Grading is a pain, so English head teacher cans homework

[Mayabird]

Maya, that's why I said SOME. No, you can't fit it all in. That doesn't mean homework gets to be the ultra-copout. As for a responsibility to pass students...call me a nut, but I've always believed that failing is an option. If a student can't hack it, fine, you don't need to pass high-school lit to flip a burger.

Sorry for that. I just get a little pissed sometimes when "progressive" people start spouting total bullshit. People like that have made "progressive" into a dirty word.

And I agree with your opinion about failing kids, too. Everyone's so uptight about not allowing kids to fail, but if they deserve it, screw 'em. You shouldn't give a diploma to a 22 year old who still hadn't passed all his sophomore classes just because you didn't want to hurt his stupid self-esteem, as my high school did. (We're talking about a guy so lazy that he failed band. BAND. You have to seriously work hard to fail band. Hell, he didn't even show up at school for months at a time, but he was too lazy to officially drop out and they were too lazy to kick his sorry ass out. And then he got his piece of paper out of it.)

[Zaia]

Math problems, science problems - they are not going to learn math and science without doing problems. Writing papers - people are getting practically illiterate. They don't know how to write a simple paragraph or even a couple coherent sentences. Punctuation? Capitalization? If they don't do it, they might only be getting experience from instant messanger (*shudders*). A few of the kids will be reading on their own, but how many of them would rather watch TV? Granted, a lot of homework is pointless busywork (like some coloring assignments I had in high school - color the maps all pretty colors! I gave that teacher so much hell for that one), but some of it is very necessary and useful.

Some of your points here are the very same concerns that those of us in the high school teaching environment have about the four-period day. In Maryland, some of the school systems have made the switch from having 7 periods per day (basically each class meets for 45 minutes everyday) to 4 periods per day (each class meets for 90 minutes every other day or every day for only half the year). The idea was that the students would be better prepared for college (I think), but with something like foreign language (or instrumental music)--if you only do it for half a year, the other half of the year you forget most of the things you learned the previous semester since you don't use it regularly. Some subjects need constant reinforcement, and if you take away some of that reinforcement in the case of not giving homework, or if you take away all of that reinforcement in the case of teaching on the four-period-semester program, the amount of retained knowledge goes way downhill.

[White Haven]

4 periods for half the year doesn't work too well. 4 periods every other DAY works beautifully, my schools went to that, and it was a much needed breath of fresh air.

[Coyote]

Most homework is busywork, and turns students off to "the fun of learning" by making it monotonous and pointless. And it also wears down teachers by filling their time with grading (busywork for them) so they are as burned out about the whole mess as the kids.

The frustrated teaching the apathetic... wunnnerful.

I'd say a monthy project would be better. Assigned on Day 1 and turned in on Day 30, with allowances for holidays, etc. You have all the resources and time you need. If you don't turn it in at the end of the month, here's your "F", thank you for playing, better luck with next month's project.

Give them responsibility (meeting a deadline) and managing resources... just like life indeed. There are 8-9 months in the typical school year in the US so the loss of one, even two, projects does not mean failure.

The kid can do it all at once and fuck off the rest of the month, wait 'till the last minute and pull a miracle (hoepfully) out his ass, or pace the work through th emonth and get it done carefully and low-stress. And of course over the course of school life the student has years to experiment to see which system works best.

True, most will do the last-minute option, but since that's the way many people seem to live their lives, well, they better get used to it and develop a system in school, then.

But daily busy-homework just makes good kids hate school.

[Pick]

I think I agree with Coyote. Of course, some classes you do need the repetative stuff (math, oh joy) but I don't, for instance, see the merit in doing monotnous Biology homework when with more time and effort in a project, they could actually learn something other than how to play "fill in the blank" activities every night.

[Petrosjko]

I don't buy any of this "busy work is a good life skill" crap, though Nobody should ever learn to be satisfied doing busywork, and it's a terrible sign of the times that people think that learning busy work is a good thing.

What I'm saying is that there are jobs out there that need to be done, that require repetitive labor. A lot of clerical data entry is mind-numbingly dull, but those jobs have to be done. I knock paper pushers as much as any field worker, but without them any major industry will grind to a halt.

I'm not saying drown them with busywork, but everyone should be able to handle a certain amount of boring, repetitive labor and have the discipline to just hit it and get it done.

It's something that should be calibrated by age and progress. Drown them in it? No. But eliminating it entirely is stupid. Homework is there in part to teach students to complete work on their own, without the structure and supervision that comes in a school environment. That is an essential life skill.

[White Haven]

Yeah. Said jobs, however, are generally 9-5...which coincides fairly well with the monotonous bullshit you go through IN CLASSES. That's already covered, Petro, by the schooling itself, never mind the homeworld.

[Petrosjko]

Yeah. Said jobs, however, are generally 9-5...which coincides fairly well with the monotonous bullshit you go through IN CLASSES. That's already covered, Petro, by the schooling itself, never mind the homeworld.

Not my point. It's the ability to work unsupervised that is a life skill. During school hours you have a teacher there at all times, to inspire and assist. Doing homework, you have to actually get off your ass and get it done. In any kind of decent-paying job, your supervisor should not be expected to have to hover over you to make sure you're working.

[White Haven]

Alright, so you learn the hard way: Goof off at your job, get fired. It's not anyone's job to force you to tolerate that sort of thing, and if you can't, well, you're out on your ass. Schools are an academic institution, nothing more.

[Petrosjko]

Alright, so you learn the hard way: Goof off at your job, get fired. It's not anyone's job to force you to tolerate that sort of thing, and if you can't, well, you're out on your ass. Schools are an academic institution, nothing more.

Jesus fuck!

Schools exist to teach people the basic life skills... these things include reading, writing, mathematics, interpersonal relations, dealing with authority, responsibility.

It's an integral part of the learning process to learn how to deal with a certain amount of drudgery. If people aren't learning how to do this, they aren't going to function in higher echelons of learning, they're not going to function in the workforce, and we're wasting our goddamned tax money.

Speaking as a business owner, the product that comes out of American high schools is entirely inadequate, in a lot of areas of this country. So instead of teaching them when they can be taught, businesses have to retrain people on the cusp of adulthood to get past the bad habits they've had instilled by years of coasting in school. The system is in sorry enough shape as it is, and proposals like this just make the whole thing worse.

For a functional society, these sort of lessons have to be taught in childhood, when the patterns are being set. Schools are where this is done. If the American educational system can't provide functional workers to help maintain society, what are we paying for?

[Coyote]

If the American educational system can't provide functional workers to help maintain society, what are we paying for?

Self-esteem. Didn't you get the memo?

[Petrosjko]

If the American educational system can't provide functional workers to help maintain society, what are we paying for?

Self-esteem. Didn't you get the memo?

Sadly enough, that's true. But what gets me about that is that it's not even functional self-esteem.

True self-esteem comes from surmounting challenges and the knowledge that one can surmount challenges. It's not 'I'm okay, you're okay' bullshit.

Pride in one's capabilities is good. But when one has damn few capabilities, one has damn little to be proud of.

Which is why I find the current self-esteem regime to be so particularly odious.

[RogueIce]

On a related note, I remember hearing of a plan (at least, not sure if it's implemented or not) where homework is purely extra credit. In other words, you can do it if you need the help/practice/whatever or are otherwise not so good at it, and it'll help if you don't do so well on the test.

On the other hand, if you know that chapter or whatever cold and know you can ace that test, no problem, then there's no need to bother with it. Unless you want to spend five minutes and get some free points.

This idea isn't perfect and would probably need tweaking before real world application, but what are your thoughts on this plan?

[RogueIce]

This idea isn't perfect and would probably need tweaking before real world application, but what are your thoughts on this plan?

I like the idea, though one thing I would have to insist on is that it be actually graded, not one of those stupid 'you get extra points because tried' things. If you do poorly, you don't get bonus points, but you do get the bonus of knowing your faults and getting the practice, which would yield points on later assignments or the test.

Oh yeah. It's not a freebie. You gotta get it right.

If I thought it could work in the schools, I like what one of my current profs does: you learn the material on your own, and instead of lecturing he has "help sessions" where basically you ask any and all questions about what you didn't understand in that section.

I doubt it would work at the primary/secondary school level, but it is a nice concept.

[Lusankya]

On a related note, I remember hearing of a plan (at least, not sure if it's implemented or not) where homework is purely extra credit. In other words, you can do it if you need the help/practice/whatever or are otherwise not so good at it, and it'll help if you don't do so well on the test.

On the other hand, if you know that chapter or whatever cold and know you can ace that test, no problem, then there's no need to bother with it. Unless you want to spend five minutes and get some free points.

This idea isn't perfect and would probably need tweaking before real world application, but what are your thoughts on this plan?

It sounds similar to formative and non-formative assignments. A student can fail all the non-formative stuff at school, but still ace their SACE requirment because the formative assignments are all that count for the end of the year - non-formative only affects to school grade.

My cousin also said that when he was studying law, there were non-compulsory assignments that he didn't do (he didn't want to do any more work than he had to, and besides, they were optional).

[Guardsman Bass]

Still . . . can all of you do the times tables right off the top of your heads? At least in my case, that was the result of about 3 years of timed times tables tests, with the amount of tests equaling about 50-60 tests. It worked. Plus, a large part of the reason why I can do algebra is because it has been repeatedly jammed into my head. I couldn't remember half of what I did in Algebra class, but after 3 years of more advanced math using the same stuff at the basic levels, I do now.

[Sharp-kun]

Still . . . can all of you do the times tables right off the top of your heads?

Yes. We spent a year in Primary school having them crammed into our heads.

[Petrosjko]

Still . . . can all of you do the times tables right off the top of your heads? At least in my case, that was the result of about 3 years of timed times tables tests, with the amount of tests equaling about 50-60 tests. It worked. Plus, a large part of the reason why I can do algebra is because it has been repeatedly jammed into my head. I couldn't remember half of what I did in Algebra class, but after 3 years of more advanced math using the same stuff at the basic levels, I do now.

*nods*

Pre-college education is supposed to give someone the basic tools to do two things.

1)Have enough of a knowledge base to make in in basic jobs and life situations. Can you read a map? Can you read directions? Can you balance your checkbook? Can you write a legible note for the morning shift about the broken soft drink dispenser before you shut the place down for the night? That sort of thing.

2)Teach you the fundamentals of learning, so that when the time comes for you to learn the more advanced and specialized fields of knowledge you'll need to work somewhere besides McDonalds, you'll know how to do it. How to study independently, how organize and retain information, and how to deal with the drudgery that it takes to become proficient in any worthy field of endeavor.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

A large issue here is volume. Once you get beyond a certain length/number of problems, you hit a point of diminishing returns, where adding another thirty or fifty problems doesn't actually help the student learn, just pisses them off and wastes both their time at home and your time in class going over it. The idea is to help the student LEARN, not to take up time for the sake of taking up time. Math (and related science courses, physics, statics, chemistry, etc) are about the only courses I can possibly justify busywork homework for, and even then it's fairly silly. Word problems and the like that actually encourage critical thinking will make the person doing them actually reason through the problem, and in my experience that makes the concept stick far better. English? Please, if you can't understand basic grammar from in-class lessons, go work in corporate America, you apparently don't need it there

I've taught some math students who learned more from repetition than from actually understanding what they were doing. This mostly applied to adding/multiplying fractions and negative numbers. Simply knowing the algorith improved their grades tremendously, and gave them time to learn the material later.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Maya, that is true, some of the work has a purpose. But you've got an hour and a half of class time, there's more than enough room for at least some of that stuff to stay /at/ the school, rather than bleeding over into a student's free time.

Here in the States, each class lasts about 45-50 minutes. Not really enough time for guided practice, let alone doing homework at school. Unless, of course, that's all you do in class.

[Darth Wong]

Just a note here: at my son's old public school, the teachers did very little hands-on instruction in the classroom, and relied on massive amounts of homework to teach the kids. At the new private school, the teachers rely mostly on hands-on instruction in the classroom and hand out very little homework.

Teaching only happens when the teacher is present. Homework drills are not teaching, and there's way too much cheating and parental assistance, thus making the whole exercise a joke. Nothing is more annoying than seeing a science fair project that was obviously put together by the kid using his own two hands and some heartfelt effort and gets put to shame by the expensive "Made by Daddy" science fair project sitting next to it.

[White Haven]

Maya, that is true, some of the work has a purpose. But you've got an hour and a half of class time, there's more than enough room for at least some of that stuff to stay /at/ the school, rather than bleeding over into a student's free time.

Here in the States, each class lasts about 45-50 minutes. Not really enough time for guided practice, let alone doing homework at school. Unless, of course, that's all you do in class.

Aaaah...Bob? Last I checked, Virginia failed to secede from the Union. Hour-and-a-half classes are becoming a reality on this side of the lake.

[Slartibartfast]

Ugh, homework. Good riddance, and good for them.

[Raptor 597]

Math problems, science problems - they are not going to learn math and science without doing problems. Writing papers - people are getting practically illiterate. They don't know how to write a simple paragraph or even a couple coherent sentences. Punctuation? Capitalization? If they don't do it, they might only be getting experience from instant messanger (*shudders*). A few of the kids will be reading on their own, but how many of them would rather watch TV? Granted, a lot of homework is pointless busywork (like some coloring assignments I had in high school - color the maps all pretty colors! I gave that teacher so much hell for that one), but some of it is very necessary and useful.

The problem with illiteracy is that they don't bother teaching english mechanics pass grade 8, and they drop useful skills for poetry and loads of useless stories.

[White Haven]

If you don't know basic language skills after eight solid years of it, you're up shit creek anyway. Seriously, if you can steadfastly avoid learning something for EIGHT YEARS, what good is another four going to do?