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My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

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Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#61

Post by haldujai »

neltnerb wrote: post #47
Emass12 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting transportation to and from school in your daily calculation, which could take up to an hour and a half total. And socialization which is non-negotiable. At least an hour for that? Oh and some people might need 9 hours of sleep, and another HN comment actually cited that this is recommended for a 13 year old. You see the problem with cutting it so close that homework just, just barely fits in the rem…

I did an experiment in college where I tried to see just how much work I could take on and stay sane. I'm very successfully academically (PhD at 26 from a very respected institution), and I found that if I did not have at least eight hours of unscheduled, unplanned time to just do nothing useful it severely impacted my ability to perform on any task. And I'm an extreme outlier in terms of innate skill, I say without…

This is why education is not a one size fits all model. For students like yourself there are dozens of schools in district 2 one could attend instead of this institution. Like I previously mentioned, people who attend this school do so by choice.

Additionally, innate skill does not translate to the ability to handle stress, discipline, or work ethic. Your schedule is entirely unrealistic outside of academia today (or being your own boss), judging from the population of successful people (in finance, software engineers, researchers, politicians, etc) you'll see that most people get by with less than 2 hours of unscheduled time whether forced or by choice.

Personally, I find unscheduled time and being mindless hampers my productivity. I function best under pressure and produce my best work. The most academically successful year of my life was when I was spending 80 hours a week on research, class, and studying (1-2 hours). My point in this is that what works for you is not necessarily the minimum requirement for success.

Also, I am aware of the physiological consequences of stress before anyone gets to that point.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#62

Post by neltnerb »

anigbrowl wrote: post #48
neltnerb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous. You can't learn when sleep-deprived. And god forbid you have hobbies. I was on the tennis team in high school, and often didn't get home until 8pm, much less have dinner. If I had 3 hours of homework after dinner, I'm up until midnight and had to catch the bus to school waking up at 5:45am. Yes, that means I am in school from effectively 5:45am until 8pm in the US. Yes, that is a 14 hour work day.…

I had plenty of hobbies a teenager. Maybe what people need is fewer resume-stuffing directed extracurricular activities, more free time, and starting school an hour later. We used to do 7 hours of school (9-4), 3-4 hours of homework, and had 1-2 evenings a week of structured extracurricular activities. And, no, you're not in school from the moment you wake up, although I do think American schools start stupidly early…

If you're on the bus for an hour each way, it hardly counts as "not at school" either.

But yes, I agree that what used to be unstructured activities are shifting to structured formal clubs. I don't think I'm willing to just assume this is for resume-stuffing, but it's a definite trend. So that could be part of the mismatch in the arithmetic of how many hours are in a day.

I also think it's too cynical to assume that all extracurricular activities are "resume-stuffing". As it turns out, plenty of extracurricular activities are vastly more rewarding and often more important in the long run to being a happy and productive person in whatever your career is than classes. I was in the choir in high school, which was a major time sink. I still sing in choirs now, 15 years later. I find this a very valuable life skill. Similarly, I did science olympiad, which has made me a vastly better engineer and scientist than any official science course -- I learned all sorts of important lessons in a practical context. And that's not even mentioning athletics, which taught me that maintaining fitness is critical for body and mind. Or Boy Scouts, which taught me a huge amount about leadership, project management, and lots of generally useful skills. And god forbid you get into a romantic relationship... I was lucky in being a closeted gay guy, so I didn't have to worry about that at least. Or having a job, like mine where I was a cook working ~10-15 hours a week to make money to save for college.

Anyway, there is more to life than school. You don't seem to disagree with that, so I'm not saying this to argue with you. But there is a lot more incidental stuff in there that is just as valuable as school.

There are some interesting solutions to this that I think are good. For one, a trimester system where you take three 2-hour courses each trimester instead of trying to take 4-6 45 minute classes.

You can get into better depth because you get into a groove. I teach now -- not high school -- and 45 minutes is enough to basically take attendance, introduce at most one idea at a very basic level, and practice it a half dozen times. With two hours, you can actually engage at an individual level and get into far more depth. Plus, you only have three classes giving you homework each night, so it's likely to actually be less outside work each day.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#63

Post by Glyptodon »

Afforess wrote: post #39
tudorw wrote: post #26

Six and a half hours sleep, this is way too low, Millpond Children’s Sleep Clinic recommends over nine for a 13yr old. http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Childrenssleep/Pages/howmuchsleep...

I once asked a vice principal (way back, 10 yrs ago) why schools started so early when lack of sleep was known to be bad. He said it was so there was time for sports in the evening. If you started at 10 or 11 school would run until 6 and it would start getting dark. Sports are why kids sleep is ruined.

It's sports and so parents can drop them off before work. Both play a role.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#65

Post by narwally »

anigbrowl wrote: post #45
Afforess wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly are very isolated from the world. Even if the author had a good math experience, polynomials do not appear in everyday problems. As for the start time, likely she is involved in extra-curricular activities, like cheerleading or sports. I wouldn't judge so harshly.

I can't believe I'm reading someone on hacker news saying 'polynomials don't appear in everyday problems.' As for the start time, likely she is involved in extra-curricular activities, like cheerleading or sports. 5 nights a week? Not buying it. I don't think I'm isolated from the world at all; I managed to deal with a heavy homework load and still have plenty of fun and get into various sorts of trouble (often at th…

Maybe polynomials appear in everyday problems of Hacker News users. But Hacker News isn't exactly representative of your average everyday person.

Also, I think a lot of people are forgetting the relative privilege they had while growing up. I was always forced to do the majority of my homework during the schooldays because I was busy taking care of my three younger siblings in the evenings. Expecting every child in a class to be equally capable of completing an assignment at home is making a lot of assumptions about their home situation.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#67

Post by asperous »

Glyptodon wrote: post #63
Afforess wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once asked a vice principal (way back, 10 yrs ago) why schools started so early when lack of sleep was known to be bad. He said it was so there was time for sports in the evening. If you started at 10 or 11 school would run until 6 and it would start getting dark. Sports are why kids sleep is ruined.

It's sports and so parents can drop them off before work. Both play a role.

This has also confused me as well, but I had never considered that. Now it makes sense.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#68

Post by Tichy »

kaybe wrote: post #53
rtpg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a lot of time up until high school forcing myself not to use a calculator, because I wanted to work on my mental skills in arithmetic, but I always make a lot of small mistakes, even now. I have a hard enough time concentrating on 'easy' things , please don't ask me to hold numbers in my brain. I am a pretty "mathy" person but mental multiplication is not meant for the human thought process, too much is going…

It's a well-known fact here that mathematicians can't do calculations. I've had professors in class ask the class to do very simple calculations for their complex examples for them. (Or they get it wrong. A lot.)

The driving factor for mathematics is laziness. I didn't even memorize the basic multiplication table (1-10) for a long time, but I remembered some shortcuts (like multiplying stuff by 9 was easy) and got by.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#69

Post by mike_esspe »

Tichy wrote: post #54
comex wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One comment: there's a difference between mental arithmetic, which is as useful as ever to be able to perform quickly/effectively, and the pen-and-paper variant (which I assume the cited assignment required), which is not. Everyone should, of course, know how to do the latter, but doing long pen-and-paper operations usually doesn't save time over reaching for a calculator, and is error-prone. Unfortunately, schools (…

Do calculators even routinely work with infinite precision (like (sqrt(2) x sqrt(2) = 2)? I guess you could achieve some results with Mathematia or something like that, but I have my doubts about the average calculator. Sometimes it is still useful to do calculations by hand, also to understand what is going on. (Edit: just tested the OS X calculator, sqrt(2) x sqrt(2) works out by chance, but sqrt(200) x sqrt(200) f…

It just means you should choose a better calculator

From my calculator (Genius Mathematical Tool):

  genius> sqrt(200)*sqrt(200)
  = 200.0

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#70

Post by webjunkie »

fcatalan wrote: post #49

When I was a kid the situation was clear for me: Homework made me struggle for hours while the drill sergeant act next day would last for mere seconds. So I did the bare minimum that would keep me from getting in serious trouble and accepted punishment for the rest as a good deal. My own kids are now growing and should show up with homework quite soon. I dread the day.

Haha, yeah, that was the way.

“find three important and powerful quotes from the section with 1–2 sentence analyses of its [sic] significance.”

What to do: hastily read the pages, write down anything that might qualify as a quote and write "It's important because blah blah". Done.

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