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

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

#271

Post by fsloth » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 5:26 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #172

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.

They'll screw it up anyway. I believe the core issue is just about agency: kids will enjoy and learn from anything and everything if they don't feel forced to do so . The best way to absolutely ruin a book? Make it a required reading in school. The best way to make a totally crap game that is neither fun nor educating? Make an educational game. If you want to kids to learn and have fun at the same time, you have to a…

"The best way to make a totally crap game that is neither fun nor educating? Make an educational game."

My 5 y. daughter is completely enthralled by a spelling and reading game on IPad. This leads me to disagree and claim instead that a crap game is not made good by educational goals but a good educational game is provably plausible - it just needs to be a good game.

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

#272

Post by andrewbinstock » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 5:42 AM UTC

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.

>European students in the US vs. in Europe,

I'd like to see stats for that. I strongly doubt that's true of European students.

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

#273

Post by shostack » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 5:44 AM UTC

svachalek wrote: post #237

plaguuuuuu wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the "skip school and become an entrepreneur" meme chiefly an American idea? Everyone I know from China be like "get the best marks in the entire region and become an entrepreneur"

Probably. It seems to me that in China and some of the nearby countries, there is a belief that doing well in school will practically guarantee success in life, an idea that most Americans would find laughable. I don't know if it's actually a lot more complicated to get ahead here than it is there, but certainly there's a lot more awareness here that life is not so simple.

I wonder how much of that belief stems from cultural institutions where top positions at the best companies use good schools and good grades as primary hiring criteria.

In the US, that is still very much the case at a lot of companies outside of hiring developers in the tech industry. Can't say I entirely blame them as much as I dislike the practice. When someone lacks experience because they are entry-level, that is pretty much the next best indicator you have as to some level of intelligence and drive to succeed.

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

#274

Post by voltagex_ » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 6:27 AM 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…

Got any tips for people who are much older who might have been taught the wrong way to think about maths in school?

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

#275

Post by voltagex_ » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 6:30 AM UTC

ashark wrote: post #205

douche wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 par…

Might be worth people voting here - http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/civil_war_generals_2 - although it's way, way down the list at the moment.

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

#276

Post by r00fus » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 6:55 AM UTC

netcan wrote: post #203

jbob2000 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, bl…

It's not just teachers and students, it's the parents, government (NCLB anyone?), and corporations (e.g. textbook vendors, testing companies) who profit from the system.

Following the money often works for discerning most dysfunctional systems.

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

#277

Post by r00fus » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 7:00 AM 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?

School-to-Prison pipeline, maybe?

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

#278

Post by vacri » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 7:34 AM UTC

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.…

I disagree. I'm an autodidact, but I'm not rich. As a kid I did things like repeatedly read every volume of the encyclopaedia cover-to-cover. On a tour group a few years ago I was nicknamed "google [vacri]" because I knew a bit about everything and people started asking all sorts of esoteric stuff. But I didn't earn average wage until my late 30s (median wage early 30s) and didn't earn above average wage until this year (42). There's lots of people out there like me, who love learning about all sorts of things, but don't learn about the specific things to make one wealthy.

What makes rich families generationally rich is not autodidactism, but skill transfer and network effects. For example, it's easier to handle money when you've been around people who know a lot about finance and money movements than it is to autodidact-learn about money.

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

#279

Post by vacri » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 7:53 AM UTC

NDizzle wrote: post #85

I 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…

I remember being a TA at uni, and taking a practical class on electricity with some first-years, one of the questions involved multiplying 4 by 0.2. One student reached for her calculator and I said "No, you're not allowed to use the calculator for that". She just stared at me like a doe frozen in headlights for a painful 10 seconds until I broke: "Okay, what's 4 by 2?" => "Ooohhhh".

Yes, different people have different aptitudes, but some people simply don't want to engage their brain. It's definitely a multivariate problem...

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

#280

Post by toothbrush » Wed, Oct 28, 2015, 8:10 AM UTC

bitL wrote: post #140

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…

> 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.

These anecdotes (i've heard a gazillion) always bother me. So what, now she's good at playing the piano. But what would she have done or become if she had the choice? Perhaps a computer programmer, or a doctor? Leave the damn kids be kids already.

EDIT: I emphasise that i have nothing but respect for those who play an instrument professionally, so i'm definitely not deriding the "piano teacher" part of this story. I'm complaining about the perceived virtue of forcing a child to do something they may or may not actually want, or that may or may not in fact be good for them.