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.
Whatever, Michael Jackson came out of the womb singing! Sha-moh!
More parents, students saying 'no' to homework
91–100 of 295 posts
Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework
#92I 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…
Assigning blame for a system that sucks is tricky. That kind of narrating is often just an outlet for bias, frustrations and such. In reality the way things are has a long history, with interlocking effects and counter effects.
Teachers being unhappy with being teacher is a problem. It's partly because teaching is often an available profession, mostly due to how many we need. There are other things to blame too: Education is bureaucratic and regimented, this makes teacher dislike the job. It's the legacy of reactions to failures in the past, an attempt to make sure that schools can't fail kids. Class sizes are way too big, often. A class of 15 9 year olds can learn more in 4 hours than a class 30 9 year olds can learn more in 8. But, we need babysitting. Teachers don't have high pay or a respected place in our society. Etc. Etc.
The reality is that it's hard to do this right. It's easy to blame. Even if you're right, it's not useful.
Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Except children don't sit down at school and begin a "school lesson". Basic education is going to cover Math, Science, Language, History and hopefully Art. So in a given subject there might be 5 hours of lesson time week. When framed that way, asking for another hour or 2 of practice time for mastery doesn't sound so unreasonable.
Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework
#94One evening my wife, daughter and I were sitting in the living room. My wife and I were reading and my daughter was doing her Math homework, when all of sudden she asks "Did Heath Ledger commit suicide?"
I said "that's a weird question, what brought that up?" and she said they were talking about it at school today with the Dare Police Officer. I said "Oh you had a Police Officer in your class today?" and she said "Yeah, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays."
No one I've ever told that story to has ever commented on it.
Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework
#95The 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…
> ... you can simply ask your kid some enlightening questions. It's probably a lot more interesting for them that way. Part-time (law) professor here. Thinking of enlightening questions is often quite difficult.
This is where I think technology and legislation can really be helpful. A standardized structure for encouraging the top achievers combined with a national database of templates and problems to accommodate the wide spectrum of students would go along way.
Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework
#96I am not to the point of saying 'no' to homework. But I am starting to question a few things. First off, my situation is not the norm anymore. Not only am I the single earner in my 5 person household, but I work from home full time. I am extremely active in my kids lives. My kids are very fortunate in that they always have one and often times both parents to help out with school work. My oldest is 9 - 4th grade. I ha…
It's not easy for low SES students to learn much from homework.
Schools are designed by upper-middle-class people who care a lot about school. The problem students are from a very different background.
It's nice to say that teachers should be doing parenting for kids (building their self esteem, helping them develop as people, etc), but that's just glorified daycare. The poor students need to be taught to read, write, and do math, because that's what their parents can't help them with.
Education is meant to give every child a chance. I really think poor people have decent general cognitive skills (problem solving, relationships, etc), but really need a leg-up when it comes to formal academic work.
I don't think schools are really helping kids, when they shunt the fundamentals off to parents, as homework. 6 hours a day should be plenty to develop basic numeracy and literacy. But that's often not a priority to educators. It's more fun for teachers to tell themselves they're being parents - teaching kids how to develop as people.
Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework
#97The 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…
> ... you can simply ask your kid some enlightening questions. It's probably a lot more interesting for them that way. Part-time (law) professor here. Thinking of enlightening questions is often quite difficult.
> Thinking of enlightening questions is often quite difficult.
And this is a big piece of the problem with homework. Enlightening questions could be asked as homework, but various forces create an emphasis on quantity over quality.
As someone who's taught arithmetic to lots of adults, I use 'enlightening' in a broad sense. I hope most of us agree that grasping arithmetic requires practice (in or out of class), but that's not the same as repetition. Even simple arithmetic problems can be varied in deliberate ways that draw students' attention to those variations and at the same time reinforce the underlying pattern.
Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework
#98Hmm. The article alludes to some studies that back up their point, but, anecdotally, I think I got more out of doing homework than I did out of sitting in class...
This right here is the core of a world of problems. Data contradicts gut feeling. Data must be wrong.
Data and anecdotes are rarely actually contradictory; by combining data, which can demonstrate broad trends with authority (while taking special care to avoid giving extrapolated conclusions the same authority as what is actually shown), with anecdotes, which can fill in detail by suggesting what factors may cause some cases to defy the broad trends, one can come to a broader understanding of a situation.
Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework
#99Earlier 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…
As a person with math degrees, I cannot agree with this more. I'm fighting this battle at home now with my first grader. There is way too much focus on the mechanics of grinding out arithmetic and way too little in teaching kids how to think about numbers and mathematical operations.
You can't teach kids how to think about math when the focus is on mechanical mathematical operation.
When I work with him on his homework I have to undo a lot of stuff before we can make progress. Then he goes to school and they undo all the stuff we did at home. Rinse, repeat, it can really drive you insane.
Furthermore, he's already terrified about getting the wrong answer. He's so worried about doing it wrong that he is afraid to think. When he thinks he does just fine.
Re: More parents, students saying 'no' to homework
#100I see several issues with the ideas presented here. Firstly, the idea that a parent should have control over homework in any capacity seems like a misguided idea. Secondly, the article dances around ideas but never touches on the importance of the content of the homework. Not all worksheets are created equal and it follows that neither are all hours spent at home working. There are big differences from a pedagogical…
I would rather see less standardization and more diversity in teaching methods. All of my children learn differently and would benefit being able to go to schools that match teaching style with learning style.