More parents, students saying 'no' to homework

I think that's a really brilliant idea.

IMO the problem is not work, the problem is homework.

It's pretty well accepted that the sweet spot for working a job is around 40 hours a week. Go beyond that consistently and your productivity starts to fall off, to the point where you may well get less done than you would have if you worked less.

School is basically a student's job. Their output is learning. Surely the same thing applies? Yet we have the students "work" 40 hours a week at school, then have them "work" even more once they get home. If you go to school for 8 hours a day, then you have two hours of homework a day including weekends, you're "working" 54 hours/week.

By all means, give the students assignments. But they should be assignments the students can complete during school hours. If you don't have time for that, then maybe you should cut back on instructional hours.

I am not to the point of saying 'no' to homework. But I am starting to question a few things.

First off, my situation is not the norm anymore. Not only am I the single earner in my 5 person household, but I work from home full time. I am extremely active in my kids lives.

My kids are very fortunate in that they always have one and often times both parents to help out with school work.

My oldest is 9 - 4th grade. I have a 5 year old in Junior-Kindergarten. Both have homework. (My 2 year old doesn't count here, except when he's literally eating their homework.)

I coach little league, and I talk to a lot of the parents. Some of the parents have kids in the same class as my 9 year old. These are households where both parents work and have more than one child in school.

There is a drastic difference in support that the children receive. Now, I'm not smart. I have a high school education from Arkansas, which is always fighting with Mississippi for the worst rank in education standards. However, I consider my problem solving skills outstanding. I am not doing my kids homework, but I do look at my kids homework. Every night. I help them sometimes. I get on the white board and we go over things. I have them teach the methods back to me.

It's a difference that just last night, a mother of one of the kids came up to me and was talking about the math homework they had today. Her daughter had spent an hour on it before the game and still doesn't get it. I hadn't even looked at the homework yet, so I asked my daughter what was going on with the math homework tonight. Her response? Oh yeah, that's super easy. You can look at it when we get home.

So you have something that takes at least 1 hour (I'll find out more about it later if anyone cares!) for one student compared to something that is a nonissue for another student. In 4th grade. That isn't really sustainable. And I'll go out on a limb here and say that her friend who is having a bit more trouble isn't dumb by any means. I've coached her for two years in softball. And we're not special in the other direction, either.

Oh yeah - my 5 year old in Jr K - she has monthly homework assignments. Things like gather fall leaves and glue them to a piece of paper. Trace your hand and stick leaves on it to make a bird. Fun things like that. Not real homework. But she does have things to do at home to gear her up for the future.

Anyways. There are my personal experiences with this stuff in California's central valley.

The issue with the idea of the flipped classroom is I feel the proponents only examine the "happy path" as you might call it in QA. Assuming parents are invested in their child's education and enforce the consumption of the lecture materials and preparation for class the next day the system sounds great. The current model of education in this country is designed (for better or worse) around the opposite paradigm. Mandatory schooling dominated by lecture allows the establishing of a minimum level of exposure. And then homework with penalty provides the negative feedback to ensure (as best possible) the minimum of parental involvement. You still need a home life that treats education as a priority to get excellent results but the floor is capped as best we can.

You see this thinking in almost every metric by which we grade schools. % failing to pass test, % drop out, etc are all built on the foundation of measuring the efficacy of the achievement floor.

Repetition, when overdone, leads to an absence of learning. And repetition in the context of rote memorization is often actively harmful to learning. The biggest thing missing in modern public education is synthesis, because there's no time for it, but that's how learning truly sinks in and becomes valuable. Otherwise it's all just disconnected trivia.