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My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

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Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#261

Post by Pxtl »

tptacek wrote: post #130

Some quick thoughts, as the parent of a high school freshman: * If you anticipate your child being assigned 3 hours of homework in a typical evening, it is negligent to allow them to start that work at 8:00PM. Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon, he could consider a rule suggesting homework gets completed before electronic entertainment; that's our rule this…

The trick is that the Japanese students have student-led after-school homework groups to get this stuff squared away. Look at it this way - if a kid has 3 hours of homework per night, and they get off at 3PM, and they did work in their homework club until 5, guess what? At the time you saw them, they'd only have 1 hour of homework per night. That would be manageable.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#262

Post by tptacek »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #152
tptacek wrote: post #130

Some quick thoughts, as the parent of a high school freshman: * If you anticipate your child being assigned 3 hours of homework in a typical evening, it is negligent to allow them to start that work at 8:00PM. Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon, he could consider a rule suggesting homework gets completed before electronic entertainment; that's our rule this…

* If you anticipate your child being assigned 3 hours of homework in a typical evening, it is negligent to allow them to start that work at 8:00PM. Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon, he could consider a rule suggesting homework gets completed before electronic entertainment; that's our rule this year (for the first time) and it's working better than I thoug…

If her hobbies are conflicting with her homework, she can either (a) accept poorer grades or (b) set aside some hobbies. What he's doing --- demanding perfect grades with a schedule that doesn't have her starting homework until 8:00PM --- is physically harming his kid.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#263

Post by Pxtl »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #214
altrego99 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Kids should not be penalized for knowing which is the capital of what, nor which part of Americas grows the most bananas. It is useless information unless the kid loves that kind of stuff. * Focus should not be on memorizing anything, unless they are a building block of something which they will understand later, and better, with the memorization. May be the Spanish language verb forms are one of those, I'm not sur…

> Focus should not be on memorizing anything I have to disagree. At that age the things you memorize get seared into your mind permanently. I can still effortlessly rattle off a few Shakespeare soliloquies a teacher had us memorize, for example. I think having 13 year olds memorize things is a great idea, but the things should be important and useful. I wish we had extensively drilled on mental arithmetic.

And how do those soliloquies serve you?

The things they need to memorize for life are the things that serve you for life. Arithmetic is a fantastic one - you should be able to do all forms of simple arithmetic in your head, and everything to do with fractions and simple algebra on paper, and you should be able to do that stuff so naturally and instinctively that it's like riding a bike or speaking English. Because that's an ability (not just knowledge but something you can do) that will serve you for life.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#264

Post by grandalf »

The trend toward memorization homework is part of the larger view of education as social assimilation training and obedience training.

If the homework required "rationalization, not memorization" then the brightest students would easily coast through in minutes the same material that would take the dimmer students hours. With memorization, the curve is flattened significantly and grades are much more closely tied to effort than to innate ability.

All this is intentional and has the desired outcome -- colleges offer many classes where the student who is used to drudgery and memorization can simply thrive by putting in the hours with flashcards, and can then go on to a career where obedience and compliance with drudgery are highly valued traits.

The problem with this is that it misses the more important point, which is that abstract reasoning skills can be taught too, they are just often taught very poorly and so kids who have a small leg up (largely by accident) get a big unfair advantage and in a non-memorization world reap significant benefits.

I'd be extremely concerned if my child were being asked to memorize material that was not strictly necessary for some kind of reasoning exercise.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#265

Post by tptacek »

jtheory wrote: post #156
tptacek wrote: post #130

Some quick thoughts, as the parent of a high school freshman: * If you anticipate your child being assigned 3 hours of homework in a typical evening, it is negligent to allow them to start that work at 8:00PM. Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon, he could consider a rule suggesting homework gets completed before electronic entertainment; that's our rule this…

> Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon That's a bit unfair -- that was Friday afternoon only. I don't have any kids in school yet, and I'm not in the US anymore anyway; but I do remember from my HS experience it would have been unkind to force me to complete all homework before any entertainment. School ended at 2:15 (because it started at 7am... ugh), but tha…

Doesn't he open the story by saying his daughter starts homework at 8:00PM and routinely gets inadequate sleep?

The "so be it" rule is what we have in my house, but because we require homework to get done before the kids can use the computer, it always gets done before I even get home from work.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#266

Post by mcphilip »

alt_f4 wrote: post #244
pc86 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, some families are religious. That's not necessarily a bad thing, even when that translates to structured education.

It ends up as a bad thing when it eventually translates to bad public policy. Like banning stem cells research with the justification that a large portion of the public has been schooled to believe in fairy tales. So, unlike what the OP suggested, I do not consider this a good approach to home schooling at all. Unless children are given both sides of the story - the value of bible study vs. the criticisms - and then…

I attempted to recount my homeschooling experience without advocating it or bible study. Indoctrination at a vulnerable age is a bad thing, for the record. Still, competent minds will learn to question such things over time.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#267

Post by jeltz »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #38

Wow. Everyone in the thread seems to have gotten lots of homework in their youth. In my case, I went to both a private and a public school (in Spain) and the homework load was probably like half an hour a day, in both cases. In high school it was a bit more, maybe 45 minutes, the main difference was that in high school studying the day before the exam was usually not enough. I remember that my mother used to be worri…

My experience from Swedish schools is rather similar. While my memory isn't perfect 30 minutes per day is a reasonable guess. It could have been 1 hour max.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#268

Post by mathattack »

bodhi wrote: post #242
barry-cotter wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, I thought there was some daylight between Korea and Japan in terms of messed up zero sum games cram schools. AIUI the pressure lets up rather a lot once one gets to university, yes? As in there is actual freedom to slack off and many do. Or is there no point between primary school and becoming a salaryman to chill out?

> AIUI the pressure lets up rather a lot once one gets to university, yes? The running joke that I've heard is that university is the only vacation that a Japanese person will get in their life.

My experience in Japan was similar. "They're allowed a good vacation before school starts, and during college." The lowest University of Tokyo graduate has better placement options than the best graduate from any other school.

Some of this comes from good reasons - the companies value teamwork and social skills, assuming they own the burden of training people.

There are numerous downsides for this method though. (Miss out on good candidates, people could be learning in college, too much lifetime emphasis on one admissions test, etc.)

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#269

Post by sp332 »

FedRegister wrote: post #167
madaxe wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the benefit of attending the British, German, and American school systems. Schooling in America has little to do with education, and much to do with indoctrination. Pretty much the only thing I learned was the pledge of allegiance - over which I repeatedly got suspended, as I refused to recite it along with the rest of the class, every morning. Everything else they "taught" was years behind what I'd been learni…

The role of public school in the United States, especially when it first started, explicitly was to churn out factory workers[1]. The fact that non-industrial knowledge is also taught is a side effect of later developments. [1] http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

Some public schools were started right after the American Revolution, before anything was very industrialized. Horace Mann and Booker T. Washington led a massive expansion that followed through the mid-1800's. I'm quite sure Mann and Washington were not looking to produce unthinking factory workers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Mann#Education_reform

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#270

Post by mathattack »

tptacek wrote: post #262
VBprogrammer wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* If you anticipate your child being assigned 3 hours of homework in a typical evening, it is negligent to allow them to start that work at 8:00PM. Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon, he could consider a rule suggesting homework gets completed before electronic entertainment; that's our rule this year (for the first time) and it's working better than I thoug…

If her hobbies are conflicting with her homework, she can either (a) accept poorer grades or (b) set aside some hobbies. What he's doing --- demanding perfect grades with a schedule that doesn't have her starting homework until 8:00PM --- is physically harming his kid.

That math didn't jump out at me, but you're right. Maybe she only starts the homework when he gets home?

The pressure on these kids is immense, which is why you see cheating scandals in the top NYC schools. http://gothamschools.org/2013/08/30/report-faults-former-stu...

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