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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

#281

Post by pyre »

chris_wot wrote: post #170
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…

The author's child is still a kid. I think she's in year 8? Here's my feedback: a. Let her be a kid. b. let her get enough sleep (it's hard to learn without enough sleep). c. Stop taking cannabis. It can lead to mental illness. d. If you are concerned about too much homework, do something about it. For real.

> Stop taking cannabis. It can lead to mental illness.

... in a small percentage of the population (though a real risk).

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#282

Post by einhverfr »

GotAnyMegadeth wrote: post #197
meddlepal wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really need to teach your kid this stuff even? The smart and smart-enough-but-lazy ones seem to figure it out just well enough for themselves.

If you mean, how to avoid homework, I wasn't taught any of it, it was all stuff I learnt throughout my schooling life.

I have been letting this roll around in my head for a while after reading the article and the comments here and I wonder....

To live is to work and to work creatively. To live is to accomplish things. To be great is to accomplish more. If we teach kids to value doing things by the book what kind of a lesson is that?

Our virtues are built out of the stuff of our vices. Productive laziness, the kind which says "I want to accomplish such and such but there must be a way without working that hard" is a virtue.

My advice is to figure out what homework is really important and try to figure out what you want to do. Shortcuts aren't cheating. Picking which homework to do is not cheating.

If what you learn out of school is to work hard, memorize things without understanding them, and do without sleep, then it is the perfect preparation for, say, doing data entry for someone. But if you want to be great, learning how to get out of homework is a much more valuable lesson....

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#283

Post by modfodder »

One subject I don't remember learning; how to learn. Maybe it was just taught so early that I don't remember, but although I was always a good student that breezed through school for the most part, I take horrendous notes and feel really inefficient when it comes to learning.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#284

Post by lanaius »

emerongi wrote: post #233
chris_wot wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author's child is still a kid. I think she's in year 8? Here's my feedback: a. Let her be a kid. b. let her get enough sleep (it's hard to learn without enough sleep). c. Stop taking cannabis. It can lead to mental illness. d. If you are concerned about too much homework, do something about it. For real.

Honestly, whenever I felt like I had too much homework, I just didn't do it. You can always discuss these things with the teachers. Usually they're not complete dicks that want to ruin your life. Let your kid grow a spine. (continuous) Sleep loss as a kid is very bad.

When I didn't want to keep doing homework in High School, they dropped me from "honors" math to regular math and gave me poor grades. They continued to give me bad grades occasionally (since I didn't do the homework, occasionally) but it seemed like everyone met a decent compromise and the teacher didn't have any particular ire towards me.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#285

Post by leephillips »

aestra wrote: post #184
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…

You cannot be suspended for not saying the Pledge. You cannot be compelled to say the Pledge. Your rights were violated. The Supreme Court of the United State has ruled that it is well within your right to not say it. See West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_State_Board_of_Ed... Writing for the majority, Justice Jackson stated: "If there is any fixed star in ou…

This only applies to public (state run) schools. Maybe he got suspended from a private school.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#286

Post by josefresco »

voidfunc wrote: post #180
ja27 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I drop my daughter off at 6:45 AM (school starts at 7:30), sometimes their football team is out on the field practicing under lights.

Which is insane. These are kids not professional football players. I like sports, but the entire culture of children and teenage sports in the US is totally whack.

The same could be said about traditional academics. Just like elite academic schools, there are elite athletic schools that are the early proving/training grounds for aspiring college and pro athletes.

Why is ok to devote hours to an academic pursuit and not okay to do the same for an athletic pursuit? You could argue the "middle ground" doesn't exist in athletics like it does for other professions, but that would assume you're classifying school as simply vocational training.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#287

Post by selmnoo »

rayiner wrote: post #260
tptacek wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How caustic a lesson to teach your kid, that they should organize to cheat on homework, so they can artificially inflate their grade. I suppose it does set them up for a productive life of investment banking.

I think kids should be taught to perceive the mechanics of any system and leverage those mechanics, within the bounds of ethics and fairness. They should ignore what people say and focus on what they do . I absolutely don't condone lying or cheating, and I think it's a huge problem in schools today. But kids aren't the only ones that lie. American education is predicated on a basic lie: that it's about learning. In f…

> But learning is what you do while researching Hacker News posts.

How do you research HN posts? Fundamentally it comes down to a lot to knowing what source, person, or place of knowledge to trust. What are your rules of thumb to decide what to trust and not to trust?

Do you go to wikipedia and extend your research by looking in the citations, or use google right from the start?

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#288

Post by Karawebnetwork »

hobs wrote: post #229
Karawebnetwork wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To which he answer "the capital of France" and everyone keep going. If I tell you that you need to go to Sucre for a meeting, do you know where that is? Probably not. You will google it, spend 5 seconds on the internet and boom, you know where it is. Putting countless hours to learn all of them is useless. This is time that could be spent learning things that are important in the modern world. The computers aren't go…

While everyone thinks "What an idiot." While you are 100% right that you dont NEED to know that Paris is the capital of France, displaying that ignorance for all to see is just bad form. While your analogy makes sense (bolivian capital no one knows about), knowing that Paris is the capital of France is incidental knowledge when you spend any time looking at western history for the last several hundred years.

The fact that you remember that Paris is the capital of France has nothing to do with what you learnt during high school. You know it, because it is general knowledge. You saw it in the movies. You had a phone call from someone living there. Only someone living in a cave would not know where or what Paris is, hence why you would call him an idiot.

However, the capital of an area that isn't in the media very of ten? You won't remember them. "Quick, what is the capital of Cambodia? No idea? You surely must be an idiot! Let's fire you!" Nobody will ever say that. If I tell someone that they must go to Ankara for a meeting, I would pretty much expect them to answer with "where?"

Having general knowledge is important. Knowing the main capitals of the world is important too. Spending hours and hours to learn all of the obscure ones and commit it to memory in a world where you can say "Ok Glasses, Ankara is the capital of which country?" is useless.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#289

Post by joelhooks »

We homeschool and our kids do 2-4 hours of academics per day, generally. Frees up a lot of time for things like "being a kid" and "enjoying life". Some days they don't do any and spend the day building things in minecraft or drawing pictures.

It's awesome, and I highly recommend it to anybody interested in non-institutionalized kids.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#290

Post by throwaway1979 »

GotAnyMegadeth wrote: post #239
throwaway1979 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what A levels are. What does AAAB mean? Does this mean you gave four subjects and scored 3 A's and 1 B? If that is correct, I'm curious what subjects you gave?

Yes it does. I got As in Maths, Physics and Electronics and a B in General Studies which is a joke compulsory subject that tested your writing skills. Interesting: I would say "I took four subjects", and you say "I gave four subjects". Never heard that before!

I had a transient stay in a commonwealth country when I was a teenager. I "gave" a few A-level exams. I.e. I studied on my own and just showed up for a grueling exam organized by the British Counsel in my country. I picked the subjects that were easiest for me to study on my own ... Econ, Accounting and General Studies. Since I didn't take A-level math, I had some trouble in college (in North America).
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