Should Schools Get Rid of Homework? (npr.org) 184
Tony Isaac shares a report from NPR: Federal survey data shows that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students, in particular, has been steadily declining for the past decade. Some educators and parents say this is a good thing -- students shouldn't spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework is complicated. Some studies show that students who spend more time on homework perform better than their peers. For example, a longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the amount of time they spent on math homework performed better in math, even one year later.
Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed. More homework was also associated with negative attitudes about school for younger children in the study. "The best educators figured out a long time ago that we can control what we can control," and that's what happens during the school day, Superintendent Garrett said, not homework. "There has been a shift away from it naturally anyway, and I felt like this made it equitable across our entire school system." "The best argument for homework is that mathematical procedures require practice, and you don't want to waste classroom time on practice, so you send that home," said Tom Loveless, a researcher and former teacher who has studied homework.
Ariel Taylor Smith, senior director of the Center for Policy and Action at the National Parents Union, said: "The thing they point to is that it's an equity issue, and not all parents have the same availability and ability to support their students. I would make the argument that if a kid is really far behind in school, that's an equity issue. They need the additional time to practice." Kids, she said, "need more practice ... Sometimes, you do have to practice the boring stuff, like math."
"The interesting issue for folks to consider is not should there be more homework, but should there be better homework," said Joyce Epstein, who has studied homework and is the co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. "Better homework in math might be knowing the fact that kids don't have to be practicing for hours, 10 to 20 examples," when they could establish mastery in less time.
Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed. More homework was also associated with negative attitudes about school for younger children in the study. "The best educators figured out a long time ago that we can control what we can control," and that's what happens during the school day, Superintendent Garrett said, not homework. "There has been a shift away from it naturally anyway, and I felt like this made it equitable across our entire school system." "The best argument for homework is that mathematical procedures require practice, and you don't want to waste classroom time on practice, so you send that home," said Tom Loveless, a researcher and former teacher who has studied homework.
Ariel Taylor Smith, senior director of the Center for Policy and Action at the National Parents Union, said: "The thing they point to is that it's an equity issue, and not all parents have the same availability and ability to support their students. I would make the argument that if a kid is really far behind in school, that's an equity issue. They need the additional time to practice." Kids, she said, "need more practice ... Sometimes, you do have to practice the boring stuff, like math."
"The interesting issue for folks to consider is not should there be more homework, but should there be better homework," said Joyce Epstein, who has studied homework and is the co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. "Better homework in math might be knowing the fact that kids don't have to be practicing for hours, 10 to 20 examples," when they could establish mastery in less time.
Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
It was always wrong to acclimate kids to work colonizing their home life. "Preparing" people for the workplace just means conditioning them to believe their suffering is deserved.
Re: Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Yes (Score:4)
Doing work that doesn't result in additional comprehension or knowledge is not only non-beneficial, but because it's emotionally defeating, it can be worse than not doing any homework because all the student learns is that they don't get it and likely never will.
The big problem with education is that many/most teachers aren't good at tutoring/teaching. That is, they say stuff in class that doesn't help the students learn new concepts. Or with many teachers, they don't even both with the lecturing. They simply assign stuff and hand out tests. At home, the same pattern repeats. What would be great would be either work that by design is self-tutoring. Or maybe some sort of AI-based instruction that forces the student to ask questions about what they don't understand.
Re: Yes (Score:2)
Perhaps kids who feel emotionally defeated by extra practice arenâ(TM)t being challenged and need more advanced content?
If you get in the ring with Mike Tyson and lose (Score:2)
You know I don't think you have thought this thing through...
Fuck I get it. We are nerds and a bunch of us got bored in school and started fucking around and ended up dropping out. That is a rare experience for most kids. For most kids it's not that they aren't being challenged it's that they need more positive feedback.
One of the dirty little secrets of our society is the majority of children aren't wanted. But there is li
Teachers are great at lecturing and teaching (Score:2)
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Maybe, but the real risk comes from this bit:
Ariel Taylor Smith, senior director of the Center for Policy and Action at the National Parents Union, said: "The thing they point to is that it's an equity issue, and not all parents have the same availability and ability to support their students. I would make the argument that if a kid is really far behind in school, that's an equity issue. They need the additional time to practice." Kids, she said, "need more practice ... Sometimes, you do have to practice the boring stuff, like math."
What the parents' union person misses is that quite often doing more or less homework ends up being a symptom, rather than a cause:
In both cases, a better way to handle that is doing more supervised practice du
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Gee, I just did my homework in class while the teacher lectured. I still had some left over here and there, but it wasn't that bad. Maybe if the students weren't busy fucking off half the time, they'd be able to get the homework done? Crazy talk I guess.
Considering how terrible our Math scores are since covid, kids need more practice on it, not less. Oh well, they can just ask AI and blindly accept the answer. What could go wrong...
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You didn't address the comment to which you replied AT ALL. Not even a tiny bit.
Follow the Money. (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends on the kid. It needs to be adaptive. I'm a listen to the teacher type. Others are book learners. Still others need homework. What's needed is an understanding of what works best for the individual child, and the actual test should be the ultimate basis for the class grade.
That final class grade, has been turned into a school funding plan. And we know what happens when you inject a profit motive into something that shouldn't have it.
The core problem in the American educational system, is it was reduced to little more than teaching students how to pass a standardized test at the end of the school year by literally taking the same damn test over and over and over again until the final final final we-mean-it-THIS-time final grade is tallied that maximizes school funding based on grades.
Remove the profit motive, and we just might get back to teaching something worthwhile instead of teaching something profitable.
Yes. This problem was manifesting itself before it was completely FUBARed with a screen for every student junkie they never dare leave behind.
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100%!
Yep... that's all school has been since I was in school (class of '02, here).
The kids who want to get into like Computers 1 or whatever, had to have passed keyboarding 1, 2, 3 (I think there was a 3... long time ago). I could be typing in mIRC on the computer and have a conversation with the parents while watching TV... but I can't get into Computers 1.
And, the "standardized tests" are a ton of stuff that even the brain-dead zombies in the corner could answer... especially if it's multiple choice. Ot
Re: Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
The big problem I see isn't the HW learning feedback cycle it's my daughter who is a freshman in college has no idea how to plan college hw and projects.
Re: Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Teachers are under political pressure to give students As. The grade they give to the kids is implicitly a grade they are giving to themselves and to the school district. So, they have strong incentives to inflate those grades.
I don't know anything about your kids, of course. Maybe yours are exceptionally bright. In any case, your anecdote isn't evidence, and the grades received in high school are not a measure of their actual level of understanding and performance (given these pressures).
It is basically settled science that "practice makes perfect." Homework, as implemented, may be problematic, but most people do not have eidetic memories and need to do homework in order to master the material.
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whether it's in class or at home there's no way afaict to learn math or anything that requires selecting and applying algorithms to a problem to solve it without practice.
however in these days of video, I could see asigning kids to watch the lecture at home... and then do the practice in class. ...
ofc most of the kids still wouldn't... but there's little advantage, imo , to having a teacher stand there and give a live chalk talk for 30 min over a video. and watching videos as hw seems easier
Re: Yes (Score:2, Insightful)
Teachers are under political pressure to give students As.
Bullshit.
Teachers need to teach children.
We used to have curriculums that teachers were supposed to teach, but over time, they strayed from covering that material, so states started achievement tests to measure the effectiveness of school's programs (note, most state achievement test scores are not included in student records, they are about the school). Then teachers started complaining about being forced to be 'teaching to the test'... YES! The test captures the required material teachers are supposed to
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Common core and no child left behind has absolutely destroyed the education system. Because funding is tied to it, my kids spend WEEKS being drilled on EXACTLY what is on the test, not one iota more, with no thought to intellectual curiosity, no ability for the teacher to explore a tangent that gets the kids excited about the subject. Then the kids spend days grinding out meaningless standardized tests that don't go towards their grade when they could be learning.
And because the testing and the lead up to
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Common core math has ruined any parent's chance at trying to help the kid learn math... parents should not need to go back to school to learn how to add something together. I've looked up pics of what that "math" looks like... if my kid (if I had a kid) brought me a math problem like that, I'd dig out the holy water and try to cast the demon out of the piece of paper/tablet! I learned math the old way, that's how I do math... imagine trying to balance a checkbook using Common Core Math.
All 'No Child Left
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Trust me, the same college professions regularly "cave" and give students more time and makeups for being lazy shits in college as well. My niece saw it in her Master's program and I've seen in at a community college level. It's a real shame but at the end of the day, education is a business and the business needs to cater to the customer.
We're REALLY fallen in the past 30 years.
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I have children in every phase of schooling in one of the top 10 largest school districts in the US. My kids essentially do zero homework. Almost straight A's. Even things like book reports and research papers all mostly done in class. Actual work at home amounts to maybe 30 minutes a week at most. The big problem I see isn't the HW learning feedback cycle it's my daughter who is a freshman in college has no idea how to plan college hw and projects.
While I don't have a problem with homework per se, When my son was in middle school and beyond, the amount of homework they assigned the kids was mind boggling. Some nights he would come home from school, and not be done with homework until it was time for bed.
And looking at it, it wasn't proving much - maybe an hour would have been more than enough. If the child could understand and figure out the first few problems, the rest was just busywork.
And then there was the common core math. Taking utterly s
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It isn't colonial, it is industrial. The current format of school is that of preparing for a factory workforce. We are post industrial, knowledge/AI/Whatever it will be called workforce.
Educators need to come to grip with getting EVERY child their MAX educational value we can. This means breaking the rows and columns of desks in a classroom, and getting kids their most valuable education they can get. This means some will do much better than others. Talent has gradations. Not everyone can be a Astro Physics
Re: Yes (Score:3)
Schools are making factory workers? Then why did so many schools drop auto, wood, metal, etc classes?
The worst thing the educational system has done in my lifetime was, I think, was perpetuate the lie "every child can and should go to college." How many lives were ruined by schools/teachers telling unprepared students to go to college, only to fail and incur massive student loan debt.
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Schools are making factory workers? Then why did so many schools drop auto, wood, metal, etc classes?
Those are skilled things, factory workers are ideally low skilled and replaceable. That was one of the main points of the factory system and later the American system. You're not skilfully chiselling wood or hand turning machine parts in a factory.
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The worst thing the educational system has done in my lifetime was, I think, was perpetuate the lie "every child can and should go to college." How many lives were ruined by schools/teachers telling unprepared students to go to college, only to fail and incur massive student loan debt.
The problem is figuring out which students "should go to college" when they are in 7th / 8th grade, and their brains are still developing, and much of their performance at school up to that point has more to do with their SES and family situation than with innate ability. This 'tracking' system sent many bright, capable poor and non-white students into tech / vocational tracks when they were extremely capable of performing well in college. Having high expectations for all children does make a difference in
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Schools are making factory workers? Then why did so many schools drop auto, wood, metal, etc classes?
The worst thing the educational system has done in my lifetime was, I think, was perpetuate the lie "every child can and should go to college." How many lives were ruined by schools/teachers telling unprepared students to go to college, only to fail and incur massive student loan debt.
The Educational system tried a social experiment and fell flat on their faces. Inculcating the concept of everyone should go to college, and denigrating anyone who didn't as stupid.
And part of the effort ended up making "gut" or opinion majors, or expanding existing opinion majors to place these kids in.
The results? A glut of young adults with huge debt, and no employment opportunities to discharge that debt who were told they would be leading the world soon because they were superior. They would be
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This means breaking the rows and columns of desks in a classroom, and getting kids their most valuable education they can get. This means some will do much better than others. Talent has gradations. Not everyone can be a Astro Physics expert.
One of the cruelest lies ever told to children is that if they only try hard enough, that they can be anything they want to be, and once they find their passion, they'll not "work" a day in their lives.
No - you cannot anything you want to be. I cannot be a prima ballerina, or even a nurse - I'm just not physically or psychologically suited.
And then there is passion - I am a passionate person about my career, may family, and even my hobbies. I can state unequivocally that very few people have pass
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"What factories? Let me know if you see one wandering in the woods... I wanna shoot it and mount it in my den!" (loads two elephant-gun shells)
What the schools should prepare the kids for is losing their jobs (and their parents losing their jobs) to AI.
Re: Yes (Score:2)
The important thing is that students be asked to independently reinforce/demonstrate their mastery of the subject matter. This does not have to be taken home and done - this could/should be done in a study hall setting during the school day.
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If you take your employer's work home with you, that's something you're doing for your employer. They probably (assuming illegal shit isn't happening) pay you to do that.
If you take your school work home with you, that's something you're doing for yourself. You might even be paying them for it.
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How do you teach a literature class in a world of no homework? All class time would just be taken up reading the novel. Also forget about learning how to write an essay. We should just skip that too I guess.
Same with mathematics. You can learn the theory of how to apply integrals or trig formulae in class, but until you've worked a few hundred problems, you don't really know calculus or trig.
Same for foreign languages. You can practice speaking in class and learning about grammar rules, but you need to
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Well... that's what their future is gonna be (because everyone's kids are going to be making $100k/yr at an office job)... sitting behind a desk typing numbers into a computer, go home and deal with office stuff the rest of the night... until AI deletes their department.
Do they even use paper in schools anymore?
There won't be workplaces... AI rules all! Meanwhile, we'll get UBI checks for like $300 (literally like $5 more than rent and utilities), we'll get SNAP for food, and some county assistance for the
No (Score:5, Insightful)
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Is this another blame the Republicans thing when the Democrats clearly control the education in this country?
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Hate to tell ya, that's how every single discussion ends up going on here, and it's one of a dozen or so users that start it. The ones who start it don't even realize that regardless who you or I vote for (that's the popular vote), the Butt In The Chair (and the Vice-Butt) is decided by the Electoral College.
Re: (Score:2)
No, actually, they decide to enlist because the movies and games make it look all cool and shit (and the soldier always gets the babes)... and then, the kids go off to fight some war or battle and realize that they can't pull the trigger or "doing all this is too hard".
If Jesus reappears outside my apartment building walking across the Mississippi River (when there's no ice on the river), and I can verify that there's no wires or a submerged platform or something... as I think more in science terms, I'd wan
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
Mindless homework foisted on the students doesn't necessarily make them smarter.
The summary did a solid job of presenting some perspectives toward that end.
I will particularly agree that *maybe* practicing math has value beyond the classroom setting, but will counter that in my experience that is only valuable if a parent has the availability and skill to check their work and help them identify missteps.
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Anyone can be taught to read at a young age. Poor, rich, brown or white, doesn't matter. Libraries still exist. You can check out the books for free. Here is a link showing why fostering reading upon your child is important :
https://blog.dalcu.com/the-pow... [dalcu.com]
https://www.nationwidechildren... [nationwidechildrens.org]
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research... [cam.ac.uk]
https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com]
Having grown up poor, I actually did utilize the library quite a bit. It definitely helped me in school as I was able to read the book while the te
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Society is dumb, that's just the way it is. The problem is normalizing it so that everyone thinks they are educated when they actually aren't.
But even if we fix that, people are still going to be dumb.
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Math teaches you critical thinking skills. You really want to stop teaching that? I'm sure Trump would love to hear your ideas. He loves the poorly educated after all.
Will probably be the opposite (Score:2)
Invert the process (Score:5, Interesting)
There's long been a school of thought that the homework should be the learning portion of the curriculum, and the classwork should be the practice portion. The exact opposite of how it's currently done. Students can read the assignments or learn at their own pace using whatever methods they find suits them, and then can demonstrate their understanding and practice their new knowledge under supervision of a teacher who can help them with any difficult spots and recommend tools/methods that might work better.
This also solves the "cheating" problem because you can't copy someone else's knowledge without actually learning it and an LLM can't learn it for you either.
=Smidge=
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There's not one right way for students to learn, because different people learn best in different ways. The idea that all students will benefit most from trying to learn from books at home is a ridiculous one at best.
Students can read the assignments or learn at their own pace using whatever methods they find suits them, and then can demonstrate their understanding and practice their new knowledge under supervision of a teacher
After they practiced doing it wrong for an hour at home as their first exposure to the idea? Great plan with no drawbacks!
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> After they practiced doing it wrong for an hour at home as their first exposure to the idea? Great plan with no drawbacks!
No, they would not be practicing anything for the first time at home. The whole point is they review the lecture/reading materials/youtube videos or whatever on their own in a way that suits them and the application of that knowledge happens in class.
> There's not one right way for students to learn, because different people learn best in different ways
Which is exactly why you le
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That seems like it makes sense for older kids (high school) who can be more self-directed. But for elementary or middle-school age kids, having a teacher to interact with as they are learning seems far more likely to have a good result.
My Algebra teacher in Middle School did it this way, and it was not a good fit for me at the time. I didn't have the discipline to learn the material independently, so when class practice happened I was often not far along enough to ask meaningful questions. Somone needed to
homework is not the problem (Score:4, Informative)
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I always did well on tests and found homework redundant. When I was in high school homework was 50% of your grade. I could get perfect test scores and still fail a class. The reality is that school failed me with unnecessary dogma. You can be talented and not give a shit about school. You can be talented in non-academic ways.
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Sure, but the amount of positions in society that don't require academics to be successful is not very high. The vast majority of people cannot compete at a professional sports level and our technologies have more or less done away with ditch diggers. Even our ditch diggers now need to understand at least a bit of machinery and get certified to do so.
diffract has the gist of it. Your students are either self motivated (via parental influence) or they are not. My sister is a teacher and has lamented that she
Better idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think getting rid of homework is a solution to the current issues facing kids. I think a better idea is to stop trying to cram ten bazillion extra curricular activities into every moment of their lives so that they can never have any actual downtime. Homework becomes an overwhelming impossibility when you also have way too many other activities to ever fit in a day. I sat and chatted with my nieces one time about their weekly schedules and my mind was blown by the time they got to Wednesday with how many scheduled activities they had. There's truly never a down moment for them. I don't know how they have time to get addicted to the devices they all carry with all the shit they're trying to cram into a day.
I think light, but steady, homework is fine. The argument to get rid of it is just as ridiculous as the idea that we need to increase it to the point it's the only thing kids have time to tackle. How about we have a debate about the right balance, instead of the black or white, all or nothing approach we tend to take toward everything else?
Re: Better idea. (Score:2)
Extracurricular activities would not be a problem if kids were not also wasting time on video games and the internet. Kids that are not addicted to gaming, short videos, and social media do just fine with extracurriculars. The extracurriculars keep them from getting bored. I took my son's devices away and now he is happy with three music lessons a week, music practice, math tutoring, and rocketry.
Re: Better idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
Boredom is not a bad thing. Being bored leads to creativity. If you always solve your child's boredom problem for them, how are they to manage themselves? What you just described sounds like a micro-managed schedule. I suppose that's better then being glued to a phone, but it's nothing compared to the freedom of our childhoods (or were you micro manged as well?).
I don't mean to come across harsh or judgemental. You are just doing whatever most everyone else in society is doing. A product of our social environment. Sadly, I don't think it's leading to happier, healthier or more competent human beings. AI is just going to make all this even worse.
I didn't have ANY of the activities you just mentioned. I had my bicycle, some sporting equipment, video games and friends. We spent as much time outside and out of our parents sight more often then not. So long as I was home by dinner, everything was fine. Got yelled at a few times when I forgot to call as mention I was just at my friends house...
So glad I'm opting out of parenting. Best of luck to the rest of you though. Our society is toxic and not getting better.
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Here is a nice article that covers what you are talking about. https://spacedaily.com/t-psych... [spacedaily.com]
While I didn't grow up in the 70s, more then late 80s and 90s, it reflected more on how I grew up compared to how my coworkers children are being raised.
Children have their schedules completely micro-managed by their parents now. It's sick and has a major cost associated with it that we don't discuss.
I think the closest we have today is "free-range children" but frankly, I suspect many people consider this child
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I'm curious, exactly WHO is to blame for the ADD FOMO Generation raising the ADHD YOLO Generation of screen addicted junkies whose collective attention span is that of a fucking hummingbird, and are now wholly addicted to needing ten bazillion "activities" scrolling/moving/running past them for every waking second of every day?
Years ago I was an adult leader on an event where we took a group of teenagers to a remote island with no services (we took our own food and water and used composting outhouses). When we got back to civilization, the kids all engaged in a bunch of physical activities, variations on tag and simon says and that sort of thing, while the adults all huddled around the wifi access point. It was disturbing to the point where I put my own phone away.
The kids are just doing what their parents taught them. As thos
yes but it should be longer (Score:2)
Schools should have twice as many teachers and the school day should be one third longer. Good luck finding funding though?
Hot take? (Score:3)
Kids are already in school doing far too little, for far too long. Then as adults it's much the same, we're spending far too many hours at work but not truly productive. Granted this isn't universal, but I'm sure many will agree more common than not.
I'm an advocate of focused instruction vs. "standardized" bulk rote learning. I'm sure many will disagree but it's hard to argue against the reality much of our college bachelor programs have devolved into an overly expensive repeat of high school level education. But school districts are often tied financially to this model, where butts in seats equals money. The teachers hate it. The kids hate it. Some parents probably like it because "I need my kids in school so I can work my full 8 hours" but is that smart? No. It's not. None of it is.
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school districts are often tied financially to this model, where butts in seats equals money
School districts are tied a model where the executives and consultants can make more than the teachers. It's a travesty and it needs to stop.
The teachers hate it.
The teachers hate it because they're getting fucked over bigly.
The kids hate it.
The kids hate it because it's shit. If only we allocated funding correctly and didn't fuck over teachers (these things are related) then perhaps they could have decent schooling.
Some parents probably like it because "I need my kids in school so I can work my full 8 hours" but is that smart? No. It's not. None of it is.
True. It's really fucking stupid to have everyone working more hours than necessary to do more work than necessary because we have
More homework? (Score:2)
I mean, 21% of Americans are functionally ILLITERATE.
Does having a lot of homework keep kids busy? (Score:3)
But should there be better homework? (Score:2)
Yes, now they're asking the right question. Most traditional homework is designed for one type of brain who can easily perform the task and learn from it. But not all brains are wired the same and while one student may excel with homework, another may struggle due to various factors.
Maybe (Score:2)
I certainly don't think kids should be loaded down with an hour or more of homework every single day. But I think 10-15 minutes per day of drills or practice exercises is fine.
Also, do not give kids homework they can't handle, especially if they have to rope parents in to help them or do it for them. That's just nonsense.
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How do we know they can handle it or not if we haven't tried giving it to them first and seeing the results? Also, education is not just the schools job. Parents are a huge part of the educational process. Parents that don't participate are a large part of the problem.
Oh, they can't find time? Who's fault is that? You breed them, maybe you should take the time to be apart of their lives and education. I know it's possible, because I hear at least two of my coworkers that do spend time helping their children
Homework does not work* (Score:5, Insightful)
What does happen is that students fail in December. They get guidelines on what to do and have ample of exercises to try at home. They can chose which ones they make. I provide constructive feedback every week. It works reasonably well. In other words, homework for those kids that need it. Parents are motivated to help, kid is motivated because there is a good reason to do better. But yes, I have stories where it works very well and other ones as well. It is not a golden ticket.
Education is a struggle. If it is not, you are not doing a good job
* in general
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If a student doesn't have the discipline to do their homework, their parent(s) have failed them. It was drilled into me that you have to do your homework before you can go outside a play. Unfortunately, now parents seem to load their children down with extracurricular activities that have fuck all to do with education. Then the kid doesn't want to do the homework or they run out of time because the homework wasn't the priority.
I was thoroughly drilled that school and homework (which was reaffirming what I l
Yes and no (Score:2)
Yes, do have EXTRA-work, but in the school and supervised by a (different) teacher.
The problem with classic HOME-work was that, more often than not, the results would depend A LOT on parent/adult involvement, from no supervision, to light supervision, to prodding*, to downright the parent doing the work instead of the children.
Lower the ammount of EXTRA-work, supervise (by a neutral adult, i.e. a different teacher) to be sure the children does it, and offer a tiny wee bit of aid, just to unstuck the childre
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If you are a parent that pawns off the entire education process to the school, you are failing your parent. Education starts in the home and is an on going process. Parental involvement matters. The biggest one is instilling the value of reading into your child as young as possible.
Sadly, a large part of our society sees reading as torture. It explains a lot.
As someone who works in education (Score:2)
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"Schools are nothing but babysitting dens until the kids turn 18"
If this is your attitude, I'd suggest another career path. My public-school education was more rigorous than college and the graduate degrees I later received from famous name schools. I could not have excelled later without that foundation. They were far from "babysitting dens". If they are, then the educators should not expect parents, students, or state policies to fix it. The problem is in the mirror.
Asking the wrong question (Score:2)
Some things need rote learning or private study (Score:5, Insightful)
Multiplication tables, history dates, state and country locations on the world map, Chemical formulae including the Periodic Table, Physics equations, foreign language vocabulary and reading set texts in English. There is no virtue in learning / doing those in school time.
To a large extent however this debate is avoiding the main issue; why are we spending vastly more on education than lots of other countries and achieving far less...
HOMEWORK = PRACTICE (Score:2)
I did almost no homework. not that it wasn't assigned in my day. some parents complained; they wanted their gen X kids busy when nobody was home before they returned home from work!
You still need homework and some habits formed from having to do that. People forget that the child does not require any parent at home to do their homework. If you don't let the GOP put your child into a child-labor job they will have the time.
NOTE- the schools should provide free daycare services after school. For many childr
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NOTE- the schools should provide free daycare services after school.
Then the government should fund it.
For many children, this would be safer and better than being at home!
OK, but how much of that is due to the deliberate dumbing down of the populace by the Republicans since the Reagan era, which we can only combat with more education? Instead of free day care, we should spend the money making school longer, and instead of cramming it with more shit, give more time for personalized instruction and alternate learning methods.
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NOTE- the schools should provide free daycare services after school.
Then the government should fund it.
Then the taxpayer should fund it. (corrected that for you...)
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Then the taxpayer should fund it. (corrected that for you...)
Yeah, no shit. That's where we should be spending our money, making a better future, not on genocides and quests for oil.
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There are a few things like multiplication tables that require rote memorization, but most things shouldn't. This is especially true now that basic facts are available instantly anywhere.
History classes shouldn't waste time making kids memorize long lists of dates or names. Memorizing the extract dates of the battle of Gettysburg is pointless if you don't understand the broader context of the Civil War and the battle's role in shaping it.
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Multiplication tables
Meh. I as always shit at multiplication tabled at school. I'm still probably worse than a good school student, but I actually understand maths, so I can do fast order of magnitude estimates and sanity checks. Precise digits are for calculators.
Chemical formulae including the Periodic Table
I mean you need an idea of what goes where and what that means, but rot memorization of it is kind of pointless. How much does it help knowing Bismuth is a pnictogen? I guess if you work with pnictides
Yes (Score:2)
So basically have them do the same things they would do for homework, but mostly during school hours. Students that need even more practice still have the option of practicing outside of school.
I did my math on my 45-60 min bus ride home. (Score:2)
Pretty much immune to car sickness.
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Well aren't you all preppy and well prepared. I did my chemistry homework in the bus in on the day it was due. Yeah I could not do anything without a deadline looming.
Recently finished Int Algebra @ a comunity college (Score:2)
I don't see how grade school kids can effectively learn math just in classroom time. Keep the homework, please.
The paradox (Score:2)
Not if mastery comes from repetition (Score:2)
My son got an A in high school calculus, but I was suspicious because I never saw the homework coming home. College calculu
Best to discard equity concerns (Score:2)
If there are any other arguments - real arguments - pay attention to them, but the equity concerns should be filtered out of the conversation and their advocates seen as having wasted people's time.
Short answer: Yes (Score:2)
Long answer: Homework has spiraled out of control. We need to have a critical debate of what the actual point of homework is. Should it be a daily slog because that's what the curriculum demands, or is it because kids need repetition to learn a difficult subject.
A US middle school student will have 6-8 classes per day. If they all demand 1hr of homework... how does that not lead to burnout?
One Solid Reason for Homework (Score:2)
I haven't been in the classroom since close to the year 2000, so I don't remember the study names. What I do remember is that there were studies, plural - studies, that showed that when you learn how to do a new task or learn new information, that using that information or practicing the task within 24 hours increases the chance of it being remembered by a large percentage. That's over 25 years ago for me, and I'm not going to claim it's at a certain percentage, but I know it was WELL over 50%. So if you le
Sure! (Score:2)
We're easing up on nearly everything else in the name of any number of lofty goals, so why not homework? In our collective rush to make sure nobody gets offended, is pressured, feels stupid, or gets "left behind", we increasingly regard advancement as untrustworthy, and preparation as a side effect rather than a goal.
So, sure. Let's drop homework into that abyss. Today's teachers are already blessed with students so smart they don't really need teaching at all. I'm sure that our current generation in middle
Practice? (Score:2)
"Practice makes perfect." - all proverbs are finally stereotypes based on reality.
We lived in Europe for a while and some of the schools had a time limit on homework. Kids were expected to stop at 45 minutes and submit whatever they had finished till that point.
We got regularly called in because our elder one would finish in 30 minutes and was making the rest of the class look bad. (Kid is an MD now, so there's that. We don't brag about the younger ones.)
Schooling is 100% broken, and has been. (Score:2)
Be honest about the purpose, and measure if you reach those goals.
Public school is "free" babysitting. Indoctrination. Forced "socialization" (break their wills). All to create useful cogs. Serfs.
Oh, and keep our mental health medical providers in business with plenty of early trauma and victim blaming.
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2 hours of homework on the weekend is excessive. Should be zero. And maybe 10-15 minutes on weekdays.
WHY? (Score:2)
You assert that without offering any reasoning ;)
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You are right, but also ... someone who is half-assing everything and gaming the system is not going to learn more from two hours than from fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, someone who is actively engaging with things, might spend the fifteen minutes and then go on to do two hours of additional exploration - but maybe not in the same direction as the specifically-assigned homework. You can't beat learning into people, but you can beat the love of learning out of people.
The crazy part is in assuming that a piec
Great answer; thanks (Score:2)
I suspect that we need to think a lot harder about what school education should look like, and that probably won't conclude that the present approach is fit for purpose. One of the more interesting options is - and don't freak at its origin - the 'Accelerated Christian Education' approach, which has each kid working on their own with a computer that teaches them the ideas and then tests whether they've got it. If they're struggling they can either ask for help - and do something else until the teacher arriv
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OK, if you're employed, please sign up for two hours of extra work on the weekend. Thanks for volunteering!
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Well, I'm just going by my own experience from when I was in school, many decades ago.
It was useful to me to have some homework to practice things that needed practicing, like times tables when I was in the early grades and more advanced mathematics in the later grades. But any day where I had more than about 20 minutes of homework, I became very resentful and fed up.
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So you admit that some homework was indeed helpful. If there is a reading assignment and an essay to be done, what's your solution to this? In my day, we did the reading and the essay on our own time. The in class time was spent on lectures and students asking questions to refine their understanding.
We would discuss the book in class and often talked about hidden means and other literary stuff in the book. The point was to get you to THINK.
I've seen your posts. Some are really good. I know you can think and
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They'll continue to require study out of class. Graded work? Doubtful, for anything written, outside some elite honour system colleges.
ChatGPT grading ChatGPT is a waste of electricity.
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"tracking" is the solution to that (or at least minimizes the impact)... e.g remedial, normal, and honors classes... magnet schools, etc.
but the focus in the US education thinking and efforts for the last 30+ years has been more "closing achievement gaps" between ethnic groups rather than increasing average gains.... because "equity".
so that's exacerbated the focus on bringing up the bottom performers in general and ignoring the top.
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"tracking" is the solution to that (or at least minimizes the impact)... e.g remedial, normal, and honors classes... magnet schools, etc.
but the focus in the US education thinking and efforts for the last 30+ years has been more "closing achievement gaps" between ethnic groups rather than increasing average gains.... because "equity".
Tracking works and we should have more but how does that solve the problem of average performance if you're leaving the majority behind?
Ignoring correlations between poverty, ethnic groups, and achievement and the fact there's schools where 2/3 of students can't read at grade level while just telling poorer schools to spend money on more parallel tracks doesn't help the average. Where are you saying the the new money and teachers should come from?
If you only have a single 7th grade class, then you can't do tracking (in the basic way), but let's say you have 2 7th grade classes. 48 students total.
Further let's say you straight rank them by "ability" (prev grades, IQ, whatever) into 4 groups of 12 A, B, C, D.
You can then choose to either "balance" the classes (e.g. each class has 6 from each group) or you can track them. so the fast class is all A and B and the slower class is C and D.
In the balanced model, both classes proceed at abou
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If you don't teach children times tables and long division (which teaches them to work through steps) how are they ever suppose to get through all the steps for calculus or trigonometry? It builds on itself.
The fact that they are now starting to drop algebra from some high schools is a travesty and an injustice to the students. They are robbing them of a chance to learn critical thinking skills. Oh, it's hard? Well, life not always easy. Sometimes, working through hard stuff is what you have to do.