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My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

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Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#291

Post by pc86 »

alt_f4 wrote: post #276
mcphilip wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

So obviously the TLDR is that reading the Bible is bad and those that do as part of a home-school curriculum should be ridiculed.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#292

Post by chimaera »

einhverfr wrote: post #279
Pxtl wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's very hard to enjoy something you are forced to memorized. The things I remember in the long term I deemed important enough to keep with me. I would even say things that were drilled in me I rebelled against.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#293

Post by mlntn »

callmeed wrote: post #198
mcphilip wrote: post #40

I was homeschooled K-12. My days consisted largely of 1-2 hours of bible study with my 3 brothers followed by a few hours on my own working through a set number of pages in math, science, literature, etc textbooks. I'd usually get done by 2 and then play Nintendo until friends got home from school. I was never tested in homeschool. There were no grades or report cards. The only accountability was mom checking that th…

This might be a weird question and totally based on anecdotes but: are you a good speller? I have a lot of friends who were homeschooled and/or homeschool their kids. I've also hired some and gone to school with some. One thing I noticed about several of them is they're bad at spelling. I've always wondered why.

I was also homeschooled for the most part (k-4, 6-10, then college) and consider myself an excellent speller. For my fifth grade year, I went to a private school where I competed in a spelling bee and won at the school level, then at the state level against other private schools for my grade level. I have never found spelling to be deficient among the homeschoolers I know - quite the opposite in fact.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#294

Post by mlntn »

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…

> Unless children are given both sides of the story - the value of bible study vs. the criticisms - and then choose to study it, then you are effectively force-feeding religion to someone in their formative years.

You assume that homeschooled kids are not given opportunity to learn both sides. And when have you found this to be the case in a public school?

Regarding "force-feeding": It's ridiculous to think that a parent's beliefs and ideas about the world/religion/culture/science/whatever would not have an impact on a child's beliefs.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#295

Post by einhverfr »

chimaera wrote: post #292
einhverfr wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's very hard to enjoy something you are forced to memorized. The things I remember in the long term I deemed important enough to keep with me. I would even say things that were drilled in me I rebelled against.

The good teachers give you a choice of which to memorize but still make you memorize something artful.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#296

Post by alt_f4 »

pc86 wrote: post #291
alt_f4 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

So obviously the TLDR is that reading the Bible is bad and those that do as part of a home-school curriculum should be ridiculed.

That's the TLDR if you happen to be a bit of a prick. If not, maybe you should go back to read what I actually wrote.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#297

Post by dragonwriter »

mathattack wrote: post #271
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…

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

> 100% learn to learn with 0% memorization is bad too.

100% learn to learn with 0% memorization isn't bad, its just an incoherent concept (to be bad it would have to be a real thing.) Memorization is an essential component (though not the only one) of learning to learn.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#298

Post by mcdougle »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #190
Djehngo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of morality you may be correct, but if the child in the article could skip some rote memorisation or other busy work for an extra hour or two of sleep I would bet on her learning "more" at school.

Then just skip it! The lying is the issue. If you judge the homework as not being worthwhile, then don't do it, say you didn't do it, and move on.

The problem with that is that, in society currently, your grades are what matter -- at least if you want a normal job at a normal company.

To get a job, you have to have a college degree and a good GPA. To get that, you have to get good grades in college -- which means doing the homework and taking the tests. To even get into a decent college you have to have a good GPA in high school -- which, again, means doing the homework and taking the tests. Most companies don't care if you actually have the skillset, or if any of those homework assignments actually taught you anything, you need the credentials to get in the door to show it.

Grades aren't as big of a deal if you're going to be your own boss or start a business or found a startup, but in typical corporate America it's the end-all-be-all until you've got years of experience to show instead.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#299

Post by rorrr2 »

TuringTest wrote: post #182
rorrr2 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) What does this have to do with knowing Paris is a capital? 2) What's the big deal? I'm sure most people don't know the capital of Mongolia or Canada or Switzerland or Slovenia or Croatia. And these aren't even African countries. 3) What's the practical limitation here? Are you unable to travel to cities that you didn't know the names of 10 minutes before you found them on Google maps?

If you think the only purpose of knowing the names of world cities is finding them in maps to travel there, you will be utterly incompetent at basic comprehension of 1) history, 2) real (not theoretical) economics, 3) sociology, 4) reading the International section of a newspaper. Forming an understanding of those topics requires connecting the dots between various stories you read about them at different places, and…

> If you think the only purpose of knowing the names of world cities

Stop beating that strawman.

I never said anything about knowing a city name. I was arguing about knowing what's the capital of what.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#300

Post by rorrr2 »

GFischer wrote: post #235
rorrr2 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood how the knowledge of the capitals of states or countries is useful in any way. It's meaningless. It can be easily looked up, if you need that information. I can't even imagine a practical scenario when one would need to know it.

I think it helps to get a sense of the world - though browsing through an atlas, and getting broader lessons is much better than just memorizing state/country capitals. I loved browsing atlases as a kid, and ended up visiting close to a third of the countries in the world (ok, so I cheated and went to Europe :P ), so YMMV. PD: I still want to see the remaining two-thirds of the world :)

Knowing locations of some major cities is useful, I agree.

Knowing which of them are capitals isn't, especially of the US states where capital assignments are very random.

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