One of the smartest decisions I made in college too. I was taking astrophysics and in addition to the lectures and tests there was of course a weekly lab with its own set of homework. One week the lab was very difficult, requiring massive amounts of additional mathematical computation. I quit after 19 hours and got a 7/10; another member of my study group quit after 26 hours and got a 9/10. I realized that choosing to earn 2 fewer points on one lab assignment was worth the extra 7 hours I didnât have to spend on the work.
1 Like
your spirit will be crushed when youâre 27, so we might as well crush you when youâre 7.
i hear this attitude from more administrators than youâd believe. there is a time in a personâs life when they need to learn to deal with stress that piles up night after night after night. but not in second grade. weâll lose those kids.
19 Likes
Neoliberal was a term from the 1930âs.
The reason you are suddenly seeing it everywhere is because republican branding gurus like Frank Luntz have pushed it through think tanks like the Cato Institute to rebrand the excesses of capitalism as caused by liberalism instead of conservatism, in preparation for the upcoming match with Hillary Clinton, and the associated dredging up of the Clinton/Blair âThird Wayâ neoconservative economic deregulation agenda.
1 Like
The reality - students in Asian countries study, STUDY, more than ten hours a day, even on weekends. I donât think Iâve ever heard an Asian parent complain about the excessive amounts of homework their children receive. Many children do not live in families that have âplannedâ activities five days a week. This issue about âtoo much homeworkâ began in the early 1990âs when the more affluent among us decided that âplay datesâ was a lot more beneficial for their children than homework. Our public schools may not be as broken as we perceive. Parents, on the other hand, have clearly lost common sense along the way. For example: parents no longer look to others (think grandparents, older aunts/uncles) to seek parenting advice, schools have been relegated to babysitters without the right to discipline (Zero Tolerance- I donât know why supposed educators would abdicate their right to discipline students), to, âMy God my little Timmy or Dora are suffering from too much homeworkâ while programs in music, the arts and even simple recess, has been eliminated just to prep students for meaningless exams that are not geared to measure what should be taught in the classroom. Bravo to those of you who managed to succeed in college without historically embedded study skills, but I donât know how comfortable Iâd be placing my life in my your hands as a surgeon or anything regarding my health. Homework should be a tool used to enhance what a student has learned in class that day, a tool that ensures that said knowledge does not disappear quickly. Our busy Americans lives are fast learning how to eliminate rituals that allow people to succeed and rise in life. We have done much over the last thirty years to ensure that our cultures encompassing love affair with entertainment will continue to erode our abilities to effectively compete in a burgeoning international stage. Part of the lament about âtoo much homeworkâ resides in our over arching sense of entitlement and American exceptionalism.
Studying is, or can be different than homework. Things that I had a more difficult time comprehending or remembering, I spent greater amounts of time on. I think that is different from random lengthy assignments given to all.
5 Likes
I am a parent of a 6th and 9th grader, spouse of an elementary teacher and president of the local school board, so Iâve seen this homework debate (which isnât very new) from several angles.
The NYT article misses several key points (and I think Cory does too):
- The main pressure to increase the amount of homework comes from parents, not teachers or administrators. Parents worry that their student is not being adequately prepared or challenged and ask the teachers and administrators to step things up. Not all parents, but a majority of the ones who speak up, favor more homework. So the teachers respond by adding more homework.
- There is a world of difference between carefully thought out, creatively challenging homework, and mind-numbing rote work. The problem is that the former takes much more time both to create, customize to individual students needs, and grade with meaningful feedback. The latter is easy and takes little extra time. The problem is that the latter will stop many of the complaints (âyou wanted more homework? I assigned more homeworkâ).
- As mentioned by other commenters, there ends up being a class difference in the response of students to increased homework, with wealthier and better educated parents better able to help their children. This would not happen nearly so much with a longer school day, but thatâs more expensive and the US is not currently willing pay for this on the public dime.
Interestingly there are âhomework is goodâ/âhomework is badâ narratives on both the right and the left. I live a rural district with a blend of hippies (though itâs their grandchildren who are in school now) and conservatives. You can see point 2 (above) leading to a narrative about âteachers being overworked and underpaid and not having enough timeâ or to one about âteachers being lazy and protected by unionsâ. Equally getting more homework âprovides more education and allows students to fulfill their potentialâ or it âbuilds character and work ethicâ. Or on the anti-homework side: âit grinds the children down and doesnât give them time to play and be creativeâ and âit increases indoctrination or gets in the way of important after school chores/prayerâ.
Conclusion? There are no easy answers. But carefully and slowly spending more money on education with attention to effectiveness will help. Slowly, because (looking at successes like Finland, Singapore, etc) an effective education system is an organically built culture not easily helped with quick fixes.
8 Likes
The American (and Canadian) school system is no longer efficient. It was fine for 20-30 years ago, but the amount that is trying to be crammed into their head is too much, most of it irrelevant. Not only that, but it is increasingly overflowing into after school life. I have been spending on average about 1 hour a night with my son on homework over the last 2 years⌠he is in grade 1. Luckily, my sons school is one of the best in my area, the weeks homework it tailored to work on his weaknesses, not just a generic assignment to the whole class.
Really, beyond grade 9 where you completed your basic math and language skills, the vast majority of high school is irrelevant. Those years are spent training kids to become anything they want to be⌠but they cant be all of it, so most of it is lost the moment the exams end. I learned 100x more about history, technology, business, and even writing after high school, because it interests me. What was drilled into me is long forgotten.
By the end of grade 9, the schools should know your strengths and weaknesses, and high school courses should be tailored to a career path. Some people should be tracking to working with their hands, some in tech, some in the sciences⌠etc. Someone tracking towards becoming a auto mechanic does not need advanced math and history.
My son LOVES his video games, he LOVES his youtube, and if I allowed it, would move from playstation to computer to tablet to tv all day every day. I guide the thing he watches to be somewhat of a learning experience, and encourage him to read and type.
He loves minecraft, lego, and anything remote control (he has a rc boat, helicopter, carsâŚ), which teaches exploration, problem solving, task management, creativity, planning, decision making, hand eye co-ordination⌠and plenty of other skills. He is quite proud of the skills he learns, and loves to share them with friends and teachers at school.
Video games are a new form of interactive media which should be tapped for learning. Get them interested, engage them, let them have fun. They can learn as a byproduct of fun. It is doable⌠go home, play games for homework. New tech can vastly improve the education system, but not as a tack on for the current system.
1 Like
Itâs a very common term in political science and sociology. Often in other areas (i.e., news, casual conversations, etc.) itâs inaccurately referred to as âneoconservativeâ, which is a term youâre more likely to have heard.
This was what bugged me the most about homework when I was in school. My homework was the same as everyone elseâs, and each class was assigned homework as if it were the only class we had to deal with.
As it was, I ignored the homework, aced the tests, and got solid Bâs. What a waste of time all around.
7 Likes
There must be more than 2 billion (3 billion?) Asians. For the purposes of our argument, Iâll have to assume that youâre referring to the reindeer herders of northern Siberia. I hate to tell you this, friendo, but your assertion that they study more than 10 hours is a day is false. In some cases, they donât study AT ALL. Maybe if youâd spent more time on homework (and getting disciplined), you would have a better grasp of Asian geography and work habits.
Iâm not sure what to make of the rest of your post. It seems pretty far removed from my familyâs experience, or the experience of anyone we know.
8 Likes
I would have been in big trouble back in '69. My dad was often disabled and I used to work over 40 hours a week at night while going to high school full time during the day. I once mentioned it to one of my daughterâs teachers who said, âwell, you certainly couldnât have learned anything doing that.â I told him he was wrong. I learned how to work. It turned out that was the most important lesson you need. I took a company public and retired at 50.
1 Like
While there is overlap between âneoconservativesâ and âneoliberals,â theyâre not synonyms. Neoconservative is to distinguish from paleoconservative, the latter being isolationist (or at least against foreign military entanglements) and promoting responsible (if parsimonious) fiscal policy more sophisticated than âBLARGHL I DONT WANNA PAY TAXES WARGHL.â
I kind of miss them.
Hereâs a rundown.
3 Likes
Perhaps if youâd slept more, the time spent working would have been more productive. If the work load was seriously so high as to merit that time commitment (irrespective of the diminishing/negative returns when sleep deprived), I would suggest you were at the wrong university.
1 Like
âThe school is a business that produces educated children as products. The teachers are employees. The administrators are managers.â This is the wrong way to think of public education and the responsibility we have to educate the citizens of the future. Privatizing public works is a documented disaster.
2 Likes
Many products of the Asian education system are adults working within the system to dismantle it. They accurately perceive it as relentless all consuming competition and know that parents drive it, they can not put on the brakes.
Asian countries like South Korea, Japan and even China lead the world in suicide and it is driven by study, testing and economic expectations. Brutal individualistic capitalism on top of a culture of family loyalty, study, and testing.
The Asian study culture is not something to emulate - it has a very real body count.
We have known that and used to make fun of it. Now we tell our fellow citizens to emulate it. Itâs putting work and work product ahead of the welfare of people and itâs absolutely despicable. You may want the best of the best for your surgeon. I am happy with a guy who is talented, healthy and rested.
The last time I went in for surgery I didnât ask what school the surgeon went to or what his grades were. I got a recommendation from other good doctors. I observed his competence, health and effective time management. The frazzled do everything overworked nurse who walked in the room after reading the wrong chart - she freaked me the fuck out especially what she would have cut. She came in asking about my testicles and I was so shocked I had no witty rejoinder.
8 Likes
Ah the after-school hours⌠I remember collecting caterpillars and the leaves they needed to form cocoons. I remember playing with my second hand microscope, and role playing with my second hand microscope. I remember hitting the library to find the few books I would read that eve entirely under my own recognizance. I remember staging, setting up props and costumes and creating elaborate scenarios for my large stuffed animal menagerie. I remember D&D, and construction paper and graph paper. I remember talking about math and geometry and literature with my best friend. I remember playing hide and seek. I remember way too many after-school cartoons, and Mystery, Nova and Masterpiece Theatre on PBS. I remember developing exciting new and innovating masturbation techniques in the surge of hormones preceding my finding sexual partners. I remember walks on up the mountainsides just to turn and look back at the valley. I remember making friends, and then again and again into deeper and wider friendships.
I chronically underperformed on my homework.
Later, after a few failures at community college and taking a slow time to pull my shit together in college, I did well at top tier universities in graduate school.
The homework sometimes helped (actually reading the literature, actually working through the math and physics problems), but was a relatively small part of my overall learning context.
What is the benefit of intense homework again? (I mean aside from breeding 60-hour work week drones?)
9 Likes
Unless you are rich enough to rape those privatized assets for your own benefit!
1 Like
I actually disagree with your point about repetition being pointless. Maths at school and undergrad is all about practice. Itâs about getting so much exposure to the principles that they become second nature. Itâs about putting the mental tools permanently into the tool box. When people say they are bad at maths, they invariably mean they didnât put sufficient effort in to grasp the early stuff and so they never understood the tower that builds on that.
There is a discussion to be had about the best way to achieve practice, but just sitting down and doing problem after problem is clearly one strategy - yes it can be really dull, but shrug. You didnât suggest an alternative in your criticism - perhaps you could?
From the article
Researchers asked 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities ⌠The students reported averaging 3.1 hours of homework nightly, and they added comments like: âThereâs never a break. Never.â
SO no, the average California kid is not working that hard, only those who choose to go to high-performing high schools. If we interviewed students in the top music high schools/conservatories in the country we might learn the students practice their instruments 5 hours per day.
Seriously, 3 hours per day at top high schools is completely typical in most of the world. But then, high schools in the rest of the world donât have football,cheerleading, choir,⌠those are club events one does if one has the time.
1 Like
Kids learn differently. Homework undoubtedly helps some, but others, as weâve seen in the comments, learn just fine without homework. Yet homework is required of all of them and Iâm not sure there is any documentation that homework applied to all students increases overall mastery. Homework has always seemed to me to be like standardized test scores -something we do to make ourselves feel like we are doing something nand to assuage our guilt at producing students who canât reason or think critically.
The basic questions that need answering are how can so many students get out of high school and know nothing about critical thinking, reason and science? How can they not be able to spot propaganda when itâs fed to them by Fox and Frank Luntz? How can they know virtually nothing about the economy they are entering?
2 Likes
