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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

#191

Post by Goronmon »

neltnerb wrote: post #56
anigbrowl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe I'm reading someone on hacker news saying 'polynomials don't appear in everyday problems.' As for the start time, likely she is involved in extra-curricular activities, like cheerleading or sports. 5 nights a week? Not buying it. I don't think I'm isolated from the world at all; I managed to deal with a heavy homework load and still have plenty of fun and get into various sorts of trouble (often at th…

Even purely from a practical perspective of "I have to get into college", if you are not very active in extracurricular activities you are screwed on your applications. If you're doing athletics, you're spending five days a week for three hours after school every day during the sports season. Even not during the sports season I was spending a minimum of two hours every day on extracurriculars including Boy Scouts, Ac…

If you're doing athletics, you're spending five days a week for three hours after school every day during the sports season.

And when I played sports in high school, there really wasn't an 'offseason'. Wrestling started the Monday following the Thanksgiving game for football, and if you did well in wrestling, your season butted up pretty close to baseball season as well.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#192

Post by pdpi »

mistercow wrote: post #103
comex wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

I have to disagree with this a little bit. The skills you use for mental arithmetic are very similar to the skills for pen and paper. I would view pen and paper as training wheels. It might be argued that mental arithmetic should also at least be taught , but the only way I know of to do that which will tend to generalize to a majority of students is to teach them to use an abacus (seasoned abacus users eventually st…

> The skills you use for mental arithmetic are very similar to the skills for pen and paper.

Speak for yourself. Pen-and-paper arithmetic, to me, is a completely mechanical process, pure symbol manipulation, whereas mental arithmetic is very, very heuristic-heavy and involves a much richer mental model that often borrows from geometry.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#193

Post by JoeAltmaier »

belorn wrote: post #59

> But when I ask her what the verb tener means (“to have,” if I recall), she repeats, “Memorization, not rationalization.” I wonder where she got that from, or if it was something she figured out by herself. It just sound so soul crushing that the goal for children is not learning, but to memorize something until the test is done. Memorization should never be used when rationalization could do better. Sure, there exi…

Yes, I was horrified that an educational institution should choose that as their motto. Its little more than an admission of failure.

I guess if its a trade school, some of that would be useful. But every time you rationalize a system, you gain far more. You gain understanding, and maybe the ability to integrate the new knowledge with what you already know.

How about "integration, not memorization"? I'd send my kids to that school.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#194

Post by TuringTest »

alextingle wrote: post #188
TuringTest wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Surely it would be better to learn history, economics, sociology and to read the international section of a newspaper than to memorise cities? Knowledge of capitals and so forth is incidentally acquired by doing those other things.

Why does it have to be either/or? A systematic approach guarantees that you have seen each capital city at least once.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#195

Post by yardie »

GotAnyMegadeth wrote: post #154
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 had to recite a pledge of allegiance? Wow. Sounds like North Korea.

I found this to be really regional. I did when I was a kid, then I questioned our teacher why she did not after the first week or so. She felt the whole standing, gazing and hand over the heart was a bit too military for an elementary school.

I've had a few "super patriotic" teachers threaten me with detention for not towing the line. But these tended to be in urban and ex-urban, lower socioeconomic schools. The type of places that wanted to make you into factory workers rather than college students.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#196

Post by mcphilip »

alt_f4 wrote: post #173
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…

You lost me at the emphasis on 1-2 hours of bible study.

I mentioned the bible study to highlight how I only spent 3 or 4 hours on real schoolwork a day and still somehow managed to get an education.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#197

Post by GotAnyMegadeth »

meddlepal wrote: post #178
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.

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.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#198

Post by callmeed »

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.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#199

Post by Zigurd »

His daughter is in a high-pressure selective school that appears to market this workload as a feature. It might be the right thing for kids who breeze through their school material and then get bored for lack of any challenge. It probably isn't the right thing for everyone.

His daughter seems like the victim of needing to get into some college prep program where choices are limited, waiting lists are common, and many private school prices are out of reach. I did not see where she was asked about a choice of schools.

Middle school seems way too early for a program this intensive. What is the retention for all this material when the students are high school juniors? The only purpose for the homework grind appears to be to get students that they don't want in this school to self-select out of it.

It seems like what the author is wishing for is a good free normal public school in New York City. Ha! The bottom line is that he can't actually afford to live where he lives unless he sacrifices his daughter's childhood this way.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#200

Post by Schwolop »

tptacek wrote: post #133
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…

The "cyber-bullying" thing seemed janky when I read it. We don't know exactly what he wrote to the other parents, or the tone of the conversation they had. We know that one parent was alarmed enough by the conversation to (apparently) forward it to the school administration. It may have been nastier than the author is crediting it for.

I suspect from the context that the journalist's email(s) was/were fine but that replies from other parents may have been less appropriate.
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