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My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)
41–50 of 124 posts
Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apart from the fact that it is illegal: your kid will resent you. Sure, they might grow up all fine, but do not think that resentment will ever go away.
Really? I was spanked in this manner twice (that I remember) and I don't resent my parents.
I was spanked and I love my parents. My approval ratings with my children don't influence whether I'm willing to hit them.
Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)
#43mm, This may be minutae to some, but I think it's important: Learning math is not tedium. By that I mean gaining the problem solving skills and the mindset required for mathematics is invaluable. Jeopardy facts however I can't defend.
Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)
#44Unfortunately, you need to deal with chickenshit sometimes. I was a history nut in high school -- I received perfect scores on all of the Regents exams (state tests in NY), and got 5's on two history AP exams, one of which I didn't take the class for. It was my passion.
But I did receive a "C" in Global studies class my junior year -- because my binder didn't have the tabs organized correctly. (Wrong colors, wrong order) My classmates even complained, because I could have taught the class!
End of the day, it didn't affect my life much, gives me a funny story to tell, and prepared me for the bureaucratic hazing that was to come from the State University of New York. As long as your son understands that less than perfect grades will keep him out of Stanford, Harvard, etc, relax.
Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)
#45We learn math & science because it gives us electricity, airliners, and computers. Enough said.
If that were the reason, they would never have existed in the first place.
Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)
#46My son finds homework painfully aversive, as I did before him. But I cut him much less slack than I was given as a kid. School is often arbitrary, pointless, and tedious. It's part of a large system that needs to serve many different interests, several of them legitimate. That's modern life. We're not so much beset by wolves and bears; instead, we have to deal with systems and social/cultural obligations. And while I…
"But I cut him much less slack than I was given as a kid."
Could work great. Could also end up inhibiting his executive function and turning him into a heroin addict.
The formula for success is multiplicative: Ability * Motivation * Opportunity.
If any one of those factors is zero, success is zero despite how much of the others you have. The thing about forcing kids to do their homework is there's no such thing as a free lunch. Whatever you gain in terms of extra external opportunity may be easily offset (and then some) by reductions in intrinsic motivation, executive function, etc. Or not. The point is that it's a wicked problem[1], and as such there isn't any simple and/or one-size-fits-all solution. Keep in mind also that doing well is largely beneficial because it gives you more opportunities to do various things. But thanks to new social structures that are being built on top of the Internet, those sorts of opportunities are becoming less and less valuable every day. While having them will always be better than not having them, it may no longer make sense to optimize for them either, especially when you're young enough to have a decades-long arc.
Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)
#47My son finds homework painfully aversive, as I did before him. But I cut him much less slack than I was given as a kid. School is often arbitrary, pointless, and tedious. It's part of a large system that needs to serve many different interests, several of them legitimate. That's modern life. We're not so much beset by wolves and bears; instead, we have to deal with systems and social/cultural obligations. And while I…
> he's at least going to be familiar with what it takes to play the system.
That comment makes your perspective the complete opposite of the author's. The author kid moves his chess pieces randomly and the author writes a blog post about how the rules are not fair. You likely teach that sometimes you have to follow the rules to play the game.
This blog post reads like like a fool arguing that the rules of chess are stupid.
Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)
#48After hiring committee one day, we digressed into a discussion of the value of a high GPA from university. One of my colleagues made the point that the value of an individual with a high GPA from a four year degree is that you know the person will get done what needs to get done. To have a high GPA, a student needs to finish term papers on subjects they have no interest in, they need to study for exams in language fo…
Do you really want to hire somebody whose most notable talent is their ability to bullshit their superiors and tell them what they want to hear?
Unfortunately that is how the hiring systems for most things work.
Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious, do you ever have discussions with him where you make it clear that you know he is "playing the game" so to speak, or do you also try and hold up the charade? (I know it's less black and white than that, I'm speaking in extremes to make a clear question.)
Hah. Yes. Hah. Hahahaha. Like all teenagers, he is capable of of reason, judgement, introspective listening, and a sense of how he actually fits into the cosmos. In 5-10 minute bursts. In other words: I might as well be the teacher addressing the question of whether the dog has the Buddha-nature. I try, but realistically. And then I make him write the papers.
What if he doesn't like "playing the game"? No dinner?
Re: My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007)
#50After hiring committee one day, we digressed into a discussion of the value of a high GPA from university. One of my colleagues made the point that the value of an individual with a high GPA from a four year degree is that you know the person will get done what needs to get done. To have a high GPA, a student needs to finish term papers on subjects they have no interest in, they need to study for exams in language fo…
Do you really want to hire somebody whose most notable talent is their ability to bullshit their superiors and tell them what they want to hear?
The unfortunate reality is in a lot of (big) organisation people who can bullshit progress the furthest.
I've worked with plenty of managers that would rather not know the truth if it meant having to deal with a problem.
To them denial is bliss.