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More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

philly.com

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Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

#71

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

zaphar wrote: post #50
lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll preface this response with the acknowledgement that the world is not ideal, and there are some fundamental problems underlying how classes are structured (largely due to the fact that evaluations are based on the achievement of the lowest performers) which poses institutional obstacles to efficient work assignments. That being said, given the (in practice flawed) assumption that the work being assigned is someth…

You are assuming the education of a single class takes precedence over other classes, the education of extra curricular activities, and the education of chores at home. That is a large assumption that I'm pretty sure is invalid. The crux of this problem is that time spent in school is poorly spent for a host of reasons. If you child spends close to 7 hours at school and none of that time was available for the work th…

The metaphor that resonates with me as a musician, would you expect someone to get better at piano only by attending lessons but no practice at home?

Im not sure where you get the idea of poor time use from. Out of that 8 hours you need to fit lunch, recess, cumulative transition times, and at least 4 major academic topics (Math, Science, History, Language) plus hopefully a rotating time dedicated to the arts. And you want that to fit into 8 hours on top of the practice required to achieve mastery?

Finally, this is me making a value judgement. Just picking one class, math, I'll go out on a limb and say mastery of basic arithmetic is going to resonate much farther in a child's life than participating an extra hour in extra curricular or chores.

Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

#72

Post by Mz »

jbob2000 wrote: post #60
JamesBarney wrote: post #45

I am in total agreement that children have better things to do than homework. Such as learning how to play and interact with others. Learn how to deal with adversity. How to deal with the sadness of a break up or not being included. Learning how to lead a team via Counter Strike or WOW. Learning computers by writing a mod for a favorite computer game. These things taught me far more than a worksheet on a very idealiz…

My significant other is a teacher and entered the workforce 2 years ago. I now firmly believe that the education system is the way it is because of the teachers, and not in a good way. The few who got into it because "they love children and teaching" are so massively outweighed by those who took it because there was nothing else. It's created a system that is center around Dear Teacher, a frustrated individual upset…

Bonus: A lot of elementary school teachers are there because they can't cut the math for some program they wanted and their college shunted them off into early education. These are, unfortunately, very often women. As a mathy woman who homeshooled my sons and spent considerable time getting my oldest over the math phobia school instilled in him, I harbor the opinion that sending math flunkies in droves to teach our children is part of why math has such a reputation of fear and loathing. They not only cannot teach it, they pass on their fear and loathing to the students. Extra bonus: Since they are overwhelmingly female, I think this contributes to keeping the stereotype alive and well that girls are bad at math. We give our kids sucky math education and also model that "All the women you know and admire are terrible at it and hate this shit."

Go, us.

Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

#73

Post by thaumasiotes »

lordnacho wrote: post #37

The problem with homework is it's used as a form of accountability. My French teacher used to joke when collecting papers : "Ou est votre dette a la societe?" (Apologies for missing accents.) Of course what it should be is like at university. The professor can't spend all his time with you, so you get a rough list of what you should know about. It's then up to you to judge whether you need to read a bit more or a bit…

> Of course what it should be is like at university. The professor can't spend all his time with you, so you get a rough list of what you should know about. It's then up to you to judge whether you need to read a bit more or a bit less.

This does not reflect common US practice.

Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

#74

Post by wvenable »

Mz wrote: post #72
jbob2000 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My significant other is a teacher and entered the workforce 2 years ago. I now firmly believe that the education system is the way it is because of the teachers, and not in a good way. The few who got into it because "they love children and teaching" are so massively outweighed by those who took it because there was nothing else. It's created a system that is center around Dear Teacher, a frustrated individual upset…

Bonus: A lot of elementary school teachers are there because they can't cut the math for some program they wanted and their college shunted them off into early education. These are, unfortunately, very often women. As a mathy woman who homeshooled my sons and spent considerable time getting my oldest over the math phobia school instilled in him, I harbor the opinion that sending math flunkies in droves to teach our c…

Based on my son and daughter's math education I agree with this. It's not all entirely on the individual teachers; the program (created by groups of other teachers) is heavily based around non-algorithmic math. I really liked math in school but I absolutely hate the math my children have to do.

Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

#75

Post by jerf »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #71
zaphar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming the education of a single class takes precedence over other classes, the education of extra curricular activities, and the education of chores at home. That is a large assumption that I'm pretty sure is invalid. The crux of this problem is that time spent in school is poorly spent for a host of reasons. If you child spends close to 7 hours at school and none of that time was available for the work th…

The metaphor that resonates with me as a musician, would you expect someone to get better at piano only by attending lessons but no practice at home? Im not sure where you get the idea of poor time use from. Out of that 8 hours you need to fit lunch, recess, cumulative transition times, and at least 4 major academic topics (Math, Science, History, Language) plus hopefully a rotating time dedicated to the arts. And yo…

"The metaphor that resonates with me as a musician, would you expect someone to get better at piano only by attending lessons but no practice at home?"

If they were at lessons for 7 hours a day, five days a week... yes! Yes I in fact do.

Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

#76

Post by clinta »

gayprogrammer wrote: post #30

I didn't see anything from the side of parents who want more homework. Why are some parents asking for more? Are their children misbehaving? Are their children not learning the material? I am guessing that homework doesn't automatically make up for a school's or teachers' shortcomings.

I've seen parents argue for more homework so that homework would make up a larger percentage of the students grade in an attempt to make up for the fact that their child is a "Bad test taker".

It always bothered me because a grade should reflect the percentage of the material you actually learned. Not be just an accounting of how many hours you spent trying to learn it.

Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

#77

Post by riot504 »

JadeNB wrote: post #65
Kalium wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there was something in there that could be easily cut and is significantly less important than homework...

Assuming you mean the sports practice: I also personally value homework more than sports practice, but it seems callous and self-centred to assume that our own preferences are automatically right for others.

Sports teach kids about teamwork, working together, and how hard work pays off. I have found more use from what I learned in sports than any homework assignment.

Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

#78

Post by sf56 »

samfisher83 wrote: post #22

If you want to get good at something you have to put in the work. I wonder what would have happened if MJ didn't put in time into practice.

A lot of kids that show promise in something outside of school get a free pass on homework. I wonder what would have happened if MJ was too buried under homework to get in any practice time.

Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

#79

Post by fineman »

s73v3r wrote: post #67
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! This dovetails with the Khan Academy approach, of listening to lecture online, then doing homework in class with the teacher there as tutor. Public school is usually run upside-down from what makes sense.

What data do you have to back that up?

Believe it or not, but I did a fairly detailed study of public schools. I spent nearly two waking years over more than a decade auditing and participating in 50+ classes at levels from K to pre-university, across ten or more schools.

I know people will respond with "Anecdotes aren't data", but that's incorrect - they're just really badly sampled. Even if my experiences are uncommon they're enough for me to recognize errors and overly broad assumptions in other people's work.

Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

#80

Post by benihana »

lycidas wrote: post #40
fiatmoney wrote: post #18

"the notion that America can close the learning gap with China or India..." Indian and Chinese students in America do as well or better than Indian and Chinese students in their home countries on any measure you'd like to name. For that matter the same is true of Mexican students in the US vs. in Mexico, European students in the US vs. in Europe, etc.

Chinese and Indian students in America also have the benefit of being from some of the highest socioeconomic groups in America [0]. It is more a factor of the group's average wealth rather than the fact that they are foreign. [0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...

>It is more a factor of the group's average wealth rather than the fact that they are foreign.

How do you know that for sure? Maybe their higher average wealth is a function of their success as immigrants, not the other way around.

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