More parents, students saying 'no' to homework • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by jbob2000 » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 6:45 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #92

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…

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: Educ…

No, it's important to assign blame here. Teachers welcome praise with open arms, but the minute we criticize them, "oh you know, the issues are complex, it's not my fault". They are the sum of the education system, it is wholly represented by the person leading the classroom. Just like we blame a president for a shitty economy, so too must the teachers carry the blame for a shitty classroom.

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

#102

Post by adrusi » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 6:47 PM UTC

I figured I'd share a relevant anecdote: throughout most of my school (at least by seventh grade) I did virtually no homework. Not with the blessing of my teacher, nor of my parents. But I knew that my parents wanted to shut their eyes and pretend that my grades were improving for as long as they could until the report card came home. I knew that most teachers could be convinced into letting me make up some work at the end of the quarter to turn my Ds into Cs if need be. And I knew that without doing the homework, I could still swing a 90% or greater in the remaining assignments.

I could sit down in class and be fully engaged an learn everything I need to and more. While I avoided some higher-level classes because often they were just the same as the regular classes with more homework, most of the classes I took were of the advanced level. I wasn't just coasting.

I repeatedly tried throughout high school to change my habits, but for various reasons, many personal, these attempts were doomed to fail.

I know I'm not the average case, but clearly homework is not at all necessary for every kid to do well in school. Other commentors have given the opposite anecdote, saying they did only homework and did well. I think maybe we should accept that these grading policies should be tailored to the student. At the risk of just rambling off my life story, I'm going to continue to show how these homework problems affected me beyond high school.

Despite these problems, I was admitted to a good state university. I had a 3.0ish GPA because I brought it up with easy A classes like band, and because I had several classes that where homework comprised only 5-10% of the grade. I guess that. combined with my above-average extracurriculars got me in. I then essentially flunked out after two semesters.

It's not that I didn't have the study habits. They were probably lacking a little for the academic environment, but I definitely knew how learn independently. I was just so completely used to ignoring my academic responsibilities that I couldn't stop. When you've been saying "I don't need to do this homework" for years, it's very easy to say "I don't need to study this thing" even though you know very well that you have a lapse in understanding.

I'm convinced that I would have done at least somewhat better in college if only not doing homework in high school didn't feel like not doing something that I had to do; if my parents and teachers hadn't treated not doing homework as a bad thing. Obviously it was in fact a bad thing, but it didn't have to be.

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

#103

Post by talmand » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 6:49 PM UTC

mmcclellan wrote: post #94

One 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 "Ye…

A Dare police officer, as in D.A.R.E.? Is that program from my childhood still active? Or is that something else?

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

#104

Post by wishinghand » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 6:52 PM UTC

mmcclellan wrote: post #94

One 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 "Ye…

Why was there a DARE officer at that school three days a week?

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

#105

Post by SCHiM » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 6:53 PM UTC

I HATED homework. I can honestly say that it's one of the main reasons I didn't have a fun time at school, since these things tend to snowball out of control.

Don't do your homework -> get into trouble -> teachers thing you're * -> etc.

When universities started to doing the same (in my country) I just quit. Now I work in tech, I love my job. And the best part is that I thought all the skills I needed to myself without the huge (wasteful) drains on free time.

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

#106

Post by protomyth » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 6:54 PM UTC

School starts at 8AM around here and ends at 3:30PM with a 30 minute lunch break. 4 classes in the morning and 3 in the afternoon of 55 minutes each with 5 minutes between classes to get to the locker and to a different classroom. Around 32 hours of instruction and work per week. That's close to a full time job, and some people want the students to do 2-3 hours of homework a night?

If schools must, increase the school day by 30 minutes or an hour, but that's enough. Other things are just as important as school.

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

#107

Post by dingaling » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 6:55 PM UTC

s_dev wrote: post #82

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…

Repetition is an important part of learning. Expecting all children to understand what was taught in class is unrealistic. This is why homework is assigned - so the student may take their time to review the parts they themselves didn't fully grasp in class. The time spent doing homework varies from child to child and this is important - kids who need longer to accomplish the same task will have that time because they…

> kids who need longer to accomplish the same task will have that time because they are at home.

But they only have that time if they sacrifice other activities such as clubs, sports and hobbies... or sleep.

School already absorbs seven hours of a child's day. In my opinion that is already excessive without the additional burden of homework.

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

#108

Post by Jtsummers » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 6:55 PM UTC

mmmBacon wrote: post #99

Mz wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 homewo…

> 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.

As I posted to a friend on Facebook:

arithmetic : Math :: spelling : English

It's a critical component, but it's not the entirety of the subject. But we drill, drill, drill it, and when people have trouble with it they say they're "bad at math". I know plenty of mathematicians (also have a math degree) that were horrible at arithmetic, but mathematics (whether for the particular person this meant some field of algebra or geometry or topology or whatever) itself was easy for them.

I tried to help my last girlfriend out with this. She is a teacher and a severe mathphobic person. It was incredibly frustrating, because she did get higher concepts when they were separate from numbers, but introduce numbers and her mind would shutdown. This attitude will be passed on to her (future) children and her students if she's not careful.

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

#109

Post by phil21 » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 6:58 PM UTC

jbob2000 wrote: post #101

netcan wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: Educ…

No, it's important to assign blame here. Teachers welcome praise with open arms, but the minute we criticize them, "oh you know, the issues are complex, it's not my fault". They are the sum of the education system, it is wholly represented by the person leading the classroom. Just like we blame a president for a shitty economy, so too must the teachers carry the blame for a shitty classroom.

I'm not so certain. I've been in many educational environments ranging from home school to private college prep high school, to suburban high school, to inner city high school, to the ghetto school in the area.

There were good and bad teachers in all of those. However, the good teachers may as well have not had existed in the inner city/ghetto schools. Their talents were 100% wasted, and those classrooms would have been far better served with a police officer in front of the classroom who was enabled to boot the dysfunctional future criminals from the classroom. With those students in class, there was no point in even calling it school. Call it daycare, or juvie, or whatever you like - learning wasn't much of the process though.

I find it hard to blame teachers when their job is primarily daycare, and they have zero tools available to them to deal with poorly performing and disruptive students who have no business being in the classroom.

tldr; Almost all the US education problems can directly be tied back to the parents. Full stop.

This goes for my private schooling as well. The college prep school I went to was probably more diverse than the inner city school - the only difference was the self-selection of the students and parents who attended. They also taught with about half the funds.

That said, there are tons of horrible teachers too. The problems go far deeper though, and until you solve the parenting problem you may as well shut the public school system down in many areas. No amount of epic-level teachers will be able to get anything done in those environments.

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

#110

Post by hugh4 » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 7:01 PM UTC

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...

Or the causation goes the other way, and they get rich because they're smart.