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My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

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Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#271

Post by mathattack »

altrego99 wrote: post #169
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…

* 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…

There's a legit trade-off. 100% memorization is bad. 100% learn to learn with 0% memorization is bad too. Research indicates that people learn more when they have context, which unfortunately comes from memorization. (I hated memorization, I'm more of a derive the facts person)

E D Hirsch has some of the research behind this. http://www.coreknowledge.org/books

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#272

Post by pnathan »

nja wrote: post #16
pnathan wrote: post #7

This is the official guideline from my local school district on average homework times: K Occasional 1-2 15 minutes (M-Th) 3-5 30-60 minutes (M-Th) 6-8 30-90 minutes (M-Th) 9-12 60-120 minutes (M-S)

Per class?

It doesn't say. But if you have 5 classes in high school, that would wind up to be a max of 10 hours of homework per night, a conclusion of about 15 hours of schooling per day. I would reckon that is not what is expected, so I read it as 'total'.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#273

Post by mathattack »

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…

Times have changed. Every kid today is special. :-)

My observation is in a hyper-competitive city like NY, the parents do bad together against the teachers of administration if they feel slighted. There's a lot of jostling for position amongst parents, who each want someone else to air their concerns, because they don't want to seem like the problem parent.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#274

Post by mathattack »

graeme wrote: post #252

I teach the SAT. My impression is that children are too busy to learn. I learned a LOT from reading random things outside of school. Students have no time for that these days. And when they do need to learn something new, such as math on the SAT, they have no time to learn it. The schools also don't seem to be focussed on learning. The emphasis is on covering 'the curriculum'. So I'm dealing students studying trigono…

Very good point. I really enjoyed being out of school so that I could control my reading list. The one thing I didn't like about going back for grad school was giving up control over my reading list for a few years.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#275

Post by jerf »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #246
loup-vaillant wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's what's happen when we focus on memorization: I suspect the most dangerous habit of thought taught in schools is that even if you don't really understand something, you should parrot it back anyway. http://lesswrong.com/lw/i2/two_more_things_to_unlearn_from_s... Which more or less directly leads to http://lesswrong.com/lw/iq/guessing_the_teachers_password/ With such a method what will be permanently seared into…

My point is there's a very valuable window at that age to permanently learn things. The window should be used to, for example, learn a ton of vocabulary in a foreign language. Or learn a bunch of arithmetic tables by heart, so you can do mental arithmetic without even thinking hard. To waste the window is silly. Learning such things as I mentioned isn't "parroting."

I agree, but there needs to be some good selection. Memorizing multiplication tables will serve you for the rest of your life. (Especially since it doesn't even take all that much, there's a lot of symmetry and patterns in there.) Memorizing huge swathes of a foreign language is the only way to learn it. Memorizing state capitals is debatable. Memorizing who exports the most bananas is USELESS. In 30 years, it may not even be true anymore. Learning the basics of geology may be useful; learning intensive, college-geology-major details about mineral crystallization is a waste of precious time.

What burns me is that there is so much good stuff in the world to learn, more than you could ever possibly learn, and they waste our time so frivolously. They sit your child down in front of the world's finest multi-course banquet ever conceived, then thoughtlessly stuff them full of dry crackers, because that's what the standards say we have to do. Augh. Such a waste.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#276

Post by alt_f4 »

mcphilip wrote: post #266
alt_f4 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Still, competent minds will learn to question such things over time.

There's no question that eventually some will.

Unfortunately, that's certainly not true for most. Otherwise all politicians wouldn't be so persistent about pandering to religious groups, we wouldn't end up with representatives that believe the earth is 6000 years old, we wouldn't come up with ridiculous rules about contraception and abortion, we wouldn't be banning scientific research that can alleviate deadly disease and improve the quality of human life.

So, to sum up, good that you've learned to question things with time, but please don't assume that is a universal occurrence.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#277

Post by einhverfr »

aestra wrote: post #257
loup-vaillant wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Pure self interest can explain this. As far as I know they were (and still are) underdogs. Free speech is one of the things that favours underdogs, and is not easily openly attacked.

The thing a lot of people don't understand about free speech is the kind of speech that needs to be protected is the unpopular kind; the kind that very few people agree with. Popular speech needs no defending. I don't understand a lot of Americans who run around talking about "America the free" and then try to pass laws to limit the expression of anyone who doesn't live exactly like they do. Freedom means some people…

This is right, but there are many religious minorities who engage in unpopular speech. I was raised as a Quaker for example. I just think it is interesting that Jehovah's Witnesses have been a group which has laid so much of the groundwork of this sort of thing.

It also makes me wonder how much cross-pollenation there has been between Anabaptist movements, Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses and other similarly non-mainstream groups. That however is a question for another time.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#278

Post by shoover »

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…

We have no context on the Texas City answer. Could be she didn't know the answer, didn't care, and put Texas City as a joke.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#279

Post by einhverfr »

Pxtl wrote: post #263
a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

Literature is a part of life and it forms how we see the world. Those pieces of poetry I have committed to memory, as diverse as "Scaffolding" by Seamus Heeney and several poems by folks like Lord Byron or William Butler Yates, inform the way I look at life.

Living is an art, not a science, and making art a part of us, for example by memorizing poetry, is an important part of being good at that art.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#280

Post by pyre »

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…

> Neither my son in high school nor my daughter in middle school has ever to my knowledge had state capitals homework, and neither would give that answer.

When/if that happens with my children, I have the perfect answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCieT1dQWlo

I actually own that on an official CD somewhere from my childhood, too.

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