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Who Invented Homework?

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Re: Who Invented Homework?

#51

Post by nibs »

germinalphrase wrote: post #50
nibs wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Which makes me sad. The funds do exist, but it all goes to public education. One cannot opt-out of school taxes, even when one opts out of school. It is not just an issue that is purely economic, the money exists, it just does not exist in the hands of the parents.

Possibly, but if the per pupil cost is between $6500-19800 (Utah and New York, respectively) would this amount of money free at least one parent to fully educate their children? If that were true, wouldn't it seem to follow that more people would do it? Public education must be - or at least have the appearance of being - a good deal economically.

Probably not, unless you have 3+ kids. My Mom always worked park time, and we had a community that would get together and hang out and share in the child care. And you definitely have to make sacrifices, we grew up in the country in a pretty small house, etc. but we lived fairly well on 1.5 incomes.

Re: Who Invented Homework?

#52

Post by germinalphrase »

lucb1e wrote: post #41
hdctambien wrote: post #28

Math isn't the only class that gives homework. Should Spanish class-time be spent memorizing vocabulary and conjugations, or practicing communicating in the language? Should History class-time be spent reading from the book so you know what happened, or discussing those topics and their implications? Should English class-time be spent doing silent reading, or talking about the books/authors/time periods that you read…

It doesn't need to be class time. The issue is that "home work" invades our private lives (evenings, weekends and holidays) due to its very definition. If I work from home for a company, it's not called homework because it is under the same conditions as normal work: there are set hours, I receive compensation, the only difference is that it's not on-site. So should Spanish class time be spent memorizing vocabulary?…

Then - perhaps - this is an argument about whether homework should be compulsory or not. We are constantly hearing about company cultures that require more than 40 hrs/wk due to competition. We seem to (at least tacitly) accept this as a price to pay for success. Should it then be that you can receive the basic skills by merely showing up and working hard in class (which is often true + the primary problem with low performing students) and reserve homework for those who have higher level personal/professional goals (and structure the work accordingly)?

Re: Who Invented Homework?

#53

Post by bpchaps »

KON_Air wrote: post #48
bpchaps wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was failing classes for not doing homework, I was enjoying the company of other nerds from all over the world on IRC and learning to code by writing (awful) mIRC scripts instead. Pretty sure there's room for some middle ground in there. ;)

Mind you (and AndrewDucker) being occupied with something else which is more interesting to one is not the same thing as thinking it is torture.

I don't think you understood my point. I'm saying that it's possible to be far more intellectually stimulated in ways that will help you in life and your career that doesn't require homework. There's a middle ground, and rote homework is far, far from that point.

Re: Who Invented Homework?

#54

Post by Jtsummers »

elcct wrote: post #15

That trains you to work outside your agreed working hours and to make you feel bad if you don't do it. Essentially this is how you train slaves.

Or you learn to work efficiently and finish your homework in the minutes between classes, the bus rides to and from school, and perhaps 1-2 hours immediately after getting home.

Unless things have changed substantially (and they may have), that was all the time I needed for everything but research papers and projects requiring more thought.

Self-discipline and time management can solve most of these problems. My parents forbade video games and TV until my homework was done, and I was honest as a kid (most of the time). So I got my shit done so I could do what I wanted to do (watch Batman and Animaniacs, run through the woods like a mad man).

Homework doesn't train you to be anything other than what you (really, your parents at that age) allow it to.

Re: Who Invented Homework?

#55

Post by JulianMorrison »

nibs wrote: post #30

As an unschooler who went to school and did "homework" or any kind of "schoolwork" for the first time when I was 12, it took me about a month to catch up to my peers in terms of abilities to do the coursework, and about a year to catch up to my peers in resentment and disengagement. Except I got to spend seven years hanging out with my brothers doing fun stuff and my friends had to spend it training to be slaves. The…

I think the primary function of mass schooling is to warehouse kids somewhere off the streets and out of the workplace, avoiding having to adapt adult spaces to kids being around. There's a secondary function as a meaningless token mill, for use in pseudo meritocracy. And a tertiary function, much underfunded, of education.

Re: Who Invented Homework?

#56

Post by c1641287 »

ownagefool wrote: post #9
coderdude wrote: post #7

I fought tooth and nail against homework to my own detriment. Those counselors just did not know what to do with me. >Is There a Bright Future if You Don’t Do Any Homework? Heh. Nah, not really.

My physics teacher attempted some reverse psychology on me and banned me from doing homework. After a while, I think when he figured out I was happy with that, he got fed up with that routine and started asking for the homework again but I still didn't bother. In hindsight my grades probably suffered, but only as far as the fact I didn't have all this still drilled into my memory. I doubt it made me any less smart, a…

I'm still waiting for the "highly paid" part.

Re: Who Invented Homework?

#58

Post by adrusi »

hdctambien wrote: post #28

Math isn't the only class that gives homework. Should Spanish class-time be spent memorizing vocabulary and conjugations, or practicing communicating in the language? Should History class-time be spent reading from the book so you know what happened, or discussing those topics and their implications? Should English class-time be spent doing silent reading, or talking about the books/authors/time periods that you read…

Fwiw, high school language classes are very easy and slowly paced, to the point where I aced the standard curriculum purely by showing up to class and doing no out-of-class work, nor any memorization at all.

So either the curriculum should be made more challenging, or homework should be optional for everyone, like it was for me.

And something I regret more, but still wouldn't have done differently if given the opportunity to do it again, is I never read any of the books for my English classes. I would come to class and integrate what the teachers and other students said and come up with answers to questions that sounded insightful (and probably were, I guess) and learn enough just from class discussions to do well on tests.

Both my English and German classes were considered "honors" level classes in a highly ranked school district. I avoided AP-prep classes outside of math and science because the English and language AP classes involved significicantly more homework, to the point where I couldn't get away with not doing it and pass the class, even if I could pass the test anyway.

If the school can't offer classes that actually require students to do regular homework, then they shouldn't demand that students do regular homework.

Re: Who Invented Homework?

#59

Post by noxToken »

auxym wrote: post #29
lordnacho wrote: post #20

My feelings now are that there really shouldn't be any mandatory homework. - If you do it badly, you may as well not do it. Who else remembers flipping through "The Catcher in the Rye" so fast they don't actually remember any other character than Holden Caulfield? - It's an easy way for teachers to not teach, yet gives them an alibi. "Look I'm teaching, they have loads of books to read. Can't help it if they don't."…

>burn time plugging things into (-b +- sqrt (b2-4ac)) / 2a I swear to god, I had so much of that to do, I got tired of it and learned enough python in one night, at 15, to get the computer to do my homework for me.

I wonder how kids who aren't interested in rote math (e.g. 10 quadratic equations 5 nights in a row) bother to learn anything with tools like Wolfram Alpha available for free. I spent so much time on Wolfram Alpha for parts of Calculus II, Chem I and Chem II while in college. Those classes gave mountains of homework, so after I understood how to do them, I just plugged the questions into W|A for a quick answer.

In high school, I would have never had the restraint to learn the material first. All of my homework would have been copy-paste jobs from W|A.

Re: Who Invented Homework?

#60

Post by fiatjaf »

hmottestad wrote: post #33
nibs wrote: post #30

As an unschooler who went to school and did "homework" or any kind of "schoolwork" for the first time when I was 12, it took me about a month to catch up to my peers in terms of abilities to do the coursework, and about a year to catch up to my peers in resentment and disengagement. Except I got to spend seven years hanging out with my brothers doing fun stuff and my friends had to spend it training to be slaves. The…

"It is not productive, does not produce smarter or more learned people." I would like to disagree, but I don't have anything to back up my claim that mass schooling makes people smarter or more learned. Like you, I just have anecdotes. But one thing is for sure. I would never have gotten to where I am today. If I hadn't learned english at school. Having lived in two countries, neither of which had english as a native…

Your anecdote doesn't even count, because you're assuming, without any reason to, that you're right about the counterfactual.
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