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My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

theatlantic.com

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Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#91

Post by rwallace »

cookiecaper wrote: post #13
imperio59 wrote: post #6

She is not learning about what she is studying, she is learning to become a well trained parrot. Society has no use for parrots. These kids need to be taught to look up the words they don't know in a dictionary appropriate to their age and gain an understanding of the new words they come across as they are studying. That is the only way to understand any subject one is studying. No amount of "guessing" or "memorizing…

>Society has no use for parrots. In fact, society has a great use for "parrots" whose sense of rational processing is beat out of them, and are taught to keep their heads down and just swallow whatever their superior is cramming down their throat. It is certainly not a noble use, but without these many years of mandatory obedience training, the wage slavery upon which our lifestyle depends would suffer a severe lack…

That was certainly true in the Industrial Revolution, which was the time at and reason for which the education system as we know it was invented; the economy did actually need people who could spend all day every day fitting widget A into slot B without going mad from boredom. But as mechanical drudgery is progressively delegated to computers, leaving an economy desperate for people who can make plans and take the initiative, we should be progressively cutting down the education system, not allowing it to continue growing like a cancer.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#92

Post by voyou »

egwor wrote: post #23

Welcome to the educated new world; where education matters. One thing to consider; perhaps the child shouldn't be in that class/level or school? Perhaps their previous school didn't cover the material so this is all base stuff for everyone else? If it takes you 3-5hrs to do something and you want to sleep before midnight, start earlier. Perhaps when less tired it would be quicker. I used to have homework that could t…

"Welcome to the educated new world; where education matters."

Right. So why is this school wasting children's time and energy with busywork, rather than teaching them effectively during the allotted time at school?

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#93

Post by girvo »

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.

A boys school actually did a test where they started the school day at 10.30am, and nearly every teenagers grades improved, sometimes dramatically.

I wish I could find that reference, but it proved to me what I knew: I really would've done better if I'd not had to get up at 6.30am so I could walk the hour to school (both parents worked).

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#94

Post by aidos »

Zecc wrote: post #83
cperciva wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The start of that sentence mentions finding three quotes, so it should be their significance.

Your interpretation explain the use of "[sic]". But personally I think the "its" refers to the section and not the quotes, making the "[sic]" unnecessary. But I don't have access to the original text.

Actually, reading it again you could well be right. It would make sense for it to be referring to the section.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#95

Post by girvo »

ygra wrote: post #31

I don't recall similar homework loads (Germany, school being 10–20 years ago), but that might be due to laziness on my part or simply the fact that it wasn't a good time for me anyway. By the later grades (11th and onwards) it definitely wasn't as much. I liked what our math teacher said regarding his homework: It's for practice and not strictly needed and thus voluntary. If we feel confident doing the homework ad-ho…

Homework for me (I'm 22) while at highschool was mandatory and contributed to your overall mark.

I never did mine. Like, at all.

Luckily for me, I had the highest grades across my entire year, and did so well that they bent the rules for me and ignored the fact I never did my homework.

Still not sure if that was a good thing or not to be honest, our workload wasn't that large, and it took me a while to build a work ethic.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#96

Post by ronaldx »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #75
acabal wrote: post #19

What stood out for me from this article wasn't the homework load, which only seems slightly more than what I remember from my own youth, but rather that: 1) a teacher can accuse a parent of "cyberbullying" for an email sent in purported confidentiality to others, and that the claim can be taken seriously. Obviously I didn't read the email, but the author seems well-read and reasonable, so I'm inclined to conjecture t…

Totally agree, especially with your second point. Both my parents are career educators (teachers, counselors and now professors). They personally tell me about how "helicopter parenting" has increased in the time since they've gotten their degrees up to now. Parents are getting more and more involved (read: obsessive) about their childrens' education, sometimes to the detriment of the school process. Very often they'…

As a teacher, I far prefer to have parents who are involved in their kids' education, than the parents who are not involved.

There's a correlation between affluence and parent involvement, yes, but there's a stronger correlation between parent involvement and pupil engagement/learning.

Edited to add: Helicopter parenting is often a symptom of poor communication between the school and the parent - better and happier personal communication tends to resolve tension.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#97

Post by mistercow »

The answer, of course, is to tell your daughter she just doesn't have to do this shit. It's middle school. It doesn't matter. When she gets to high school, if teachers try to put her in non-honors classes (where she obviously doesn't belong), you sign a waiver and put her in the right classes.

Of course, if you by any means have the time or the money, the real answer is not to send your kids to these idiotic institutions at all, and to teach them yourself, or higher tutors. Hire college students; they can use the money.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#98

Post by VargardObyron »

neltnerb wrote: post #88
NemesorZandrak wrote: post #14

When I was at school and that is not USA but Poland. We used to have 6-8 different subjects per day from biology, chemistry, geography, maths and history as examples. Everyone of this subjects converted to at least an hour of homework. What I learned as a kid is that it is impossible to learn all this things at home and I have to filter what is needed the most. Sometimes approximate and sometimes simply take the risk…

Thanks for the interesting perspective. I guess I was lucky in having teachers who were more concerned with aptitude than homework (luckily before no child left behind). Almost none of my homework was graded -- this seems to be a european thing? You'd know better than me. So I did the amount of homework needed to learn the material, and no more. Like college. I do wonder if the big issue is that this approach can rea…

There is no marks for having homework, there are only negative marks for not having it.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#99

Post by pantalaimon »

comex wrote: post #46
vacri wrote: post #24

There are some concepts at odds here. "The measurements included numbers like 78 13/64, and all this multiplying and dividing was to be done without a calculator." is not 'rote learning'/'memorisation without rationalisation'. It's directly exercising an ability. I've had a university-level experience reach for her calculator to multiply 0.2 by 3, and when I forbade her from using it, she just stared dumbly at me. Th…

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 (…

> there's a difference between mental arithmetic, […] and the pen-and-paper variant, which is not

Until you are working with variables.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#100

Post by evincarofautumn »

neltnerb wrote: post #37
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…

I think a good part of the problem is that we learn to multiply and divide backwards. The standard US algorithm involves starting at the least significant digit and working your way up. It is much easier to do in your head if you do it from the most significant digit down. Or learn to convert hard multiplications into easy ones, for instance: 9x27 = 10x27-27 = 243 The other way to do this would be to multiply 9x7 to…

Our insanely good fuzzy classification skills let us select and continually update a solving strategy. In computing terms: writes to long-term memory are slow, but reads are fast; short-term memory is extremely size-constrained and time-volatile, but fast for both writes and reads.

Efficient algorithms for human brains should rely as much as possible on pattern matches, long-term memory reads, and limited short-term storage—exactly the opposite of what you want to do on a computer! It’s no wonder that the polynomial-time multiplication algorithms that work fine on paper aren’t going to perform very well in our heads.

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