With the helpful links supplied above on the tangent about what a neoliberal is or isn’t I realized that everyone is correct but just talking about different things. Many of the terms used above like neoliberal, liberal, social liberal, classic liberal, conservative and neoconservative all have different definitions and multiple ones depending on what group is using it. We are also not all from the same country (or even parts of the same country) here on BoingBoing so that adds a nice extra dimension. After we define our terms then let’s argue.
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When i was in school… My child at the top of their class excelled …
Oh, I just remembered that the plural of anecdote is not data, it is anecdotes.
In a discussion with a teacher friend of mine we realized (really continued to realize) that the problem of education in the United States is manifold. First define a list (Common Core, personal opinion, it worked for my ancestors) of what we think a student should know to be successful (survive, thrive, be happy) in the world. Then, it is incredibly difficult to measure whether a student has achieved these goals or mastered this list - testing, but what kind, evaluations, experience. It is then hard to get people to agree on that measure. We go further and want to measure how effective a particular approach or who applies the approach is (teachers, homework, homeschooling, experiential) by using that earlier measure we couldn’t validate or agree on.
Finally to add action thriller excitement to the mix, we make very important things like school funding, a teachers job, keeping a school open, a student’s future, or the very future of our country dependent on improvement in that measure. This perhaps explains some of the excitement when these topics come up.
High schools tend to start around 7:30am and get out somewhere around 3:30pm. Five hours of work plus an hour for dinner would make you done at something like 9:30pm. That seems like an awfully long day to me. (Unless you were “working” for those 5 hours like most high school and undergrads do.)
I graduated in '96 and I don’t actually remember doing homework in high school. Not at home anyway; I think that I did it all during other classes. I find it hard to gauge the amount of work I did in college or grad school for my math major but I sure did feel like I had a lot of free time.
Anyway, giving kids homework doesn’t teach them how to learn for themselves. Once they find something they are interested in learning for themselves comes naturally. That requires some personal time.
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This is where you undermine your own initial argument, which I agree with, but this last bit, if you didn’t have good study skills = you don’t know anything is false on its face.
And saying that homework SHOULD do something = homework DOES something is disingenuous.
This is of course how school administrators abdicate their responsibility, by saying that by following the rules they’ve done enough.
I’m not going to argue the conclusions with you, i agree with some of what you said, but the reasoning you propose argues against your own point.
The difference being that, unlike working at a hot-shot financial services firm, going to school is compulsory and unpaid. Also, there are very few hot-shot financial services firms that force employees to spend hours studying subjects they have no interest in and never will.
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You’re approaching the student who is determined and productive but not test-oriented as a problem to be fixed. You’re coming across like the Victorian teachers who insisted on “fixing” left-handed students. Please consider the possibility that test-taking ability is not important to most students’ lives outside of school, and you may be harming them by trying to mold them into your value system.
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Yeah and nobody had to worry about history before the 1700’s, nothing relevant to learn XD
That was pretty much the norm for the homework that I received. The reading was typically enforced/encouraged by requiring an outline of what was read to be turned in.
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Our local public middle school has a “No Homework” policy. Teachers aren’t allowed to grade homework, so that it won’t affect the term grades. When these same kids go to high school and are slammed with homework, they have no idea how to study and often fail many courses. Then, No Child Left Behind forces the school to pass the kids to the next grade level. When the kids leave high school and go to college, they fail miserably (often with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt) because they have no study skills whatsoever.
Great system.
This BS about American schools not measuring up is just BS. I’ve been hearing it all of my life and in that time products of American public schools have taken us to the moon, invented the World Wide Web, won the cold war, created about a zillion software programs, phone apps, and web apps, created the technologies used in nearly every generation of mobile phone communications, and designed most of the breakthrough hardware devices in consumer technology. I could go on.
I seem to recall that even in high school, American kids are near the top in science aptitude. Putting aside the obvious flimsiness of your assertion, your claim that “Asians” study “10 hours a day every day”, even if true, doesn’t seem to be getting them much in terms of creating new and useful technological innovations in comparison to those American kids who, like me, did absolutely zero homework in high school.
There are great things happening with technology in China and Korea right now, but they are still playing catch-up. The idea that American public schools are deficient is wrong on any measure of post-school success and is largely the product of conservatives who want to teach religion in school and/or bust unions. Don’t believe the hype.
I believe that Tim Berners-Lee is a product of a British public school.
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I always have trouble understanding why some think that we should emulate the Chinese, in particular. China has a 95.1% literacy rate while the US literacy rate is 99%. We would be better off emulating Palestine with its 95.6% literacy rate.
I’m sure that this is partly due to people forgetting that the Chinese immigrant community isn’t necessarily representative of China. The same goes for India.
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It also doesn’t take into account the large number of non-Mandarin speakers in the country, or the fact that Chinese writing isn’t optimal for universal literacy - I can recognize about 1500 characters and that is only good enough to get a basic gist of most texts. The Chinese script is probably one of the reasons for the traditional style of teaching too: while there are patterns to help you learn, a lot of it involves repetition and relying on the authority of your teacher or the textbook rather than logical reasoning. Large classroom sizes and the traditional culture also contribute to this style of teaching.
Weird turn of phrase.
Thanks for you apology, although unnecessary. My biggest problem with Asian families was trying to inculcate them with the idea that their children needed more than excessive study hours to succeed. To answer your question directly - I think the difference between students who learn to study, that is, students who seek more than the material offered and have a desire to really understand and maintain knowledge, are the types of professionals we wish were the norm rather than what we experience in real life, whether it be a customer service representative or a surgeon entrusted to save us fro some catastrophic disease or injury. Asian and our students are of course the same and like us, some Asian students rise to being stellar professionals while the rest are just ordinary.
Listen…my issue with less homework for students is that I have seen incredible teachers destroyed by parents who thought their little darlings were being overworked because of necessary homework assignments. Some teachers are gifted enough to inspire students to want to know more, and not just about the subject at hand. Many modern parents (both economically advantaged and economically disadvantaged) have decided only they have the magical knowledge that will ensure their cherubs futures. Many parents are mistaken, especially because many operate in a vacuum about their children. Homework is no a bad thing. Having responsibility to complete certain tasks can build not just a love of knowledge (granted, many are not drawn to such a concept) but also the ability to complete tasks in a timely manner - a life skill most of us need later in life.
I have a child, a grown woman today, who has lamented since she was in middle school that she never had enough time to not only learn (acquire deep understanding) what was being taught, but that she also did not have the discrete time to fully ingest and explore the subject matter. She is now a 4th year medical student and I am aware that many students do not possess her zeal for the acquisition for knowledge, but what we offer to students today can be enhanced. I, who also have a love affair with education, believe that homework is a necessary evil. I think what homework is assigned should be grade and task specific. Third graders should not have three hours of homework for any reason. A sophomore in high school? Three hours seems more than amenable.
Students of every strip should be well rounded and offered a plethora of classes as well as exposure to the arts and crafts. I do not believe that everyone should go to college.I definitely do not believe that everyone should receive graduate degrees. Our society has embraced higher education to supposedly solve all of our problems because the Industrial Age has passed. When corporations began to require security guards to have college degrees - well, logic left and the foundation for a non-sustainable super educated work force began.
What made the assignments necessary? How were the teachers destroyed?
It seems rather obvious that it can be. Sometimes it’s not, but it’s a fact that it often is.
For some students it builds upon an already present love of knowledge. For many others, it creates a negative relationship with knowledge and learning and teachers. Also, if one wants to teach a student to complete a task in a timely manner, it matters whether or not the task has any meaning to the student. And in too many instances, homework has no meaning to students.
That depends entirely on the nature of the homework and the interests of the sophomore. Different people want different things in life. You love knowledge and learning for its own sake, which is great. But lots of people are interested in a smaller scope of knowledge, and that’s fine, too.
Students should have every opportunity to be well rounded (whatever that means, as it’s terribly subjective). But they should also be respected when they choose not to be. Some of the kindest, happiest, most independent people in the world couldn’t pass a third grade science test. And some of the cruelest, most heartless and destructive people have PhD after their name.
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I was amazed they had a non-zero amount of homework in kindergarten. This year (3rd grade) my son has teachers who (for whatever reason) don’t send home as much as in previous years.
I remember having to take books home for reading in 1st grade, but not actual homework (worksheets etc.) until I was well into the 2nd grade. In kindergarten we still spent a substantial amount of time playing (with blocks, dress-up, on trikes etc.) which I don’t think my son had at all, except for outdoor recess.
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I had exactly one teacher (8th grade math) who had that philosophy. She’d note how many questions we missed, but credit was based on whether we finished the work or not. The grades came from the tests.
I laughed when I read that, then looked it up and found it’s a real thing.
You’re approaching the student who is determined and productive but not test-oriented as a problem to be fixed. You’re coming across like the Victorian teachers who insisted on “fixing” left-handed students. Please consider the possibility that test-taking ability is not important to most students’ lives outside of school, and you may be harming them by trying to mold them into your value system.
I will grant you that many students do survive and thrive outside of school where test-taking as an ability is not as valued. The perennial story of the self-educated high-school “dropout” is often the poster child for this argument… however, if you look at what I assume must be a normalized distribution curve of “successful” adults, most of them succeeded due to their ability to both manage large workloads and test well.
This puts educators at an interesting intersection: Do we work to abolish a well-entrenched system of credentialism that rewards the attainment of pieces of parchment at the expense of individual learning? Do we embrace it and accept the outputs of the system on face value?
OR: Do we recognize that there are greater measures of a person than test-taking or rote repetition, and instead try to work with individuals to best equip them with the tools they need to succeed?
My point is that if I see an ostensibly hard-working, earnest student that suddenly falls flat on their face during an exam, I could still come up with alternative assessment that proves they are knowledgable and capable. But do I know for sure that other people will do the same? Will college admission boards be so considerate? Professional accreditation bodies? Government agencies? Most likely not. Do not mistake me; I have seen how rampant credentialism disempowers and alienates people. But this problem is bigger than the classroom, bigger than the education system, really.
