My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007) • Hacker News Board

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#51

Post by hcarvalhoalves » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 2:51 AM UTC

jcampbell1 wrote: post #29

“My teacher didn’t like the project, because I put it on the wrong size paper.” Either you are bullshitting, or you better learn what size paper to do your homework on. Winning is easier than being right, and winning is much more fun. I don't have a teenage kid, but there I think there are two thing that are important. 1) Acquiring new knowledge should be self-rewarding. 2) Winning is fun. This parent seems to have a…

> Winning is easier than being right, and winning is much more fun.

Hence why we have a society full of puppets with new cars in the garage.

What an awful way to think, I'm disgusted by your reasoning. For whatever meaning of "winning" you have, life only matters if you do what you believe in, otherwise it's not worth living.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#52

Post by aspensmonster » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 2:53 AM UTC

jacalata wrote: post #23

So, if we take the author at his word, then either the teacher had an unwritten rule for the size of the paper, or the student and the author both somehow managed to not read or to forget this rule. If it's a, then rules lawyer the hell out of the idiot teacher. If it's b, then looks like both of them are bad at details and instructions, which is a skill that certainly deserves some attention. So why was that the end…

Probably because it doesn't matter if it was one of the instructions or not, because it's entirely irrelevant to anything other than an arbitrary "follow instructions" assignment. Coincidentally that sort of assignment is precisely what the author complains about.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#53

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 2:54 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#54

Post by tptacek » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 2:55 AM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #46

tptacek wrote: post #13

My son finds homework painfully aversive, as I did before him. But I cut him much less slack than I was given as a kid. School is often arbitrary, pointless, and tedious. It's part of a large system that needs to serve many different interests, several of them legitimate. That's modern life. We're not so much beset by wolves and bears; instead, we have to deal with systems and social/cultural obligations. And while I…

"But I cut him much less slack than I was given as a kid." Could work great. Could also end up inhibiting his executive function and turning him into a heroin addict. The formula for success is multiplicative: Ability * Motivation * Opportunity. If any one of those factors is zero, success is zero despite how much of the others you have. The thing about forcing kids to do their homework is there's no such thing as a…

I agree. The approach I'm taking is a semi-educated guess. I could well be wrong.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#55

Post by epochwolf » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 2:56 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #42

epochwolf wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I was spanked in this manner twice (that I remember) and I don't resent my parents.

I was spanked and I love my parents. My approval ratings with my children don't influence whether I'm willing to hit them.

Apologies, let me clarify. I'm not trying to justify spanking. I'm arguing that the occasional spanking from loving parents doesn't cause the horricific long term psychological damage everyone seems to think it does. A couple of spankings over an entire childhood, while an arguably poor parental decision, does not equate to child abuse.

Edit: softer tone and spelling

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#56

Post by tptacek » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 2:59 AM UTC

smokeyj wrote: post #49

tptacek wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah. Yes. Hah. Hahahaha. Like all teenagers, he is capable of of reason, judgement, introspective listening, and a sense of how he actually fits into the cosmos. In 5-10 minute bursts. In other words: I might as well be the teacher addressing the question of whether the dog has the Buddha-nature. I try, but realistically. And then I make him write the papers.

What if he doesn't like "playing the game"? No dinner?

You're making a flippant comment, but as I think all parents know, there is a baseline level of compliance you can safely expect to achieve for reasonable effort. What if your kid doesn't like "going to school in the morning"? What if your kid doesn't like "turning the lights out and trying to go to sleep after 1:00AM"?

It is worth recognizing the difference between compliance that comes at great cost and compliance that doesn't. In my case: I'll live with late assignments and mediocre grades, as long as the assignments eventually get done, in one giant batch with me checking them off if need be.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#57

Post by Aloisius » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 3:05 AM UTC

brg wrote: post #3

After hiring committee one day, we digressed into a discussion of the value of a high GPA from university. One of my colleagues made the point that the value of an individual with a high GPA from a four year degree is that you know the person will get done what needs to get done. To have a high GPA, a student needs to finish term papers on subjects they have no interest in, they need to study for exams in language fo…

Considering the level of grade inflation today and the number of students who cheat in college and/or to get to college, I can't imagine taking GPA seriously.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#58

Post by Dylan16807 » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 3:06 AM UTC

olympus wrote: post #18

There's a story from Gene Woolsey that I had to read my senior year in college (I was an Ops Research major, and Gene Woolsey is a pretty big deal in that field). The story went something like this: A group of students had just finished a big research project and were told to present a one page executive summary that outlined their work, results, and conclusions. They couldn't quite get it to fit on one page, so thei…

I hope I would be brave enough to laugh in that man's face. If he wants to take off points for making the summary the wrong size, fine. But to throw it away and pretend it didn't exist? That's a petty abuse of power that nobody should tolerate.

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#59

Post by ethnt » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 3:07 AM UTC

olympus wrote: post #27

tptacek wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another comment on this thread that I disagreed with but found sensible, until the very end, where it recommends that adults hit children to make them do things.

tptacek, I'm sure you have a compelling viewpoint both as someone who has to manage an entire company and as someone who is older and wiser than I am (I'm not sure if you have kids of your own). Would you care to expand on why you don't think spanking is an acceptable form of discipline? To clarify, I only recommend open palm spanking. Not switches/lashes/paddles/belts. It doesn't bruise, only stings for a few second…

We don’t allow adults to strike one another in anger or as punishment for a mistake or wrongdoing. We don’t allow children to hit each other — indeed, we actively discourage it. Then why is it okay for an adult to hit a child?

Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

#60

Post by ef4 » Mon, Jun 03, 2013, 3:09 AM UTC

jcampbell1 wrote: post #47

tptacek wrote: post #13

My son finds homework painfully aversive, as I did before him. But I cut him much less slack than I was given as a kid. School is often arbitrary, pointless, and tedious. It's part of a large system that needs to serve many different interests, several of them legitimate. That's modern life. We're not so much beset by wolves and bears; instead, we have to deal with systems and social/cultural obligations. And while I…

> he's at least going to be familiar with what it takes to play the system. That comment makes your perspective the complete opposite of the author's. The author kid moves his chess pieces randomly and the author writes a blog post about how the rules are not fair. You likely teach that sometimes you have to follow the rules to play the game. This blog post reads like like a fool arguing that the rules of chess are s…

If the world actually followed school-like rules, your analogy would be useful. But it doesn't.

The recipe for "winning" the game of school is:

- follow directions very carefully - be good at memorizing things - never challenge authority

The market value of being able to carefully follow directions is nearly zero, and falling fast. That was a useful skill back when there were lots of good-paying factory jobs. Now it just makes you an excellent candidate for being replaced by software.

The market value of being able to memorize easily searchable facts is nearly zero, and falling even faster. Any test that can be "cheated" by using Wikipedia is testing a totally useless skill. (Useful tests are still hard when you have access to all the internet.)

As for obedience to authority, I'll stick with Thoreau: "Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."

The evidence around us is overwhelming. Look at all the unemployed college graduates: those are the people who learned how to play the game, when they could have been learning something useful instead.