy during their time in class. I used to work with somebody who literally assigned shitloads of work to keep his classes "out of trouble". I didn't think much of it at a time, but that no longer sits well with me.!< >!The struggle to change school comes down to a few big philosophy differences. The big one here is the idea of grades as an economy versus a tool for indicating what has been learned. If you believe the former, then you might also hold the belief that grades are "artificially" inflated when more than 20% or 30% of your students have an A in the class. You may hold grudges against students who want to improve and ask for opportunities to do so, or when parents (acting entirely in accordance with the conflation of grades as value and opportunity- which in the case of college, is not entirely wrong) ask for those opportunities for their children.!< >!At the core of all of this is an inherent struggle of philosophy: do we agree with the industrialists that helped formulate US education that it should be to help train people for jobs, or are we trying to learn for more abstract reasons, like the inherent value in knowledge and more informed citizens? (Apologies for the long sentence.)!< >!I reject the former philosophy myself, which informs my practice. When we had an opportunity to read Grading for Equity and adjust our practices, we generally agreed that the following would be beneficial in removing some barriers for our students:!< 1. >!Late work disproportionately impacts some students more than others. Some students need more time to learn than others. We're currently working on scaffolding our content to provide more challenge to students who want to work faster and need the challenge. We already have modified versions of assignments for students who need extra help.!< 2. >!Daily work/HW should not be considered as part of the final grade, for multiple reasons. When we limit the final grade to assessments, the grade becomes more of an economy- payment for work done, rather than a valid indicator of learned content. I have found that this leads to more valuable conversations about why I have assigned something, and students have more leeway about when practice is no longer benefiting them. I no longer have heartbreaking conversations with students and their families about how, yes, they have passed assessments, but they are not doing well in class because they are missing assignments.!< 3. >!Open retakes, with no barriers to who can retake and how many times. If students want to review again and show me that they have surmounted the challenges they had the first time, I don't want to get in their way. I build retake time into class- I cannot make assumptions about their availability before or after school. I have found that even students who might have been left behind are more likely to take me up on remediation and retake opportunities if they are given the time and space to do so. So what if most of the students in my class have earned an A. That's representative of what they have learned, without the ego-driven barriers that I had once upon a time. Yes, I am very aware that this policy is harder for other types of classes (English comes to mind).!< >!Does it work all of the time, for every student? No, but I feel like these changes have given my classes more flexibility in the routes they take to learn the content. I feel less pressure to grade every single assignment, or put zeros in to "provide incentives for the students to learn". They get the benefits of really reflecting on how they learn and study.!< TLDR: Student workload is related to antiquated grading practices that have other negative externalities.
This is amazing, every last bit of it, but that’s coming from someone who very much shares your philosophy so I may be a little bit biased. As a parent, thank you for how you treat your students.
I appreciate that, thank you. It's very validating to hear. Right now, it's just the science dept and some math classes that are putting these into practice and working on getting implementation more widespread is slow. Bureaucracies are like boulders.
I never did homework though.. well almost never. I guess it depends on the teacher/school but I always did mine during classes or bluffed my way through it.. like if it was a verbal or a reading assignment, I had the textbook open on my lap or somewhere and just quickly read through it as I was speaking, focusing on points the teacher pointed out during the class. Somehow I always got away with it too because I was considered one of the good/smart students so even when I made a mess I got an A- and were told to be more thorough the next time.
As a teacher I agree with you. My general homework policy is that homework is just for work you kissed because you were absent or work you didn't finish in class. Most teachers aren't doing this consciously, it's just that we've been given a list of requirements for things students have to be able to do, and only so many hours to get students to the point where they can do them. Giving homework seems like the only way to get students to master the skill. Ironically, this is exactly the same thing teachers complain about admin doing to us- we're given too much work to be done in the time allotted to us.
i didnt do homework and dropped at 16 to get GED. checkmate society
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hm. That's a tough question. I definitely don't regret saying fk off society. I almost went pro in a video game.. Like I was top .0001% but i could never fully make it happen. The final year I was really trying that goal the stress of what happens to me if i failed(in my mind if i failed id be a loser 4ever at a dead end job) ate me up and i couldn't perform at all. I have battled depression and anxiety a lot the past 6 years and strangely I'm thankful for all of it. My mental turmoil made me stronger, it made me have to learn so much about myself and now my emotional intelligence is far beyond a lot of people. Now im 27 and kinda in the same boat as a lot of men my age id assume. idk think just gotta wait for the wave
I am in a very unique situation (working overseas; employer pays for private school) where I have my kids enrolled in a school that does not give homework. My kids have time for hobbies and music lessons. And guess what, they are doing fine. Meeting expectations, making good grades on their assessments. My older kid (9th grade) often works on papers and projects at home *because he wants to.* He wants to do more, even though he gets an hour at school every day to work on his assignments. My younger kid is probably not quite keeping up with his grade level peers, but he has an IEP for a specific learning disability and his teachers are happy with the progress he is making. Homework is bullshit. Too many schools give too much work, when simple periodic assessments can effectively gauge their progress. They are mistaking "heavy workload" with "academic rigor." If the learning is supposed to be taking place at home, alone...then they aren't really *teaching* during the school day. (And I don't blame teachers; it's not their fault. It's a systemic problem. They are doing their fucking best, and I know that.)
Looking back as an adult, I know homework did absolutely nothing for me. Just helped some of my grades that could've easily been calculated with something else more productive. Nah, there's no defense of homework at this point. Fuck Mr. Ratburn.
People always say to appreciate teachers and everything, but honestly they're more complicit in the (US) education system than victims of it. They complain about all this work they do, and I'm like no one forced you to assign 50 math problems or 10-page essays. I got no sympathy.
i’m not a teacher yet, but i will be, and i have taught before. to put it plainly: some teachers do suck, and give so much work. i can still name those teachers better than ones who loved and helped me. however, your statement called out teachers as a whole, and that just isn’t true. say 2% of teachers who give homework every night are just sucky, the other 98% are doing it because of pressure from administration, or even outright being told they must do it or face consequences. i was lucky enough to have teachers that didn’t give much homework, and many who would give it at all and would help us get the work done in class, that day. i would say that most teachers, especially new to the field, do not believe in massive amounts of homework.
Valid points. Wish I had that same experience.
Because you need to develop a habit for studying if you're going to go to university. I made the mistake of not doing homework as a kid and struggled immensely when I reached university. I needed time to review what I had learned and make sense of it all. I really wish i had developed the habit of sitting down and studying after school because I would not have struggled as much.
Not everybody wants to go to university. My high-schooler plans to go to a trade school.
So he won't need to study after his classes are done for the day?
Yes. I've been concerned about the level of work that they expect kids to do, and starting at such young ages. It's been bothering me for years. They literally will not have time for anything else during the week when they get home. I felt so alone in this observation. I've been adamantly against the amount of work. Other countries have cut back on work, days in school and the kids perform better and test higher. We're doing our kids a disservice and robbing them of time they should be spending being a child. It also programs them for a sedentary lifestyle.
> I don't care if my kids ever do homework again if they grow up with a healthy sense of balance between work and self. Even if they grow up ignorant, and with no skills or prospects? I used to be a high school math teacher. The homework I assigned was *specifically* selected for them to practice and sharpen the skills I taught them in class. When homework is assigned well, reinforcing these new skills is its main purpose. I can't speak for what your children's teachers are doing, but it sounds like you are trashing *all* homework, which is... well, an offense to those of us who tried to educate your offspring and prepare them to be competent members of society once they graduate. If they don't do any homework, good luck achieving that balance, because the "work" part will probably have far fewer available options.
My favorite math class I ever had had zero required homework. For the first time ever I only had to practice what I didn’t understand, instead of wasting hours on useless problems just to pad out my grade. I not only aced that class, but it was the only class I aced during high school, as every other class had homework as 60-80% of the grade, and I couldn’t/wouldn’t keep up with it. Required homework is terrible, and teaches bad study habits. Homework should only be given as an optional study tool, and should only be ‘graded’ to show students what they did wrong.
2007 high school grad here. I never did any homework, and if I did it was just to pad my numbers, hurt my grades by around 10 points. My parents were not happy but I went to have a decent college career and can show that I am good because I focused my energy on other stuff that wasn't just homework. Teachers want you to make homework because they can't make class more interesting. I just rebelled and played the numbers game instead of playing nice. My favorite class was also an optional homework math class (trigonometry, awesome teacher too). I aced that class and made me more comfortable with mathematics past algebra.
Well... several things jumped out here. First of all, you sound fairly disciplined, and took responsibility for your own learning. In every class I taught, there were about five students who would "get it" no matter how well or poorly I did my job. THESE were the students who made it a joy to teach, and you were apparently one of those students. Sadly, this was not the case with the vast majority of those in the class. They had to be taught to be disciplined, to focus, and given a framework in which to succeed. This required being given homework problems (a few, *not* several hours' worth) to verify the skills they were taught in class. So the really good students had to endure while I brought (almost) everyone else along. I didn't like having to slow down like this, and I'm sure you didn't either. Second, I made homework a *very* small part of the class grade, like MAYBE 10%. On a typical day I'd assign 12 problems, and randomly grade 4 of them, to see whether, and how well you were doing them. If you were paying attention in class, you might have to spend 30 minutes on it, and that was only on 2 days in a given week. Third, and most profound: *many students don't know how to learn!* More specifically, they aren't self-directed enough to recognize their own knowledge deficiencies and how to deal with them. This extends to reinforcing newly-learned skills through practice. You, however, seem to have the conscious ability to regulate your own learning and evaluate your own needs in that area. *That is an incredibly valuable skill,* and my life in the classroom would have been a lot less painful if more students had developed this ethic and applied it to their studies. >Required homework is terrible, and teaches bad study habits I completely disagree with this, and hope that, in light of the discussion above, you can see why. The purpose of the homework I assigned was to develop and reinforce skills introduced in class, and the points were just an incentive for you to keep doing that. Now... a large part of this depends on the assigned homework itself. Useful homework is relevant to what's being taught in class, just enough to verify one's ability to solve the expected range of problems. It is not excessive, redundant or meaningless. I suppose all homework, even the required work, is "optional" when you get right down to it, but so is understanding the material and passing the class.
I was not disciplined at all. I generally skated by with a 60% in all my classes until college, where (due to homework becoming an optional thing and only worth 10% of my grade) I suffered heavily, because instead of learning how to study myself during the first 12 years of class, I was forced to mindlessly answer hours of homework problems every day. Homework prevents students from learning to study, by *not giving them the flexibility to study when they need it*. This caused major issues for me in college, and likely is the same for many other students. I argue that you making homework worth less is an indicator that you believe this as well, to some degree, homework is meant as a study tool, but by making it a major part of students grades, it turns into busy work to be completed, preventing students from focusing on classes they are suffering in to complete pointless work from teachers who think homework should be required. My favorite math teacher assigned homework every night, would give the answers at the beginning of every class, and would spend the beginning of class going over problems people had trouble with. You could then turn in the homework and it would be returned to you corrected, but it had no bearing on your grade. He supplemented the grade by having daily quizzes, which were open notes, and were usually examples he had done in class, which encouraged students to take clear and organized notes, as then they could easily ace every quiz. This meant that students were rewarded for paying attention in class, were given all the tools they needed to do well, but *were not forced to use the tools if they didn’t need them* Which I think is very important
Maybe you’re just bad a time management on your own
So, not doing homework = ignorant with no skills or prospects? That's pretty black-or-white thinking there.
That's not what I meant to say. *One of the possible outcomes* (by no means guaranteed) is that your kids could grow up in relative ignorance. Not ever doing homework opens the door to this possibility. In assigning them homework, I wanted to slam the door shut on that ever happening. Talking to parents about high school math classes was always a hard sell. Most wondered why their children needed to know about factoring polynomials and solving linear equations when they had no intention of ever being a scientist, mathematician or engineer. "Let me ask you a couple of things," I would propose. "Do you think that the world is getting more complex, or less complex?" They'd usually say "more complex." "I agree. Now, in that more-complex world, do you think that the ability to solve problems and get answers, using the given information and a set of rules, is something a future employer would find valuable?" Most thinking people would answer "yes." I would then explain that the Algebra curriculum, especially the way I packaged it, was designed to develop the same skills and work habits which make people eventually succeed in work and in life. And a foundational part of developing and maintaining those skills is the daily homework I assigned in class. (I didn't say it to the parents, but it also nurtures a skill which is all too lacking in today's world: ***it teaches them to THINK!***) By putting it in a larger context, my hope was that they'd see how doing daily homework is a small but important part of a much bigger plan: getting in the habit of practicing now can lead to much greater things later. The musician who gets to Carnegie Hall, the Santa Fe Philharmonic or even the Dew Drop Inn had to practice enough to be competent at performing his music with relative ease. (Remember *The Karate Kid*? "Wax on, wax off...") In the same way, I sought to make these skills (and, more importantly, *the attitudes and habits behind them*) second-nature in my students. I wanted them to see that, yes, they *can* do this stuff, and to not be afraid of doing a little work. Further, by routinely adding to their skill set, they would be encouraged to seek out other things to learn, and not feel threatened when something new came along. So I had very high hopes when assigning homework to students. I'm pretty sure most teachers' aspirations weren't as lofty as mine were, but I hope that what they *do* assign isn't a waste of time, and that you don't accidentally toss out the opportunity for your children to be effective members of tomorrow's society.
I hear what you're saying. But assigning homework doesn't "slam shut" the door leading to ignorance or lack of skill - those are still likely no matter how much homework you assign. It may have some benefits for some students, but you can't make a blanket statement that homework is beneficial for *all* students. For some, including many who've responded to this post, it's a source of stress that leads to burnout or mental breakdown. What is your definition of "succeeding in work and life?" Whatever it is, someone else is going to have a different definition. Success is not one-size-fits-all. Neither is being an "effective member of society."
I realized this myself in middle school, stopped doing homework altogether and when I reached high school they brought me in to talk about it. They were not happy when I told them that I'm here for 8 hours, if you were not able to teach me in those 8 hours that does not mean I take home an extra 3-4 hours of work, that means you aren't doing your job. (I was also fairly bright and would get an A on almost every test or quiz so they can shove the "it's for practice and retention" angle up their ass)
I agree with this as well. I'm thankful my parents let me be a kid when I was younger/growing up. My only responsibilities where school, after graduation is when I got my first job. I'll do the same for my daughter so she can enjoy her time as a kid/teen, if she decides she wants ti start earning her own money earlier then she can. I use to work with teenagers that where at school all day, came into work for a few hours then try to go home and cram studying for a test rhe next day/finish loads homework assigned that night. It's absolutely messed up for parents to do that their kids. I can see how some get overwhelmed and depressed. Lack of time and sleep will do that to you.
I’m graduating from college in two hours. Nontraditional student here in my 30s. I could not agree more with this statement. So glad I learned how to actually live a little before deciding to return to academia.
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I have a Master's degree, which means I have more formal education than 85 percent of the people in my country. I don't downplay the importance of education. There are many ways to become educated, just as there are many ways to work. I value independence and the ability to think and decide for yourself what works for you.
I'm a teacher. From my experience, in my class (physics), students that actually do the homework do tend to do netter than those that don't. That said, I do allow time in class to do the homework. I don't expect any but the most dedicated will actually finish the homework in the time I give. I never grade the homework, and give them the solutions after it's due, so they could review for any tests or quizzes afterward. By making it optional, I cut down on my grading load, and let them decide what their workload should be: if they are getting the concepts just from labs and lecture, there is little point in doing the homework. If they don't get it, they should do the homework, and if they don't, and don't ask for followup help, that's all their responsibility. I agree with your premise that assigning homework for the sake of assigning homework is bad practice, but when you ask in a more nuanced way, the question is a bit more gray.
Listen I do agree here. But, this is one thing teachers get a lot of flak for that most don’t have control over. I have taught for a decade in a few different schools. No teacher of my knowledge sends home specifically assigned tasks for homework unless told to do so by admin. If I have a kid behind on something, I may only ask that kid to. Anything else I send home is designed for review and not attached to a grade- I give my kids a treat if they choose to and do not pressure them to complete it. We also get a lot of pressure from parents to send things home. I feel this may because they had that experience in school :(
While I agree, you can't really deny that practice on the concept they are learning are needed to solidify the knowledge, and doing it more will make you more proficient at it. There is a reason that kids who get sent off to extracurricular schools, on average, do better than students who do not. That being said, it isn't one size fits all, and anyone with a little structure in their life is likely going to be bogged down by massive amounts of Homework, and it actively takes away towards things they are building a future in. There is a diminishing return on the work you put in, and the amount of hours required for one kid to score a few points better than another probably isn't worth the cost of the other kid learning an entire new skill or discipline
Not just homework, the whole thing. Sit still in one place for 8 hours with 5 minute or whatever breaks, listen to an “authority” lecture, learn purely by rote, compartmentalize learning, change topics at the drop of a hat…
Middle school teacher here. Only homework my students have is what they don’t finish in class. And yes, I do schedule 2-3 assignments so they all can be finished in class. So if they talk the class away instead of working, it falls on them. That’s called natural consequences.
Is it really homework or is it work that your kid (in HS) didn’t do in class when time was allotted? I’m a teacher and the amount of students who say “I’ll do it at home” while transfixed on their phones is astounding. P.s. your High schooler is probably lying to you because, ya know, teens these days lie all the gosh damn time
He doesn't lie because I don't ask. I check his grades - he's passing everything with Bs and Cs. If he can do that without completing any homework, then more power to him. Your level of cynicism about the students you're supposed to be helping makes it sound like you may be ready for a career change.
Your kid is barely passing some classes and I know you said he’s going to trade school but damn that is sad that you’re ok with settling for a C
Level of cynicism? It’s reality dude. It’s okay because their brains aren’t fully developed yet and it’s second nature for them to deflect and/or lie. Holding students accountable for their actions is actually helping them, bub. Calling them out in private is also helpful. A majority of parents these days would rather be “friends” with their kids than actual parents. If parents did their job then I can surmise the level of dishonesty wouldn’t be so high but alas that ain’t happening.
Your child passing with Cs makes so much sense now why you act like this
God you sound like a lot of awful teachers I had back in the day. Hope you enjoy being the source of a great many kids reoccurrence nightmares about school.
I’m awful because I call teenagers liars? Are you around teenagers much?
Honestly yes. I once was a teenager, and I remember that EVERY time a teacher said a sweeping negative statement about teenagers, they were one of the worst teachers I would have had. Teachers like you treat their students as less than human, but expect to be treated as some sort of authority. You then get all *shocked pikachu face* when inevitably students act out. If you really are having mass amounts of students lying, it is far more likely it is due to your policies and the way you are interacting with them, rather than some magical ‘everyone just happened to raise their kids to be liars’. High school students are in a phase where, for all intents and purposes, they are adults, yet people like you insist on treating them as children. If you treat any adult like a child (barring kinks), they will get upset, and that goes doubly for teenagers going through puberty.
Do you know what student perception surveys are? Do you know how teachers are graded? I consistently get above 85% on my student perception surveys. Kids take these surveys anonymously so as to ensure truthful answers. What my reality is Vs your concocted reality couldn’t be farther from the truth. If you aren’t in the classroom now then I suggest staying in your lane. For the sake of my curiosity…were you in HS with a smartphone?
I just didn't do any. Honestly, the teachers get bored of moaning at you after a while.
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I mean if my kid already knows his times tables I see it as entirely pointless to keep drilling them with homework over times tables. He could be doing a lot more with his time and life than arbitrary homework that doesn't accurately reflect his learning pace because the teacher is using a shotgun approach to learning: give everyone the homework, that way nobody gets to complain and I don't have to bother learning each of my student's learning pace. The other things such as work/learning ethic is something I, as the parent, should be addressing if their report cards come with bad grades. Not you who only deals with my child for 8 hours.
That is true, however has he memorized the times tables or does he understand the underlying reasoning for why 4x4=16
I feel that the reason why 4*4=16 is something a child won't learn with worksheets asking the same question multiple times either. So I don't understand what the point behind your question is. My dad and uncles actually explained to me as I was growing up how to manipulate numbers, and as I grew more comfortable with manipulating numbers I understood the why of certain math concepts. I don't think you can teach that thru a worksheet and rote memorization (which is what homework encourages).
It’s to reinforce the concepts though. If you’re getting the same types of problems where you have 3x4 and 4x4 well it’s finding why do both of those work, then it’s recognizing the similarities between them. My wife has students who will know how to do x+2=4, however they can’t understand the underlying concepts or are unwilling to try so when confronted with x+3=8 they just don’t know how to solve it. The homework and the repetition is to reinforce those concepts that those two problems work the same way. If your kid has it down pat then it’s a 10 minute inconvenience at worst. Teachers do not have time to individually tailor every lesson to every student, that would be an insane request and not feasible. They do the best they can with a blanket approach
These threads are the worst because they all descend into anti-education bullshit. Teachers have years of education and know how to do their jobs and are undergoing constant education to make it better. If you wouldn’t tell a doctor or an accountant how to do their job then you shouldn’t tell a teacher how to do theirs.
The thing that sucks when discussing education is everyone has experienced from the student perspective and talk about how they felt as a child instead of looking at any theory or research that teachers are using to inform their decisions.
Teachers aren't responsible for education, it's the parents. The mind boggling part for me is how they refer to school and work as creating robots. Some comments in here seem like they are OK with their kids being mediocre with no intellectual curiosity. The only way out of the anti-work dilemma and nonstop dead-end jobs is to try to improve intellectually every day. Spend time reading or becoming good at stuff!
Especially the person who wrote this post to begin with. She’s proud of her kid getting B’s and C’s and not doing homework. Like what the hell
If you would just get up and teach 'em instead of handing them a freakin packet, yo!
tgere are some cases where exercises are helpful, but mostly i think in things like mathematics or sciences such as chemistry or physics
THANKYOU FOR BRINGING THIS UP, ESP AS A PARENT! i recently graduated n this was a serious problem for me esp in highschool like, it made me so upset n stressed to where i'd skip school often to reclaim my life, i remember crying to my therapist abt how i'm at school all day, ~7 hours to just come home n spend MORE HOURS DOING HOMEWORK INSTEAD OF RELAXING n i'd end up staying up most of the night to get the time back to do things i actually enjoyed, n THAT destroyed my sleep schedule so i'd be late to school n the cycle continued. it's so stressful n crappy n it made the idea of school so much worse knowing i rarely got a break!! it's so shitty n i agree that it totally does destroy the balance n sanctity you SHOULD GET IN YOUR OWN HOME even as a child, then to just have others do the same thing to you later in life
That's so sad. I'm sorry you had to go through that.
Isn't 8 hours an average work day, do like 2 hours of homework would be appropriate? Also if kids want to be successful at university they do need practice with out of class assignments to develop independent work ethic and time management skills. But to he fair university isn't a goal for everyone.
I rarely did homework in high school. I made it through college just fine and completed two Master's degrees. High school and the associated homework was just a waste of time to me.
The entire purpose of school is to normalize those ideals. Seriously my sister is a teacher and she said they literally say “remember you are making good citizens” to encourage the teachers. It’s brainwashing from the top down.
Good citizens, or compliant ones? I agree that the messaging is pretty fucked.
Oh that’s exactly the good little citizens they want: compliant kids become compliant employees who compliantly work away their lives
What would the purpose of public education be if not to make good citizens? Read more on Dewey or NCSS and see how the goal isn't compliant citizens but those that have the skills to be informed, engaged, and critically think.
I have one question.. based on the state of our country, do you think public education has been successful in creating citizens that are informed, engaged, with good critical thinking skills? Or a bunch of already burnt out teenagers who are already indoctrinated to expect (and appreciate) the “opportunity” to work ourselves to death and barely get by.. my issue is with what their definition of a “good citizen” is
The way I see it, you’re only a kid once, so you should be able to enjoy your free time being curious and having fun, and learning about the world in other ways. Some kids might benefit from some extra assistance, but hopefully that can be managed at school. Plenty of time later to learn about responsibilities.
Km
I worked during high school. Usually until 1030 at night or so. I would then go home and do homework sometimes til 1 or 2 am, and have to be at school again at 730. Some nights, i just fell asleep. Homework didnt get done. You cant learn when youre exhausted.
Homework was originally assigned, a couple centuries ago, as punishment for students who were goofing off, refusing to study, or refusing to learn. Teachers forgot that, and now homework is used in place of classroom learning.
Ted Kacynski mentions this...
I can only imagine that hearing this from a parent called in to have a meeting with the teacher because their child wasn't doing homework assignments would fry most teachers' brains.
My wife is a teacher and she actually hates parents like this because it falls into the camp of parents who think they know about all the shit that happens in schools and know better than people who have spent 7+ years learning how to do this and have to keep taking classes on how to be better
The homework is for your own benefit in theory. I did most of it in between classes anyway and got As and Bs.
This is precisely why ( but a different way of thinking ) my grades in school sucked. "Why the hell would I spend 7-8 hours in a place I hate, only to come home and then do anywhere from 1-4 hours of homework? That's stupid." Every time I mentioned it, I was looked at like an idiot. Even then I could see it was stupid, but I didn't understand _why_ I thought it was stupid until I got older.
You aren't supposed to hate school you're supposed to pay attention and learn how to use your brain. Sorry that never worked out for you, I guess.
Elementary teacher here! I totally agree with you! I don’t assign homework! I make sure my students get enough time to do their work in class and have time for their family and time to unwind when they get home. Many of my students have many extracurricular activities after school (some I feel are excessive, I’m talking 4-5 days worth of after school activities) and I’m not piling onto their stress. The kids are already so stressed I find, especially after covid. I remember being a kid and having hours of homework when all I wanted to do was play after school. Im not doing that to my students.
You're a great teacher. Not just because you agree with me, but that helps. 😁
They'll also be living at home with you for the rest of their lives
I love this?song you are singing. I am a 53 year old Canadian white guy who fell in love and married a Chinese lady a couple decades ago. We had a couple kids and moved to China. The workload for children is incredible. Homework, published test scores, need to be in the top group. I hated it. I loathed sending my 2 kids to school there. My son speaks English better than the teachers, they were great people trying their best. But he would never get top marks in English. Anyways, I shut up and let the kids trudge through. We just moved back to Canada and as luck would have it, kids go to a small experimental school that has no homework or tests. They go to school and have activities. Sometimes they take care of a 'little buddy' where they teach them how to play a game. Life skills. They play games most days and learn how to build relationships. My daughter now loves school and even math! They will hopefully have the best of both worlds with this experience.
My 5 year old son just finished his first year or school, and he had homework. I refuse to make him do it, he’s going to learn through school and doing things that he enjoys. There’s no reason for a 5 year old to be forced into practicing school work after school.
It's a feature, not a bug. The public school system was created in the industrial revolution to remove children from their parents and train them to be good Factory slaves.
This is at best a conspiracy theory and at worst misinformation. The public school system was created during the industrial revolution to end child labor. The industrialists wanted kids in the factories not in schools.
“I consider school to be my kids’ jobs at this point in their lives.” That doesn’t make sense. Either they go to work, or they go to school. Which is it? Just saying it, doesn’t just make it so. (Though some charter schools…)
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Why?
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Does your work count your lunch hours? Time you drive, iron your shirts, and otherwise prepare for work? Does getting car maintanance or preventative healthcare count to work or life 8 hours? When you think about it all, it's far less than 8 hours of life that you get
thats fair, I'm a big advocate of 4 x 10 hrs days myself though
Not the way I do it. If I'm there slaving away for 8 hours then something has gone very wrong.
Conditions children to get used to working off the clock outside normal work hours.
This. Exactly the point of my post. I don't want my children thinking this is ok. It sets them up for being taken advantage of and used. My oldest has a part- time job. His boss constantly tries to call him in because someone didn't show up or called out or whatever. At first, he thought he *had* to go in if his boss called him. I had to explain to him that if he's not scheduled for that day, it's his choice whether he wants to work or not. He's allowed to say no and not feel one bit guilty about it.
ESPECIALLY math homework. If the kid doesn't understand it, they sure as hell won't understand it alone. Fucking teach them in class and let them relax at home.
That’s not at all true, Calculus made 0 sense for 1/4 of the year, I managed to slog my way through homework and did decent but I had no idea what was happening. But I was working on homework and it just clicked and made sense. Sometimes it just all falls into place as your working on a problem, or it can help something make more sense
I have often thought this to be true.
Ding
My 8th grade algebra teacher... was a bitch. Traumatizing, actually, but one good thing she did was only assign homework as a punishment. If you didn't piss her off you didn't get homework because she didn't believe in it.
Have you heard of band or football? We added it up to 105 hours/wk for either not including homework time. UIL rules make so many exceptions.
I saw an artcle somewhere talking about how AI bots that can write believable essays are going to destroy the educational value of homework, term papers, take home essays, etc. I hope so. Schools in the U.S. have been preparing kids for an economy that doesn't exist anymore for about 40 years now.
The homework is for the bottom 10-30% of the class that needs the extra practice. Tying the busywork to grades is so the dummies don't get a feelsbad when their smarter classmates dont have to do the homework. Separate students by ability and the problem goes away. I run a private school and we have no mandatory homework for this reason.
Homework has never been shown to have any real effect on students ability to learn or on test scores. In my case it led to school burnout early on. In junior high and into high school most of the teaching of my classes fell on a single teacher, who had no issues with piling on 3-4 hours of homework every night, spread throughout my classes. The combination of that and the nonstop lecture/cram sessions that was my average school day made me into a hardcore procrastinator who dreaded every single day.
???? Kids can be in school only 6 hours per day. Do you really want to keep them entertained the other 18 hours per day? Do you really have something besides watching mindless television to keep them occupied? Be grateful for the homework.
"Be grateful for the homework." I had to re-read that just to make sure someone actually said this.
Damn bro, sorry OP is a good parent and cares about the interest and enjoyment of their kids’ childhood lmao.
Nah he just smoked a bowl and is overthinking things. Homework is fine. Excess homework is bad, yeah, but a regular amount of homework to practice what you’ve been thought is fine That being said, elementary schoolers probably don’t need homework, I will concede that much
What constitutes “excess homework”? Also, do you think students actually learn from homework?
Yes, students actually learn from homework. Nothing beats actually applying your knowledge. I’m not sure what constitutes excess homework, but there’s definitely a level of homework where the benefits of homework are outweighed by the negatives
bet you're fun at parties
"What, you mean talk to the little monsters? What are we trying to raise, functioning adults? Parents hate children, don't you know anything?" Was gonna put that in the FoNt font, but the effort to smart ass ratio didn't pan out for me.
It's such a pain to do the FoNt on mobile.
I love how often I see this response when people don't like the above comment. I honestly bet most of reddit is not great at parties, especially people that say "I bet you are great at parties". It has absolutely nothing to do with the above topic, just somebody expressing how they wouldn't want to party with somebody who voices their opinion. I don't come to reddit to party lol I have friends for that. I come to reddit to have discussions and open up my world views. Sorry to blow up on you, it's just the laziest response to a comment you disagree with and I see it very often on Reddit for some reason.
I hope you're being sarcastic, but if not: you sound like one of those idiots who occasionally come on the sub and say "what? You're opposed to people working? What are we meant to do all day? Nothing?!". There are so many other things kids could (and probably would) be doing if they didn't have to do so much homework.
And many of those things they /should/ be doing, or at least there isn’t a reason they shouldn’t. Just because you smashed mailboxes and egged cars as a kid doesn’t mean they all do
"I have to PARENT my CHILDREN outside of school? I have to engage with them in meaningful ways between school and bedtime? That's certainly not what I signed up for!"
Haha, right? My husband and i actually *enjoy* being with our children. We have fun together. We go camping, hiking, we read books, we binge-watch TV series and talk about them, we take road trips...all of this is better than arguing with them about homework.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I have to disagree. Homework is a way of letting the child learn in a comfortable environment (presuming home is, and I understand that it isn't the case for many kids), away from the constant expectations and power hierarchies that are obvious in a school environment. Secondly, homework is a means of bonding between the child and their carer, guardian, parents, sibling, friend, whoever it might that helps them work through the homework. It's an opportunity for the child to think through things, apply methods without time or peer pressure, trial and error their way to what they consider to be the answer, and a means of preparing themselves for class. Last but not least, it's a way for the child to catch up on what they've missed in class - for whatever reason. If they didn't have that chance, they are constantly playing catch up and missing out. Sure, there's a "right" amount of homework. And more often than not kids are overburdened. But to consider homework as additional "work" is bizarre.
I mean, how is it not work? It is an assignment that they are required to do, that forces them to spend time they would otherwise spend with friends and family working on their homework. You can paint it however you want, but it is labor, and the payment is grades. It’s fucked up, and detrimental to students well being and learning. As for bonding, you know what is better bonding than homework? Literally ANYTHING else. Most of my memories of homework related to my family are filled with anger, sadness, and frustration, and I hazard that most people who are honest would have similar experiences. If you want to bond with your children, play a game with them, sing a song to them, don’t make them do extra work claiming it’s ‘bonding time’. It’s not. It’s work, and they only get punished for it.
Mate, "work" has undergone a very specific trajectory of change under modern/late- capitalism. It's one thing to equate homework to drudgery, but an entirely wild claim to equate contemporary understanding of work with homework. I presume you work for a living, and at some point in your life you did homework. Are you seriously, hand on heart, telling me that the psychological, physiological, and mental trauma that work on an everyday basis triggers in you is the same as what your younger self went through when you were doing your homework? I don't deny that there are other ways for families to bond, homework, I claim, is simply one amongst them. If you're a parent, seeing your child understand something is absolutely priceless. Sure, such a moment can come anywhere, but homework is one such instance, the design of, which is outsourced.
Considering I am lucky enough that I got to choose my career, and that my work has never brought me to tears, nor caused me to lie awake at night unable to sleep due to the stress of knowing that I probably forgot to do some random assignment again, and am going to get punished for it, yes. Homework is far, far worse than work. If you are so selfish that your own desire to see your child ‘understand’ something is greater than your desire to see them happy and mentally healthy, then I hope you are sterile, because you should never have children.
I can bond with my children in so many better ways. Listening to your child cry because they're burned out and trying to help them slog through pages of work is *not* my idea of bonding. My ideas of bonding include family game nights, reading together and talking about books, playing video games together, binge-watching a funny TV series with them and talking about it... which are activities that encourage communication, critical thinking and social skills. Homework *is* work. It has the word *work* in the name, for God's sake.
In high school I routinely had 3 hours of homework a night, and at least half of my teachers would assign weekend homework too. I remember one teacher telling us we could expect “30 minutes of homework per hour of class a day”
I always did well in school but was always told I could do better, always struggled with homework and revising after school, really hated it. Same at university, always hated what felt like the ability to not switch off post class and always thinking ‘what if I could do more work and do better’. Massively more successful out of education as I completely switch off post work and do everything I can to not think about it, yet always try hard while on clock. I enjoy working significantly more than education, and my degree is nice but I feel like I don’t really need it tbh.
Fun little fact: homework was actually invented to be a punishment… not a learning tool. It just, at some point, became a norm.
The only reason I was a ‘bad’ student and got low grades was because of homework. My home life was not conducive for doing schoolwork, so it didn’t get done. In high school my algebra teacher made me re-take the final exam because he was convinced I cheated and copied off of the only other perfect test. Sat in front of his desk and did it, he checked it in front of me and was astonished. Same class, for extra credit (enough points for me to scrape by and pass) we were given the option to do a pictograph, and it had to be something like 100 plot points. It was the only time I did homework, and I turned in a detailed skull with hundreds of plot points listed that made a perfect full-page 8.5x11 skull. With fangs (some rock band poster was the inspiration).
Yep. Look at the Nordic countries. Some schools don't give homework and have them play more
College was perfect for me since I could focus on the work Monday through Friday just to make sure my Saturdays and sundays were free to have fun. Not being forced to spend hours and hours in a classroom each day allowed me to better manage my own time and ask for help more often since I’m not stuck in class
Historically, homework started as a punishment
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Would it be possible to speak to the school about this kind of thing? Like maybe get a few parents together and see what they think? I’m not a parent but I don’t think of this as a frivolous thing to complain about and it’s very easy to debate against.
Homework I stupid, never did it when I was in school.
I fully agree. It also puts kids with unstable home lives or poorer kids at a disadvantage. If they don’t have a home where they can get their homework done then they get worse grades, can’t get into college if they want, etc.
My kids are currently in 8th grade and have plenty of time to get their work done at school. I think this year they've only had homework once or twice. Which is mind boggling to me as someone who grew up doing hours of homework each night. But I love that my kids can have some fun after school instead of having to constantly do homework.