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My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)

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

#71

Post by kenster07 »

The primary goal of the education system should be to prepare students to reach their full potential in the real world. It is not achieving this goal optimally. The best and brightest are often stuck being taught the same material, at the same rate as the median student. We had to spend a year learning Algebra I, for some ungodly reason. How many of us could have learned it in literally one month? How many of us could have finished our entire high school's math curriculum in a year? Why should the A we could have gotten in one month be equated to the A of a person who needed a full school year to learn it?

Food for thought.

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

#72

Post by epochwolf »

moron4hire wrote: post #65
vonskippy wrote: post #31

Paying bills is stupid. Cleaning house is boring. Going to work EVERY day is stupid. Following rules is stupid. Doing what you're told is stupid. etc etc etc. Bwahahaha - your kid is screwed. The world is full of arbitrary and down right stupid rules (assuming he ever gets a job, he'll love the tax codes that apply to him, but not to rich people or corporations). You need to straighten out his young punk ass - and do…

art is not a real job?

For a lot of artists, unfortunately it's not. They need to have a job to support their art habit/hobby.

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

#73

Post by kjhughes »

Sugata Mitra believes that our education model, including the emphasis on rule-following, isn't broken but works to address the Victorian needs of the "bureaucratic administrative machine" of the British empire.

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_...

His Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) provides an alternative approach.

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

#75

Post by jongraehl »

tptacek wrote: post #64
ef4 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

First, that's not actually the only recipe for "winning" the game of school; it's just the one that occurs most vividly to people who dislike school. I disliked school too, and did poorly at it, approaching it as a system only solvable by the approach you outlined. Now that I'm a couple decades removed from attending school, it's obvious --- painfully obvious, like so much that I often see opportunities that my son w…

And if your son is able to understand your reasons (which seem compelling), it needn't be traumatic or rebellion-provoking that he's made play well.

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

#76

Post by jacalata »

aspensmonster wrote: post #52
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.

And reading and writing are irrelevant to whether the kid could do the equations, but if he doesn't have either skill then he needs help, not just for dad to say the teacher is mean. I consider understanding arbitrary rules to be similarly as basic a skill.

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

#77

Post by tptacek »

jongraehl wrote: post #75
tptacek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, that's not actually the only recipe for "winning" the game of school; it's just the one that occurs most vividly to people who dislike school. I disliked school too, and did poorly at it, approaching it as a system only solvable by the approach you outlined. Now that I'm a couple decades removed from attending school, it's obvious --- painfully obvious, like so much that I often see opportunities that my son w…

And if your son is able to understand your reasons (which seem compelling), it needn't be traumatic or rebellion-provoking that he's made play well.

He is biologically prevented from understanding some of these reasons as his prefrontal cortext is still not fully developed. At least, that's how I understand it.

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

#78

Post by kiba »

ef4 wrote: post #60
jcampbell1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.)

Memorization is not useless! The ability to access certain information in sub-speed latency is a valuable skill and should be learnt. This is called cached knowledge. One defining example is the multiplication table that we have to memorialize as a kid.

Searching is definitely useful, but the basic you should memorize, because you will use them over and over again. Do not be a programmer at work who have to repetitively google information several times a day that should be second nature because he refuse to memorize.

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

#79

Post by Alex3917 »

tptacek wrote: post #54
Alex3917 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Although I am somewhat less enamored with him now that I used to be, I think John Taylor Gatto's list of 14 things that elite private schools teach that public schools don't is by far the best list of things to focus on for high school age kids:

https://www.tragedyandhope.com/th-films/the-ultimate-history...

Unfortunately I'm not sure there is a good written description of these anywhere, but IIRC they are described pretty well in this video series:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11g9Tnmvo3Q

Gatto's ideas about education are based on history and spirituality (esp. Christianity) rather than science, which can be somewhat offputting at first, but having read the best of the sciency books on the various aspects of childhood development and education I generally think Gatto has more to offer. (Not that the other books aren't good too, but they're generally more useful for designing education systems that scale rather than parenting, except for when the kid is less than five which it doesn't sound like yours are.)

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

#80

Post by brg »

hayksaakian wrote: post #6
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…

I don't question the value of reliability and persistence, but in your frame of reference, that's the most valuable attribute of a new hire. Is that really the truth?

It depends on the position and level one is hiring at, really. For a senior engineer or manager we want a leader, someone who both has vision and can get things done in an organization. For a junior engineer we need only someone who can execute.

When looking at GPA, it is the later. In my experience it is a very rare college who who has the intuition or insight to drive any part of a product.

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