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

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

#121

Post by bpizzi » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 7:15 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…

Understanding is a far more important part of learning in my opinion.

You know where repetition is really important? In sport. Muscle memory really work that way, with a "conscious enabled" repetition.

But for learning? Frankly you don't learn multiplication by repeating the tables, you really learn it by visualizing the repeated additions, thus by understanding it.

That being said, homework can be smart if it promotes self-discovery of a specific domain.

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

#122

Post by c3534l » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 7:16 PM UTC

> An elementary school in Gaithersburg, Md., has banned homework altogether in favor of 30 minutes of nightly reading.

Is this reading that's supposed to go on at home? I'm now confused as to how the article is trying to define homework.

But yeah, when I was in school there'd be 8 hours at school, then 3 hours of homework. And the homework was all busy work and the time spent in school was mostly pointless as well. School probably killed my innate desire to learn more than anything else in my life. It took me a while after I graduated enjoy it again.

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

#123

Post by Mz » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 7:19 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #108

mmmBacon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Unless she genuinely gets over it, it will almost certainly be passed on even if she is careful.

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

#124

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 7:20 PM UTC

wishinghand wrote: post #104

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?

[deleted]

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

#125

Post by FussyZeus » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 7:21 PM UTC

This sounds again like a problem of a system that is trying to educate a thousand different kids with a thousand different lifestyles and a thousand different home lives and a thousand different living situations all the same way, because it still operates on the basis of the organization system of the industrial revolution. Hell, we still organize our kids by their date of manufacture.

Every time I read one of these it reads like "We're trying to make this 1940's era system work but it just keeps sucking more and more" and yet every time someone says we should just obliterate this thing and come up with something better, they always get shouted down by the educational establishment.

unquietcode up there has a great thought, and I know I'm deep in it, but yes, I got successful in howling opposition to, not because of the education system. We sit our kids in tiny desks and have them do clerical work for 9 hours a day while high school dropouts drive Bugatti's and we wonder how our kids intrinsically know that school is worthless.

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

#126

Post by csense » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 7:24 PM UTC

The problem with homework is the proportion of busywork assigned.

A typical math textbook consists of several columns of fifty nearly identical problems, of which the teacher typically assigns thirty.

I don't need to solve thirty quadratic equations by factoring in order to demonstrate that I know how to solve quadratic equations by factoring. The first three or four will suffice.

And don't get me started on the astonishing number of assignments consisting of crosswords, word searches, paint-by-numbers, and similar activities with zero academic value.

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

#127

Post by philwelch » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 7:24 PM UTC

witty_username wrote: post #41

jsvaughan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the learning benefit could be because of the change of scenery, not because one side is better

Living in India, Indian schools are mostly worse than American ones—rat race, outdated curriculum, etc. (I don't think there's sex ed in schools even).

> (I don't think there's sex ed in schools even).

Depending on the state, there isn't exactly sex ed in American schools either.

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

#128

Post by danans » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 7:25 PM UTC

It seems like the only skill that homework really builds is tolerance for being micromanaged, which I'm not sure is a good skill anyways.

I recall (with angst) the ridiculous way that homework was graded in school (x% of credit taken away for every day the assignment was late). This sets people up for a terrible relationship with work by making them focus on short-term rewards/penalties instead of longer term goals, while disadvantaging individuals who don't respond well to such a micromanaged model.

If we really want kids to develop well-rounded skills, we should make work about longer term projects, whose goal is very well articulated and its purpose is clear to students.

At the least, we should provide multiple paths for students to make the grade, one based on homework for those who naturally do well with that environment, and another based on long term projects for those who are naturally more "bursty" in their learning process. You can still administer tests/quizzes for both types of learners to gauge their progress.

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

#129

Post by dgrant » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 7:26 PM UTC

This is crazy, I don't know where I would be today if I hadn't done homework. Homework was where I really and truly learned. Independent work is so important, and it's totally different than doing something with a bunch of students in a classroom setting. Sure, the education system probably could be improved a lot. But you can't just remove homework from the current system and expect there will be no negative consequence to that.

My daughter is in Grade 1 French Immersion in Canada and she is assigned a few sight words every week in French to memorize in addition to some French sounds (2 letter sounds). On top of that we try to do a bit of math here and there and some English. The teacher tells us to make it as fun as possible, so we try, sometimes I turn her sight words in to a quick board game. For math, we try to use the Bedtime Math books or the app. For reading, we read princess readers which she loves. Sometimes we try other readers and we push it, only to find out she really hates them, and sometimes the French sounds memorization is tough and painful. Can't imagine asking the teacher for less homework though, it seems like just the right amount.

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

#130

Post by clarkmoody » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 7:26 PM UTC

a2tech wrote: post #90

The best thing my school did was moving to the 'block' system. Instead of having 6 or 8 classes to go to every day, I had 4 classes a semester. It also meant that my algebra class, or biology, was twice as long as your 'standard' class at another school. The block system meant that the instructor had twice as long with the students and could really dig into a subject. It also meant we didn't usually have homework bec…

We had block schedule with 4 classes per day, but alternated days for 8 classes total. Long, 100 minute class periods allowed for lecture+homework/help time during the day.

Fridays were an alternate set of interesting classes, from SAT prep, to bowling, to computer programming. I couldn't recommend this system more. If you must have public school, this is a great way to structure it.