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

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

#201

Post by sliverstorm » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 9:56 PM UTC

dgrant wrote: post #190

RogerL wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a pretty wide gulf between no homework, ever, and the kinds of loads being placed on some kids. You talk about "a few" words a week. My friend's kids (I have none) end up staying up until 1am, forgoing family and friend time, just to keep up with the work demands. We invited a family to do something with us - the response was that they might be able to do something in 6 or so months due to the kids schedule.…

Like another commenter said... I wonder what the kid's evening actually looks like. Staying up until 1am sounds/smells a lot to me like the kind of household where homework gets pushed until the end of the day. I sort of speak from experience as someone who constantly was up late during my university years, and it started in late high school. It all had to do with me not doing my homework right away, putting it off,…

Depends. I had friends back then who went to various forms of after-school classes (cram, prep, chinese, piano, etc). They would get home at dark, with even more homework in tow from the after-school classes.

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

#202

Post by Afton » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 10:01 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #197

Afton wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like everyone in this thread should go watch season 4 of the The Wire. There is a lot of relevant work there, including the various pressures on, and requirements of the educational system. tl:dr; Teacher's can only ever be a part of a solution to the complicated educational needs of our society. And given what we're willing to spend, they can't even be a particularly effective part in poorer parts of the coun…

go watch season 4 of the The Wire...And given what we're willing to spend... Ironically, Baltimore spends quite a lot ($15k/student) on schools. Apparently only NYC (among the top 100 districts) spends more. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-05-21/news/bs-md-ci-ce... "In spite of what we're willing to spend..." would be a better phrasing.

I think that it's pretty obvious that simply 'money' isn't the solution to our educational needs. There are lots of ways of spending money that won't change outcomes, and probably several that would.

But I'm anti-school in general (note: not anti-teacher), so the whole point of this side of the argument misses my interests.

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

#203

Post by netcan » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 10:02 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.

Everyone likes praise and dislikes blame, that is not special to teachers.

You might be able to blame a teacher for a class to some effect. What I was referring to is blaming teacherdom for education. That's pointless. When a system consistently produces a result, that's the result being produced by the system. The teachers and students are part of that system, producing and being produced by it. It will continue, blame or no blame. It is just as pointless as blaming the students.

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

#204

Post by JshWright » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 10:07 PM UTC

ilovefood wrote: post #193

JshWright wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Vaccinations are effective at preventing disease, with minimal side effects." "Hours of homework (after 7 hours of school) is 'proper education'." Are you really claiming that those two statements have a remotely similar body of evidence supporting them?

They both tend to improve our ability to adapt in a hostile environment: real life. Like I said, evolution.

I don't dispute the fact that education and vaccination are both good things. The flaw in your argument is that you are assuming that "education" and "hours of homework" are equivalent.

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

#205

Post by ashark » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 10:08 PM UTC

douche wrote: post #167

guimarin wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I blame video games for making me into a history buff. And maybe Legos, combined with the History Channel before it was the RedneckAliensJesus Channel. Civilization, Lords of the Realm, Caesar II, Robert E. Lee: Civil War General, Close Combat, Total War, Pirates!, Anno 1602, Europa Universalis/Crusader Kings/Victoria/Hearts of Iron, Age of Empires Or to go way back, Math/Word Rescue, Treasure Mountain, Midnight Resc…

Same story, nearly the same list. I'd throw in Shadow President, which taught me the names and locations of all the (cold war era) countries by third grade or so, and gave me a good sense of global and regional balances of power.

If you haven't played "Civil War Generals 2: Grant, Lee, Sherman" you should. It's Robert E. Lee: Civil War General but with the brokenness fixed—there's a victory point system that's in part based on locations held, which keeps you from just turtling on the nearest high ground and waiting for the enemy to come into cannon range—and a much larger campaign. It's kind of tricky to run these days, and is a bit unstable even under ideal conditions. Best solution may involve a Win98se VM. :-/

The Encarta game was awesome. I'd forgotten about it. Thanks for the memory.

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

#206

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 10:10 PM UTC

adrusi wrote: post #102

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 t…

Yeah, I could share a similar anecdote. I went through most of my school years ignoring as much homework I could get away with while still keeping good grades (the unspoken rule at home was that A-C were ok, anything below was unacceptable). I could learn a lot from just listening to the teacher during lesson and an occasional skimming on textbooks, and any significant effort that I put was just before important exams. This has served me well in some ways - I owe most of my general knowledge as well as the whole career to basically ignoring school and doing whatever the hell I wanted (it happened to be programming).

But then the university started, and by the third year I was in full panic mode, fighting fires. Not because things were hard, but because I've never learned the necessary endurance for systematic work (and powering through make-work bullshit). I ended up just with BSc, because I didn't give my Masters thesis in time. I had probably the most ambitious project in the entire year, but I didn't manage to wrap it up to into an acceptable Masters project (simultaneously working full-time at the time didn't help).

The end result is, I didn't learn discipline. The very things that enabled me to pursue software career are the things that are now seriously damaging my work output. That's the flip side of going for what intrests you - the modern workplace is something where you mostly have to power through boring things. Being self-educated can actually make you misadapted to the society if you don't learn some discipline along the way.

It's funny - most of the people I worked along with were hard-working but struggling to become good programmers. I was already a decent programmer; I was the one struggling to become a good employee.

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

#207

Post by protomyth » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 10:14 PM UTC

adrusi wrote: post #189

protomyth wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you happen to have a job during high school?

No, I wanted to work, but my parents wouldn't allow it because they felt it would make my academic performance even worse.

I get the feeling it would have actually improved your academic performance. It worked for quite a few people I know.

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

#208

Post by LordKano » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 10:22 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #175

jy2947 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+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.

> but truth is they are more likely just sitting there and playing their phones I might be in a minority here, but I have an issue with that sentiment. Because before phones, it was "playing video games". Before that, it was "watching TV". Before that, it was probably "wasting time outside" or "chit-chatting with friends". There's always something else that's "wasting time", even if that "wasting" is infinitely more…

I'm from the "watching TV" to "playing video games" transition generation and I must say that I owe more to both of them than to most time spent in school.

Me too. I spent a lot of time watching educational TV programming when I was a kid. I remember the day I made the sad realization that I had seen every episode of Mr. Wizard's world and there would be nothing new to learn from the show.

I think that there is too much emphasis on standardized testing but I do think that some testing is necessary. I think it's important to have some way to measure if teachers are imparting any knowledge on their students or if they're engendering a love of learning.

My favorite teachers(with some of whom, I remain in contact) are the ones who inspired me to learn more about the subject matter than was taught in the class.

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

#209

Post by pippy » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 10:23 PM UTC

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…

And to compound this pressure standardized testing is putting teachers under the thumb. There's an obscene amount of paperwork required and it takes the focus away from students. In today's environment standardized testing is a step back, in the 1950 it would have made sense. A better approach would be to emulate the Finnish curriculum which is ridiculously fluid. And it works, they're currently one of the highest achieving nations.

To be frank I suspect the standardized testing methodology was employed as a part of a conservative agenda to ensure private schools have an advantage. It seems to have spread globally under conservative governments in suspicious circumstances. In New Zealand it's called 'National Standards', and was introduced at the same time charter schools started receiving government funding.

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

#210

Post by jimktrains2 » Tue, Oct 27, 2015, 10:26 PM UTC

guimarin wrote: post #136

guimarin wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree. My friends and I played video games for fun. We learned by having "cool" ideas and trying to solve them. This is how you get freshmen learning, nearly deriving, some very basic calculus and juniors doing basic ODEs, not to mention programming to solve things like building a website to allow users to submit and edit content, converse with each other, and search the content. TF-IDF isn't complicated, and almost naturally gets derived when you start to think about "what can I do to make this search better than LIKE '%term%'?"

Games can definitely help with strategical thinking, "people skills", and even learning, but to say they're the future is misguided. Supporting children who have interests is the way I think is best followed, and that can be incredibly resource intensive.