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Tomdstone
Guest
I vote for more homework, not less.
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1990Domer
Guest
You are right in that writing stimulates the frontal lobe of the brain, which was the final part of the human brain, thus most used for reasoning and learning.
I will say that being a mom of a 13 year old, I see parents caring a whole lot more about getting their kids on a certain travel sports team than they do about the child completing homework.
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angell1
Guest
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angell1
Guest
I do agree that giving marks for “completion” without checking the content is pointless. in my educational experience, that rarely happened though
or if teachers are just giving homework because some policy says they have to. that’s also weird
I thik some subjects naturally require more work than others. but that’s normal
I agree that concepts are important. you’re not really learning much if you’re just plugging things in to a formula without understanding why the formula works. but there are facts that need to be memorized, more for subjects like biology or history.
in my experience, kids don’t want to do homework becaue they’re rather just play video games. or in high school, they didn’t care because they were all too busy getting drunk or high
or if teachers are just giving homework because some policy says they have to. that’s also weird
I thik some subjects naturally require more work than others. but that’s normal
I agree that concepts are important. you’re not really learning much if you’re just plugging things in to a formula without understanding why the formula works. but there are facts that need to be memorized, more for subjects like biology or history.
in my experience, kids don’t want to do homework becaue they’re rather just play video games. or in high school, they didn’t care because they were all too busy getting drunk or high
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Convert_in_99
Guest
This is exactly what I was trying to say. There IS a lot of just “busy” (ie=non essentials) going on. Both during the school day and in the homework required. If teachers would cut out these unnecessaries/nonessentials then there would be enough time to get more of the work done DURING school. And I’m not saying cut out recess.
ETA: I have attended decent public, private and home schools. I know what goes on and what doesn’t need to go on.
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JimG
Guest
I do agree that note taking can help with concentration and listening.
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Anglewannabe
Guest
I think the age of the child and the size of the city should play into the way homework is assigned.
I have friends who live in a big city with a long commute that depending on traffic could be over 1.5 hours. By the time they pick up the kids from day care and get home, the kids are starving. By the time supper and bath was over, the kid was way too tired to do any homework.
The older the child, the more the kid can do independently therefor it is only reasonable that more is assigned.
Angie
I have friends who live in a big city with a long commute that depending on traffic could be over 1.5 hours. By the time they pick up the kids from day care and get home, the kids are starving. By the time supper and bath was over, the kid was way too tired to do any homework.
The older the child, the more the kid can do independently therefor it is only reasonable that more is assigned.
Angie
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Allegra
Guest
In 6th grade, my teacher insisted on 25 long division problems a night. She never checked the answers herself. We were supposed to do that ourselves. I figured out that I could get the points by simply changing the date on the paper. In high school, homework points made up 50% of most of my math class grades and were figured into the science grades to the extent that a person could utterly fail the test and still receive a C in the class.
We didn’t have video games in our house growing up and I still didn’t like homework, except for reading. In high school, I was too busy working four shifts a week, participating on after school activities, and planning my escape into adulthood to be overly fond of pages of meth problems and required journal entries.
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Convert_in_99
Guest
This is very true. And we always graded each other’s homework. Again non-essentials or “busy” work.
By the way, I’m glad you weren’t overly fond of METH problems!
I knew what you meant.
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ProVobis
Guest
And replace it with what?
I don’t know about you guys, but I always looked forward to coming home on the transit, having dinner, perhaps hanging out with my buddies for an hour, and then reviewing the course materials, writing papers, preparing for tests, etc.
I don’t know about you guys, but I always looked forward to coming home on the transit, having dinner, perhaps hanging out with my buddies for an hour, and then reviewing the course materials, writing papers, preparing for tests, etc.
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JimG
Guest
Video games?
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Convert_in_99
Guest
:ehh:
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Usige
Guest
The problem is that memorizing facts become the basis of the class without having a good purpose.
Let me give you an example. In highschool the majority of our history tests were things like when did the US enter World War One, what date was the Gettysburg address given, who were the leaders of the Axis and Allied powers during WWII, etc. All regurgitating facts.
In college I took a history class on medieval Europe. There were no simple facts to regurgitate, but rather analytical questions about the importance of events. So we never had questions about when was the back plague, but rather how did the black plague impact life in the middle ages and how did it lead to the formation of universities. Facts gave shape to the narrative, but the facts are not the reason you study history. You study history to understand where we’ve been. In the end it is the why that is infinitely more important than the when.
As for grading for completion, that not how it worked in most my non college classes. It was you can get 2 or 3 points per question. Full credit for correct answer with correct steps; partial credit from wrong answer with right steps or right answer with wrong steps; no credit for wrong answer without correct steps or no attempt. So if you had 50 questions and only did 10 questions and got all the right answers, but didn’t follow their steps you might only get 10 out of 100 points even though you mastered the concepts. You could get 70 points by just poking random numbers in, but following the steps. So 10 points for mastery and 70 points for trying. That is not education.
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Gordon_Sims
Guest
How on earth on kids going to reinforce what they’ve been taught if they don’t have homework? I’m opposed to giving kids too much homework but abolishing it is just silly. I think the type of homework is just as important as the amount. If you’re not making the kids think and gain an understanding of the material then it’s pointless. Then again, I also believe that parents should play a role in the homework and I think that’s a big sticking point for a lot of parents out there.
One thing we’ve always done is to make our kids do independent reading at home. We’ve been criticized for this by a lot of the people we know (teachers included) but it got our kids to enjoy reading and they’re almost always A-B students. The people who complain the most about our strict, unkind reading requirement are also the ones who have their kids in several sports and extracurricular activities (oddly enough, almost always the ones they were in at the same age, and in spite of the kid’s own wishes) or whose kids spend ridiculous amounts of time online and/or playing video games.
One thing we’ve always done is to make our kids do independent reading at home. We’ve been criticized for this by a lot of the people we know (teachers included) but it got our kids to enjoy reading and they’re almost always A-B students. The people who complain the most about our strict, unkind reading requirement are also the ones who have their kids in several sports and extracurricular activities (oddly enough, almost always the ones they were in at the same age, and in spite of the kid’s own wishes) or whose kids spend ridiculous amounts of time online and/or playing video games.
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Kelfa28
Guest
You can’t just abolish homework…especially within the high school levels. It’s just not possible.
I can see an argument for getting rid of homework almost entirely within the grade school levels.
At the minimum, there should be no busy work. No worksheets, no extra reading assignments with questions to answer, no papers.
High School is different but even then homework should be kept at a minimum.
Why not encourage better study habits? Stop weighing homework so heavily. Do what almost all of the university classes I’ve had encouraged…3-4 tests and 10 quizzes throughout the semester and for English…make it a Essay/paper system.
Drop maybe one low test score and/or 2 low quiz scores and weigh everything the same.
The kids then need to prepare for the test and it’s up to them to prepare and pass it. They’d be prepared for college if they did that.
Stop the standardize testing and let teaches actually teach!
I can understand needing homework…especially for the upper level classes…the AP Science and Math cannot be totally covered in an hour class once a day.
So you need to assign outside reading assignments.
There should be no reason for an elementary school kid to be in class for 6-8 hours 5 days a week and then need to come home every day and work on homework for every class for multiple hours.
There should be no reason a high school student should be in school 6-8 hours, be at practice for another 2 hours and then head straight home to do an additional 4-5 hours of homework.
That is insane…but it’s also normal and typical for the average high school student today.
This problem goes well beyond the amount of homework being given out every night.
Standardized testing needs to be addressed, the fact that every single student needs to go to college…when not every student is capable of handling college…not to mention the ridiculous standards colleges have for admission.
All of that needs to be addressed as well.
I can see an argument for getting rid of homework almost entirely within the grade school levels.
At the minimum, there should be no busy work. No worksheets, no extra reading assignments with questions to answer, no papers.
High School is different but even then homework should be kept at a minimum.
Why not encourage better study habits? Stop weighing homework so heavily. Do what almost all of the university classes I’ve had encouraged…3-4 tests and 10 quizzes throughout the semester and for English…make it a Essay/paper system.
Drop maybe one low test score and/or 2 low quiz scores and weigh everything the same.
The kids then need to prepare for the test and it’s up to them to prepare and pass it. They’d be prepared for college if they did that.
Stop the standardize testing and let teaches actually teach!
I can understand needing homework…especially for the upper level classes…the AP Science and Math cannot be totally covered in an hour class once a day.
So you need to assign outside reading assignments.
There should be no reason for an elementary school kid to be in class for 6-8 hours 5 days a week and then need to come home every day and work on homework for every class for multiple hours.
There should be no reason a high school student should be in school 6-8 hours, be at practice for another 2 hours and then head straight home to do an additional 4-5 hours of homework.
That is insane…but it’s also normal and typical for the average high school student today.
This problem goes well beyond the amount of homework being given out every night.
Standardized testing needs to be addressed, the fact that every single student needs to go to college…when not every student is capable of handling college…not to mention the ridiculous standards colleges have for admission.
All of that needs to be addressed as well.
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EasterJoy
Guest
When I was in grade school, the only homework we got was to read a certain number of books before the year was over. Why?
a) the school didn’t have an infinite number of textbooks, and the textbooks didn’t always make it back to school if they were sent home. (Actually, it was axiomatic that some would not make the trip both ways!)
b) the children were farm children, and many had real work to do after school
c) it was a school with multi-grade classrooms, so students had time when other students were being instructed when they had to be quiet and do the work that peers at other schools did at home.
We still memorized things, we still had to do math drills, and we still competed extremely well with students from bigger schools, both public and parochial. We had a very low student-to-teacher ratio and we had a parent base that did not tolerate children who were insubordinate to the teachers. When we were at school, we tried very hard not to get into the level of trouble that might possibly involve parental notification!!
My children got some homework in grade school, but up until middle school the emphasis was mostly on taking something home and actually remembering to bring it back. It wasn’t much work. When they were in middle school, the “lessons” of homework mostly had to do with time management. They were purposefully given assignments that were not due the very next day, just like in high school. They did have to dedicate more time to doing it, however.
You have to do some work on your own if you are going to learn, because you learn by doing in a way that you do not learn by watching how something is done. In that sense, of course there has to be “homework.”
If the time spent at school is used efficiently, most of the time needed to give a typical student enough experience with the material to learn it can be supplied during the school day. There gets to be a point where more is not better when it comes to academic hours.
a) the school didn’t have an infinite number of textbooks, and the textbooks didn’t always make it back to school if they were sent home. (Actually, it was axiomatic that some would not make the trip both ways!)
b) the children were farm children, and many had real work to do after school
c) it was a school with multi-grade classrooms, so students had time when other students were being instructed when they had to be quiet and do the work that peers at other schools did at home.
We still memorized things, we still had to do math drills, and we still competed extremely well with students from bigger schools, both public and parochial. We had a very low student-to-teacher ratio and we had a parent base that did not tolerate children who were insubordinate to the teachers. When we were at school, we tried very hard not to get into the level of trouble that might possibly involve parental notification!!
My children got some homework in grade school, but up until middle school the emphasis was mostly on taking something home and actually remembering to bring it back. It wasn’t much work. When they were in middle school, the “lessons” of homework mostly had to do with time management. They were purposefully given assignments that were not due the very next day, just like in high school. They did have to dedicate more time to doing it, however.
You have to do some work on your own if you are going to learn, because you learn by doing in a way that you do not learn by watching how something is done. In that sense, of course there has to be “homework.”
If the time spent at school is used efficiently, most of the time needed to give a typical student enough experience with the material to learn it can be supplied during the school day. There gets to be a point where more is not better when it comes to academic hours.
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CradleJourney
Guest
My second daughter had 2 or 3 classes set up like this in high school - and it was horrid. They would be required to watch anywhere from 1 to 3 hours of youtube video lectures on the subject, then the next day they’d do the “homework” assignment in class… with the teacher being available if needed.
Of course if you didn’t have high speed internet and a stable connection then you had a lot of problems. The biggest issue for her was that there was no “give and take” with an instructor while “learning” the material - anything she wasn’t sure about she had to wait and ask her teacher the next day - and since they didn’t have the videos available for viewing the classroom, those conversations did not always go well.
Plus - like others have mentioned - having a teen come home from seven hours of school, 2+hours of traveling, and another 4 hours of competition - does not an alert and avid watcher make (again, esp. with no interaction required).
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EasterJoy
Guest
I have not heard of this being tried when the students weren’t all required to have a laptop or tablet or the like for getting onto the school’s WiFi. I don’t see how you manage this when you can’t show the teacher the problems you are having or can’t use the school’s WiFi system after school to do your viewing there.
I don’t think that videos are worse than the “I talk and you hold onto your questions and listen until I am done” model. You can hit rewind on a video, after all. You do need to be able to have the video available when you have questions, though.
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redbetta
Guest
I just graduated high school this year. I don’t know anything about public schools, but, all four years at my Catholic college prep school, I’ve had averaged four hours of homework a night on weekdays. Add to that the fact that I took the bus an hour to school and another hour back for the first three years, I had no time to myself. It was just an endless cycle of get up, school, homework, sleep, and repeat. I couldn’t even find time to read a book for fun. I’ve spent a lot of late nights, my mom often walking in on me at 1:00 AM still working and telling me to go to sleep and I’d always refuse insisting on finishing it. My mom even offered to give me a “mental health day.” In reality, those in high school who took days off were the ones who needed them the least. For the ones with the most work, it was not worth it because it piled up.
What irked me the most were the “creative” projects. The artsy projects that teachers think would be fun, but, were more time-consuming than papers, especially those that involved groups. Personally, it should be a requirement that group work can only be done at school because it was a pain finding a time slot in which everyone in the group was available due to jobs, extra-curriculars, and work in other classes. Plus, many of us commuted long distances to get to school and had limited transportation outside of school. A lot of these projects were also pointless, like all the movies and skits we had to make for religion class and book movie trailers for English.
In all, I’d rather have had a few extra hours in the school day instead of homework or at least have homework be limited to reading and studying. It took a large toll on my health and I honestly think that all the work stunted my growth as a person that would have occurred if I had also time to do my own things outside of school. And, in case anyone is thinking I just wanted more time for Netflix or something stupid, I wanted time to read because there is so much that school doesn’t teach you. Since I wasn’t getting a religious education at my school, I wanted to catechize myself. I also wanted to read classic novels, histories, and biographies. I wanted to pick up hobbies to explore my own talents. But, that didn’t happen.
What irked me the most were the “creative” projects. The artsy projects that teachers think would be fun, but, were more time-consuming than papers, especially those that involved groups. Personally, it should be a requirement that group work can only be done at school because it was a pain finding a time slot in which everyone in the group was available due to jobs, extra-curriculars, and work in other classes. Plus, many of us commuted long distances to get to school and had limited transportation outside of school. A lot of these projects were also pointless, like all the movies and skits we had to make for religion class and book movie trailers for English.
In all, I’d rather have had a few extra hours in the school day instead of homework or at least have homework be limited to reading and studying. It took a large toll on my health and I honestly think that all the work stunted my growth as a person that would have occurred if I had also time to do my own things outside of school. And, in case anyone is thinking I just wanted more time for Netflix or something stupid, I wanted time to read because there is so much that school doesn’t teach you. Since I wasn’t getting a religious education at my school, I wanted to catechize myself. I also wanted to read classic novels, histories, and biographies. I wanted to pick up hobbies to explore my own talents. But, that didn’t happen.
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angell1
Guest
I guess education has changed a lot in the last few years
I only graduated high school 6 years ago and we never got homework that was pointless.
I agree, that obviously in elementary school, you don’t need to do homework for several hours but you do need to let them build up. they can’t just go to school for 7 years and suddenly start getting homework in high school without having done any before then.
also, in real life, this doesn’t work anywhere else.
say you take up a sport or are trying to learn how to play an instrument, you do have lessons but you better believe that you need to go home and practice many more times.
it’s the same thing with school. obviously we shouldn’t get pointless assignments though. I agree with that
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