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More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

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

#131

Post by Goronmon »

clinta wrote: post #76
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.

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.

Well, the argument in those cases is that tests aren't always a reliable indicator of the material being learned. Speaking from my experience, I was a great test taker in high school, and they rarely indicated my actual knowledge of the material. It's not hard for me to imagine plenty of students having the opposite problem.

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

#132

Post by guimarin »

unquietcode wrote: post #113

Let's not forget that the inhabitants of this website are almost certainly the kind of people who saw through the noise and got their education on their own terms. As we raise our kids we help them tip-toe around all this garbage, but most parents have no tools at their disposal to review and revise and push back against bad practices in their child's education. The issue of education in this country needs to be addr…

I disagree with your comment about better teachers. Teachers are simply a conduit for learning. They don't scale, which is why there is still a power-law distribution in educational outcomes despite tons or research and data and training and testing that should combat that. Basically rich people get richer because all rich people who are generationally consistently rich have one thing in common. They are autodidacts. If you can learn on your own, and have the capacity to recognize when the assumptions underpinning the status-quo are no longer correct, you can consistently remain wealthy relative to everyone else. True rich families understand this and teach it implicitly/explicitly to their children. Who end up being the fertile ground on which 'good teachers' have a multiplicative effect. This does not work for the poor as they lack the necessary base skills and knowledge to benefit from good teaching. Poor people still break through because circumstance often teaches people, like everyone who came from nothing on this message board, how to learn on their own without help or assistance from others. Advocating more assistance from others is not the solution. And for the same reason that sending $1T in aid to Africa has had mixed results.

Knowledge cannot be taught it must be learned.

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

#133

Post by knodi123 »

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…

"ceci est votre dette à la société?"

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

#134

Post by NiftyFifty »

guimarin wrote: post #132
unquietcode wrote: post #113

Let's not forget that the inhabitants of this website are almost certainly the kind of people who saw through the noise and got their education on their own terms. As we raise our kids we help them tip-toe around all this garbage, but most parents have no tools at their disposal to review and revise and push back against bad practices in their child's education. The issue of education in this country needs to be addr…

I disagree with your comment about better teachers. Teachers are simply a conduit for learning. They don't scale, which is why there is still a power-law distribution in educational outcomes despite tons or research and data and training and testing that should combat that. Basically rich people get richer because all rich people who are generationally consistently rich have one thing in common. They are autodidacts.…

Knowledge cannot be taught it must be inferred.

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

#135

Post by retbull »

unquietcode wrote: post #113

Let's not forget that the inhabitants of this website are almost certainly the kind of people who saw through the noise and got their education on their own terms. As we raise our kids we help them tip-toe around all this garbage, but most parents have no tools at their disposal to review and revise and push back against bad practices in their child's education. The issue of education in this country needs to be addr…

Maybe don't tell them that they are smart. Tell them that it is OK to work on something and be bad at it. They need to learn to fail and try again not learn that they are smart. This doesn't mean giving them homework or not giving them homework but encouraging them however we can to actually use that creativity we know they have to learn how to learn on their own terms.

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

#136

Post by guimarin »

guimarin wrote: post #132
unquietcode wrote: post #113

Let's not forget that the inhabitants of this website are almost certainly the kind of people who saw through the noise and got their education on their own terms. As we raise our kids we help them tip-toe around all this garbage, but most parents have no tools at their disposal to review and revise and push back against bad practices in their child's education. The issue of education in this country needs to be addr…

I disagree with your comment about better teachers. Teachers are simply a conduit for learning. They don't scale, which is why there is still a power-law distribution in educational outcomes despite tons or research and data and training and testing that should combat that. Basically rich people get richer because all rich people who are generationally consistently rich have one thing in common. They are autodidacts.…

And just to be clear. The answer for children is to make learning to love learning play. And the way to do that in a way that scales is through a video game. That is the future of education. Games for children that teach them how to learn, that they then use to set their own educational path. With teachers, schools, mentors, and advisors helping along the way.

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

#137

Post by Lawtonfogle »

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…

I just had a talk with my brother about this Sunday night as he did his homework at my parent's home. He wasn't able to find his sheet of rules on how to simply some math expressions, so I sat down and showed him how I would simplify them without rules. He had been given rules, but never actually taught why these rules worked. (Not to mention at least one of these rules I would not count as simplification, though it would be useful in simplification.) Like you mention, he was scared of getting it wrong instead of understanding it.

An hour before that, I was talking with another brother why 'oh, I don't need help with that because we are no longer on that chapter' is a horrible way to think about math, especially at a grade school level where you are building up the core foundation.

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

#138

Post by jy2947 »

unquietcode wrote: post #113

Let's not forget that the inhabitants of this website are almost certainly the kind of people who saw through the noise and got their education on their own terms. As we raise our kids we help them tip-toe around all this garbage, but most parents have no tools at their disposal to review and revise and push back against bad practices in their child's education. The issue of education in this country needs to be addr…

+1 I think the problem is not homework - it is there is no other reliable and affordable "better" alternative to homework or standard test. We can all argue that homework is taking away the time kids can otherwise spend on exercising, socializing, innovating etc, but truth is they are more likely just sitting there and playing their phones.

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

#139

Post by zaphar »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #54
michaelbuddy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're losing me with this. Parents, exhausted after work, kids already 7 hours of school, then there's this new set of chores to deal with instead of enjoying life, you know life, the finite thing that runs out. that AND this goal of "education" you seem to have is not the actual goal for most people. My goal for me or my kids is not to "be educated" Just like a goal of a society is not to "have laws"

It's an investment sure and you're right in asserting that childhood is finite. Fortunately, the US is interesting in that they give you the freedom to home school. If knowledge isn't a priority we as a country give you the right to deny it to your child. In my personal experience (and I suspect yours given you're on this site) my entire livelihood is dependent on my knowledge. For me, this was cultivated on the latt…

I was homeschooled and I'm on this site. Homeschooling in fact is why I'm on this site and well employed in the lucrative world software development. Without homeschooling my education would have been far less than it was. In fact I was homeschooled because my parents saw that I was getting lost in the system and pulled me out of it.

You make a lot of statements without supporting evidence in this conversation.

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

#140

Post by bitL »

dgrant wrote: post #129

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 consequ…

You and your daughter will end up as people that can contribute something great to the society; most of the ones skipping the homework without innate talent not, and they will complain about how unfairly are they treated because they are smart.

One of my piano teachers was forced to practice through tears as a kid because they saw the talent she had. She went on to becoming a world famous child prodigy playing grade 8 pieces by sight-reading with unbelievable ease.

Work is required if you want to achieve something. You just need to find the right balance, and it's neither "no work" nor "work all the time".

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