Read it and Seethe: The Homework Files

This seems to be a problem everywhere. My niece spends at least four hours every night working on homework – and she’s only in the second grade! Unbelievable.

I don’t read it and seethe. I seethed over my own similar schooling for too long to continue anymore. It’s great that this girl is able to recognise where it is leading her, and get out before it is too late. Most others just lose interest and stop paying attention to any of it far sooner.

Most especially, she should thank her parents. I am thrilled that she is in a position with parents who also recognise the problem, and are willing to take the steps to fix it. Very few kids are in that lucky situation.

Actually, I can see the point in timed reading, though not in the grading.

The case of legasthenics aside, the eading skill is defined by how fast the reader can extact (and retain) information from a text. If someone doesn’t manage 200 wpm, something is really, really wrong and will hinder the kid in the long run, because it will take twice as long for their studies.

I’m a teacher (secondary – where homework has always been a feature) and I’m constantly surprised by the amount of homework set by colleagues in junior and primary classes. I think that kids that age should be allowed time to be… kids! Maybe a quick 30min homework to reinforce a topic from the day’s teaching, but not the crazy amount often set.

However, when I question other teachers about the amount of homework, they tell me that the pressure to do so comes not only from school management, but from parents too. Parents see lots of homework as evidence that the school is pushing their child to achieve (rather than the reality which is that is actually demotivates them)

So… if your kids have too much homework, I would highly recommend that you get vocal about the issue and pressure the school to reduce it to a level that you find acceptable

SC

Teacher here with suggestions
1. Look up your school/districts homework policy
a. if the teacher isn’t following it complain with policy in hand
b. if the teacher is following it go before the correct body and work to get it changed load yourself up evidence that drill and kill homework DOES NOT WORK.

The timed test sounds like the reading tests that are required by law. It establishes reading level and fluency. Reading level tests have to be standardized. For those of use that love reading they are unnessasary because we will read so our reading comprehension will increase. Those with LD’s or boarderline LD’s the test can provide earlier proof and allow us (parents and teachers, and admin) to force politicians/test advocates to allow accommodations for those students. The equivalent of allowing the kid to wear his/her glasses during the test.

I get into debates with my colleagues about fluency tests. I say they are stupid because being able to read aloud has nothing to do with reading comprehension. Of course I have horrible reading fluency. Due my dyslexia I read in chucks instead of word by word. So when I read aloud my mouth can’t keep up with my mind and I sound illiterate.

Homework is one of the many, many reasons my husband and I decided to homeschool. I didn’t feel like my children needed to be sitting for hours after a full day of school doing yet more school work. Reinforcement or practice is fine, especially if a child is struggling with a certain area, but paperwork just for the sake of paperwork is never a good idea.

Like Heather, the obscene amount of homework given to my (then) 2nd grader and kindergarteners was a big reason we pulled them from public school. Now that we homeschool, my kids not only don’t have to deal with homework, but we are able to finish their academics by lunchtime or early afternoon. They have the rest of the day to just be kids and have fun learning on their own.

OY. That’s awful. Makes me sad. Kudos to the parents of that girl.

I hate homework.

Study after study shows that large amounts of homework turn kids off.

ESPECIALLY gifted kids.

It’s ridiculous that my gifted program son in AP history is required to take hand written notes and turn them in for busywork grades.

He can read the material and remember 98% of it. I know there are kids who can’t, but shouldn’t they find this out on their own?

How are those kids going to fly in college, when professors aren’t pulling them by the nose hairs. When are they going to learn responsibility for their own personal learning styles, something that will serve them well for the rest of their lives?

No one coddled me. And now, I can learn anything by picking up a book.

Which is the smarter idea?

I have to disagree. Generally speaking, Homework teaches principles of discipline and provides the ability to do something even though you don’t want to do it. These are skills that children need to learn, otherwise they will not be able to build the future.

If something needs to be done, it needs to be done whether it is fun or not. Most of life is filled with non-fun things (taxes, work, dental work, dealing with in-laws, etc).

Why do you think something is not necessary? How can you know something is not necessary? Americans are especially myopic in this regard (as per your example) however being able to take a standardized test is important as well. Our usefulness, our suitability to a task will be determined by our ability to meet an external set of standards. Admittedly, we seem to be dropping standards at an alarming rate — mainly because we are failing to teach our children how to accomplish things that aren’t fun.

That may not actually be a private school. I know in the UK they use the opposite words from us – our “public school” is (rather irrationally) their “private school”, and vice-versa. I still do not have it straight in my head how that could possibly make sense, but it does to them. It may also be the case in Australia. Form the tone, I suspect it is.

dar writes:

I have to disagree. Generally speaking, Homework teaches principles of discipline and provides the ability to do something even though you don’t want to do it.

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That should NOT be the goal of homework. The goal of school is to teach. As a parent, I am more than capable of doing the rest, teaching responsibility and instiling values. Doing one’s own laundry, raking the leaves, mowing the lawn and washing dishes are all excellent examples of “teaching principles of discipline.” My daughter would rather play than sweep the basement. I can give her all kinds of chores, while not necessarily fun, get the job done and teach her how to be a full participant in our household. I don’t need pointless homework assignments doing that.

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These are skills that children need to learn, otherwise they will not be able to build the future.

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This is not the reason homework is sent home. As I’ve observed over the years, oodles of time are wasted in the classroom. Homework, under the guise of teaching responsibility and morals, is actually an extension of the school day, with parents serving as unpaid involuntary teacher’s aides.

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If something needs to be done, it needs to be done whether it is fun or not. Most of life is filled with non-fun things (taxes, work, dental work, dealing with in-laws, etc).

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I can see why your son resists homework. You have such a draconian joyless approach to it.

The thing I despise most about Modern American Culture is the antagonism it displays to learning, knowledge & intelligence.

Everyone assumes that because they don’t like something or that it is not fun, it must be “pointless.” This is why our children are becoming more and more stupid when compared to other countries. We don’t value intelligence or knowledge.

Anything that only serves one purpose is under utilized. If you think homework is only to teach the subject then you are missing out on many opportunities to enrich yourself & your child’s life. The question is do you really want your children to surpass you or do you want to persist in the delusion that you have accomplished all that is worthwhile in life.

You may think I am draconian & that my approach is joyless, but as my son has found out, I am right. He is now trying to do the homework I’ve been encouraging him to do because it is a necessary precondition for doing the things he wants to do.

People who cannot see how things are interconnected are boring. It is to be expected of children for they have little experience with life. To see it in supposed adults is saddening.

dar, chill.

FWIW, I do make my kids do all their assignments. Questioning the value of an assignment privately does not mean rejecting it completely. But I do question. I ask the teacher “what is the goal of this assignment” if it seems to be overly boring, repetitive, or frustrating for my kid. Sometimes, I get a good answer that I can turn around and repeat to the kid: “You got this wrong on your last exam, so your teacher thinks you need more practice.” Sometimes I get a “Oh, I didn’t realize he got that sheet. He’s actually fine on that concept, he must have gotten it by mistake.” Sometimes I get an idea for an accommodation that helps my son get around his particular learning issues and still get the material. All this happens because I do not blindly accept everything that comes home from school. I don’t do this for every assignment – but if the assignment does not seem to be serving a purpose, I need to get to the bottom of it. Sometimes it is my kid being a pain in the neck and he needs a bit of discipline. But sometimes the homework is what is not working. As you said yourself, anything that serves only one purpose is under utilized. So if my kids can learn math and something else at the same time (writing skills, creativity, etc.), then why not push for the assignments that do that more effectively?

Interestingly, I was doing all my homework by myself. Starting first grade. My parents at first looked at what I had done for the first half a year I was at school, then they never ever did again.

I did my homework most of the time. Sometimes I did not. If I knew the subject, I sometimes faked my way through the homework review (which always worked)…

I am just so surprised by the amount of parents that do the homework with their kids far beyond 1st grade. Is this normal?

@K:

I find it difficult to believe that a gifted child can’t kick out the spelling list in few minutes & then read about DNA to their hearts content.

I use the worksheets to kick off “teachable moments.” Just last night, my oldest (the 9th grader) had a worksheet where he was supposed to fill in important events for Western Culture (it seemed focussed on the Abrahamic Religions). Under the guise of verifying data we established the timeline for Europe from the Orthodox/Catholic Split, the Crusades, the Reformation, the Anglican Schism & the creation of Calvinism. We then went over the Islamic Holidays: noting that they were all “Night of…” which led to a discussion on what cultural factors would lead to that, then into the Jewish Holidays, their scripture (Torah & Tanakh) which led to a comparison of the Tanakh to the Old Testament & finally into that classic of Biblical pornography, the Song of Solomon. This barely covers what tangents we explored by filling out one worksheet. Missing “teaching moments” is your fault, not the worksheets.

@BMS: The problem is not the homework, but the necessary depersonalization of the educational experience. The system requires classrooms of 25-50 students. Further we segregate based upon age rather than ability. Many schools are also forced to only offer one track that needs to be generic enough to meet most of the students. Also, slower students take more of the teacher’s time & parent’s also interfere as they blame the failure of the student to learn a topic on the teacher rather than accept that their child is too stupid/lazy/unmotivated/whatever.

My kid is only in Kindergarten, so I haven’t met with the homework issue yet. However, I heard there was OH SO MUCH homework in Kindergarten, and I braced myself for it…it turned out to be about 20 minutes A WEEK. That’s less time than it takes her to watch a couple of Looney Tune episodes. This has made me skeptical of the anti-homework lobby.

Maybe I’ll be joining the anti-homework lobby when she’s in 3rd grade, but sometimes I wonder about these claims both kids and parents make that kids have “HOURS AND HOURS” of homework “A NIGHT.” Are they really sitting down and concentrating on that homework, or is there some video game playing, texting, and battling/whining in between problems?

I think this issue must vary so much from state to state in the U.S., and within state from county to county, and within country from school to school, and within school from teacher to teacher, that simply raging against homework in general is far too absolute. Some kids may have too little homework, and some may have too much. Some may be whinning about homework out of a sense of entitlement and laziness or because they have poor time management skills, and some may be earnestly snowed-under by too much.

Certainly, less time could be wasted during the school day itself. But when I was in school, here’s what I did with the time that was wasted during class: my homework. Thus, I rarely took homework home before about 10th grade. I finished what I was assigned in 1st period during the downtime in 2nd period, what I was assigned in 2nd during the wasted time in 3rd, what I was assigned in 3rd when I finished eating lunch…and so forth. Perhaps the real problem is not that homework has increased on average, but that the length of the school day has increased on average. I know they added one hour to the day while I was in high school in our state.

@J: If the assignment is to copy definitions out of a dictionary, take the 10-20 minutes to do so & then do the fun things. I am also concerned with the inability of popular culture to delay gratification. Would she have been unable to read Wuthering Heights if she had copied the definitions first?

“There are so many things I truly love and will miss about the school, includ ¬ing my yoga and sculp ¬ture classes, some of my teach ¬ers, Film Club, trips”

No wonder they had to assign so much homework. Apparently the school day was filled with trips, yoga, film discussions, and sculpture classes. Maybe if they used some more of that time to teach math, science, and English?

“I really appre ¬ci ¬ated you allow ¬ing me to drop Chem ¬istry. This helped because it elim ¬i ¬nated an hour of home ¬work each night and also, frankly, Chem ¬istry is not a sub ¬ject I am inter ¬ested in”

Ah – I’m not personally interested, so I’m entitled not to have to study the subject. Specific curriculum is for the underprivileged, not for me.

This kid is lucky — she’s clearly smart and has well-to-do parents and will probably get by just fine in whatever subject she does settle on pursuing. But graft that “if I’m not interested I shouldn’t have to do it” mentality onto a kid of average or below average intelligence, and it’s a recipe for failure.

Isn’t the point SLEEP DEPRIVATION due to excessive homework?

Children neurologically cannot learn or recall without adequate sleep. The brain stores information while asleep. Also, without it, neurons lose their plasticity and cannot form new synaptic connections.

I refer everyone to Chapter Two, The Lost Hour, in the new book Nurtureshock. Children around the world get one hour less sleep than they did 30 years ago. Despite what people want to believe, when sleep is lost, it’s lost permanently.

Sleep deprivation contributes to lower IQ, lower emotional well-being, obesity and ADHD.

I’m with the mom who sends notes along with incomplete homework, if that’s what it takes.

@J: I love your assumptions.

Anyway, it sounds like your daughter is encountering reality. My novel too lies unfinished, there are many books I have bought that I cannot read at this moment. I have other things I must do so as to ensure that my family has a place to live and food to eat. Your daughter needs to learn how to do the things that need to be done so that when she is legally an adult she can do something other than sit in a coffee shop whining about how society is crushing her creative spirit. We live in one of the least “creativity crushing” times & yet most of the great & lasting accomplishments were done during those oppressive times.

I would bet that my house contains more books — both fiction and non-fiction than yours. My TV exists to watch the occasional movie (I am looking forward to Mishima’s YÅ«koku arriving soon). They all read a lot, the younger two were reading by kindergarten. Admittedly, as they get older they are spending more and more time chatting online with girls, but that is to be expected, I leave condoms around the house for them to grab if they need them.

Has homework actually increased? I mean, I remember having homework, but I did it in school, on the bus, as fast as I could… and I never spent a lot of time on it. I could read what I wanted and investigate what interested me.

I am with “dar”, if you make excuses for your child not to do the homework and if you see in him the genius that is way beyond stupid assignments, then you are doing more harm than good…

I am against mindless homework. Bu then again, homework teaches discipline, focus, and getting stuff done. Things that so many of you parents are not teaching your child, because you give them the tool of an excuse whenever he cannot get anything done.

I am skeptical about the “too much homework complaint”. Do I think homework needs to be boring, repetitive or just busy work? No. Hours and Hours each night? If this is the case something is seriously wrong. Either the kid does not understand what he is supposed to do or the parent interfers too much and takes up too much time questionning what the kid is doing. Or the teacher is a moron that has no understanding of how much a child can handle. In all three cases this needs to be addressed on a case by case bases to get to the root cause. Maybe the real problem is that the mother-child team goes into details that are not requested and necessary?

And I thing getting ridd of grades is an odd approach.

@ Katja: I am still unsure about homework increasing. I am under the impression that there is less homework now than when I was in school, however I only just had a child enter High School, & my recollection of pre-High School homework is vague.

I think “getting rid of grades” was part of the removing standards approach so in vogue for the past few decades. Sadly, it just makes things more complicated. Changing the A to a ‘/’ really hasn’t changed anything except obfuscate the parents ability to determine quickly whether a child has a problem area.

@Sky: I simply told my children that their “job” is to attend school. They get paid based upon their grades. Their baseline is $5 (it goes up in High School). If they get a 3.5 they get it all. A 3.0+ reduces it to $4, a 2.0+ get $3 and a 1.0 gets $2. anything below a 1.0 results in nothing. The push to get their grades up before summer break is refreshing, as they are stuck with the pay rates throughout the entire summer.

Sky in quoting me, responds: “”My daughter was punished in 4th grade because she read Wuthering Heights instead of copying definitions out of a dictionary.”

Well she should have learned to hide it under her desk better.

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Great comback! No, she read it at home. When asked why she hadn’t finished her homework, she replied honestly, I was reading Wuthering Heights.

dar, what you think takes a kid 20 minutes can take her three hours. It was harder for my child to copy definitions than it was to read high school/college level literature at age 10. Why? i don’t have time to go into it now but I’ll send you some articles.

This really hit home with me because I went to a private school after being home schooled and I had a similar problem. I was bored in the regular classes but the honors classes had twice the amount of homework so I refused to take them. Plus we had 8 classes everyday instead of a block schedule (where there’s 4 classes one day and a different 4 the next) so there were 8 classes worth of homework, usually all due the next day.

When I went to public school though I hardly ever had homework, but I still hated school because the honors courses there weren’t even to par with the regular classes at the private school, so I slept through most of my classes. I tested into college when I was 15 but my mom wouldn’t let me go so I dropped out of high school when I was 16. Absolutely refused to go back until I was allowed to take some classes online and graduated.

I’m determined my kid is going to have opportunities I didn’t and I won’t let anyone squelch her love of learning with a teaching method that doesn’t work for her.

I teach a gifted and talented class in Australia and I’ve struggled with the homework question all year. I’ve tried mini projects, weekly essays and nothing – none of it worked. The parents all complained one way or another (too much/not enough)

Then, this term I found it! (for my class anyway). The students are required to read 20-30 minutes a day which can be done in the afternoon, night or morning. They would probably want to write because we’re doing NaNoWriMo and I made a maths bingo sheet with lots of different activities for the students to do including cooking, demonstrating something to their family and playing games. It’s been a big hit because everyone’s been able to adapt it to their life, and although their are little prizes for getting a row/block, no one gets in trouble for not doing it.

Sky wrote:

“They also generally have smart parents, and their genetics aren’t exactly hurting them.”

Thank you! Appreciate the compliment. :).

“Kids who are homeschooled do remarkably well because they generally have less than a 1:4 teacher/student ratio, far less administrative bureaucratic nonsense to wade through, and no intractable fellow students to distract them— not because they don’t have homework ”

Actually yes, because they have less homework. We never called it homework. I homeschooled for one year and I banished that word. Too loaded. I was weary of the whole guilt cycle homework engendered, the fear, the punishment, the grade grubbing. There was time for late later. She was a child. And I wanted her to revel in all the glory of it.

Didn’t mean she didn’t work. Didn’t mean she didn’t learn. Oh, boy, did she. We didn’t have class all day and then homework all night. We learned constantly, at the desk, at the dining room table, on walks in the park, at a museum, on our travels.

We didn’t call assignments homework, we called them, well, assignments. We did thirty novels that year. An on line math course. An on line college level writing course. My husband, Harvard educated, taught history. We did this on a shoestring budget. What we lacked in resources, we made up for in resourcefulness. Our travels meant visiting grandma in New York. And yes, all this was successful, actually, because there was no homework.

We didn’t crack the whip and she blossomed. And oh, she still had to rake the leaves and load the dishwasher. And be a generally nice well behaved child. And do community service. And raise money. And volunteer.

You may argue, school could never do that. All we asked of school is that they do school. And do it as well as they can. And leave most of our free time to us. So that we can homeschool on the side. When they took away all of our free time so that we were constantly shackled by homework, that’s when we voted with our feet.

J, why so offensive?

You dissappointed me in goinig over to yelling and accusation so easily instead of arguing.

I am a little dissapointed by you being so defensive. I clearly said that “too much homework” needs to be addressed in particular if it causes sleep deprivation. I am just skeptical about parents telling the truth, because in fact most often they do not necessarily provide an unbiased insight in their home life. And you apparantly are no exception either.

I don’t get why so called “gifted” programs give more homework than “normal” ones. They should just be doing more advanced material, moving faster in class, not piling on extra work. Just because a kid learns faster doesn’t mean they aren’t still a kid and don’t still need time to play. We had a ridiculous gifted program at our previous school in which the specialist (not gifted herself) sent parents long lists of contests our kids should be entering in their free time – like I’d want to punish my kid for being smart by making her do extra homework!

@J: So because your child has difficulties in copying definitions from a dictionary, that means that all children have too much homework & that everyone must have less homework assigned — or it is all pointless busywork. I am categorically opposed to lowering the bar because a few can’t make it.

Also, your response to Sky belies a great desire to pretend the world is how you want it to be rather than how it is. By all means, let your child share your delusions, then when you cannot shelter her anymore, she’ll be overwhelmed. I love naked class warfare. As a middle class agent, anyone who disagrees with you must be a nasty prole.

Who was it that pointed out that genius is a little inspiration with a whole lot of perspiration?

When you homeschool, all work done is homework & they are often engaged in learning activities & homework for the entire day (at least if you are doing it right). Homework exists because there are only 6 hours for them to cover material.

“She is crying. She begs to be allowed to finish. She sobs, if I don’t do it, the teacher will call on me and all the kids will laugh. The teacher writes the names of all the children who don’t finish on the blackboard. This child was terrified.

Is that what you advocate, katja? For our children to be humiliated when they don’t do every drop of homework, no matter how much it cuts into sleep? We know many of those GT kids were up till midnight every night.”

That is what I advocate. My second son is delicate like that as well. If she is the only person not getting her homework done, then frankly she should be embarrassed. The whole self-esteem movement has been nothing but a colossal failure. Esteem can only be built on real accomplishment, not empty words of praise.

If your child is a perfectionist, then they need to learn to get over it. Otherwise they will never accomplish anything as nothing is ever perfect. They need to learn the proper amount of effort to get the maximum result. The law of diminishing returns cannot be taught early enough.

As for teaching their strengths, why is it the teachers job to cater to every students special needs? Their job is to impart as much information to as many kids as possible. It is you & your child’s job to learn how to adapt that information into a format she learns best. You don’t get it, while it is true that Great People made the world conform to their will, the asylums are full of people who failed at this task. The true leader knows how to follow orders as well.

dar asks: “@J: So because your child has difficulties in copying definitions from a dictionary, that means that all children have too much homework & that everyone must have less homework assigned — or it is all pointless busywork. I am categorically opposed to lowering the bar because a few can’t make it.”

Lowering the bar? Oh, puh-leeze. You think if we complain about this mindless drivel, we are lowering the bar? Mind you, we are not opposed to dictionaries and looking up words here. My daughter is a voracious reader with a very advanced vocabulary. And in our homeschool year, she looked up words all the time! But I think the distinction would be lost on you.

You call that lowering the bar? I call that a waste of time. And if it’s so important, why didn’t it get done in school that day? In fact, I didn’t sign a note, saying my daughter wouldn’t do it, which I should have. I asked for after school study hall so she could do it at school. A lot of children simply do schoolwork better at school. They wouldn’t let her into afternoon study hall. They told me that was only for the kids failing the state standardized test. I’d rather she spent her afternoons reading to abandon and writing a novel.

I just told you I homeschooled and we did thirty novels that year. Thirty. Her gifted public school did four. Now just who is lowering the bar here? That same year my daughter took a college level writing class. At age 13. And excelled in geometry that year. And you still think we are lowering the bar. Oh, my…

As for teaching their strengths, why is it the teachers job to cater to every students special needs?

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I’m going to try this one more time. I was making the case that the entire class was special needs, a gifted class. Obviously within that class there are still ranges. But it wa a gifted program. And not really taught as one.

@J: It gets down to a simple dynamic. Are the other children also suffering as your child suffers? If not — if the program is meeting the needs of the other students, then it is incumbent on *you* to assist your daughter in learning how to adapt. If the majority of students are having problems, then *you* need to address your Talented & Gifted program. The problem isn’t homework, or too much, it is either your daughter needing extra help in grasping how the material is presented or it is a problem with the structure &/or funding of the class.

If schools suck so bad and your daughter was doing so much better being homeschooled then why aren’t you still homeschooling her?”

Because she got into a selective magnet public school program. The trade off is, the work load is crushing. But the alternative, regular school with more mindless busy work, didn’t look so good.

As for homeschooling in high school, in hindsight, I can do that, I could have done that. But once my daughter began at her current school, she made a very strong case for staying. She does not like the work load and it’s caused a great deal of stress and sleep deprivation. My husband and I revisit the decision all the time. I just wish her choices didn’t come down to either being bored to death or worked to death. There simply has to be a better way.

Sounds to me, dar, that you have not experienced an overwhelming work load with your kids. If you did, you might be singing a different tune.

My child’s public school gifted ed program doesn’t give homework. And my kids get an appropriate amount of homework, and none on weekends. Apparently I am living in a time warp.

I think so much of this is overblown. I have 4 kids in school and none of them has an excessive amount of homework, and what there is generally is meaningful.

My son attends the school that Newsweek ranks #1 in the entire country. And he very rarely has more than 90 minutes of homework.

It’s largely exagerated.

I’ve gotta say, the homeschooling argument is starting to bug me a bit. I admire people who can homeschool, and think that there is nothing wrong with it. However, many people cannot do it for a variety of reasons. We cannot solve legitimate problems with our schools if the only solution is for everyone to take their balls and go home.

It would be like me saying: We could completely solve the problem of busybodies telling people when they can and can’t leave kids in cars by just getting rid of all cars. Everyone walks or bikes. If you need to carry something heavy or a child, get a trailer. I live in the suburbs and I can do it, so I don’t accept any excuses. If you are using a car, you’re just not trying hard enough.

I am tired of all those overprotective parents here… Wasn’t I trying to get away from all this supermommy stuff when I came here? I am out.

Wow.

I just finished attempting to help my godson’s third and fourth graders. He is unable to help them much because his English was self-learned as an adult and is less than perfect.
Despite a lifetime as a newspaper writer and editor, I cannot decipher some of the educationese that comes home, even with the help of a dictionary.
Tonight the third grader’s arithmatic included a problem: Write one or two sentences explainng why 7 times 7 equals 49. Another was to explain why 3×4 is the same as 4×3.
The fourth grader had work in math and reading. For math, she was asked to “estimate” the answers to a number of simple problems. One of her answers was 6×7 equals an estimated 400; this answer had been “right” the last time. She reads very well, probably above her level, and had a chapter in each of two books to read aloud. One centered on a classroom in which the children were learning words in Spanish. This child’s first language is Spanish, and she had no idea what those words might be, because they were words used in Spain. She quickly understood when I “translated” the Castillano to the standard Mexican tongue with which she converses with her mother. I wonder how the non-bilingual pupils will fare on this assignment.
Pardon me while I go and “estimate” that I have enough money in the bank to pay all my bills…I guess the bank will find that I am “right”.

@Dino: I don’t really understand the idea of estimating a math problem. It reminds me of a math instructor who would ask “Does everyone agree?” It’s math, not a democracy. 4 times 6 is 24 whether someone disagrees or not. It drove me nuts. I realize she was really asking “Does everyone understand how we got this result?” The inability of people to say “I don’t understand” or “I don’t know” without shame is another peeve.

I assume the explanations were along the lines of explaining set theory (I’d be interested to know if I am correct on that).

Very informative stuff. Thanks very much.

Keep it up!

Regards
Tom

Regarding estimation: being able to estimate quantities is actually an important part of quantitative literacy, but the way it’s often taught can appear pointless (and sometimes actually is). There are at least two important uses for estimation: first, if you’re doing complicated calculations, estimation lets you tell if the answers you’re getting are even reasonable; it provides you with a sanity check. Second, in many if not most cases where you use math in the real world, you don’t have access to exact information, but you still need to have a “ballpark” idea of where the results will be.

Learning this necessarily involves practicing problems where there will be a Correct Answer, and seeing how close your estimate gets. It’s one of those things that seems like busywork, but really isn’t.

Similarly with verbalization of math concepts: As John Allen Paulos pointed out in his wonderful book innumeracy, most Americans come out of school knowing how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, but having little idea when to do each. Again in real life, most applications of math don’t involve providing you with a set formula to solve; they involve coming up with the right formula.

A complicating factor here is that the kinds of math instruction that work best for typically-developing kids tend to work worst for autism-spectrum kids and vice versa. This should be dealt with by proper use of IEPs, but that tends to be honored more in the breach than the observance.

Christina, I was reacting to Sandra. If a discussion of homework and/or some parents deciding to express concerns over the quantity or quality of their kids homework rather than just throwing the kids at the school and going their merry way is “overprotective,” then, well, what I said above. If Free Range is really about non-involvement during our kids’ formative years, then I want no part of it. But I really don’t think it is, nor do I think many people view it that way.

dar, two comments, in responding to yours:

“My children seldom have more than an hour of homework (sans the half-hour mandatory reading, since that often extends into pleasure reading)”

So that’s why you don’t get it! Different parts of the country have different homework philosophies. Even Jay Mathews of the Washington Post who used to call himself Mr. Homework but has now reversed that position and has called for no homework in elementary (he promotes reading and writing at home instead, precisely what my daughter craved to do in her spare time)…run on sentence, I know. Even Jay Mathews concedes that the Washington region is one of the most homework heavy in the nation. Your region and your children’s programs dictate their homework load and from where I sit, it looks like a piece of cake compared to ours.

Dar, no wonder you don’t see this as a problem. Your high schooler gets one hour of homework each day, on average! Have you ever heard of Harris Cooper? He’s known as the nation’s homework expert and he says that anything more than two hours of high school homework yields you nothing but diminishing returns. Yet you have to pay your son to do even that one hour. Which posits that he wouldn’t do it unless there was some financial incentive. Do as you see fit. It’s not my place to tell you how to run your show. I have that respect for you.

Me, I’ve tried to raise a life longer learner. Trust me, it’s not easy bucking the trend but it has yielded my family amazing returns. I have friends who did what you are doing, rewarding for good GPAs. All power to them except we used to argue this. I learned to live and let live as long as someone else doesn’t shove their ideology down my throat.

I happen not to like pop behaviorism, I’m an Alfie Kohn devotee. I know, especially with certain kids, bribing is the kiss of death. You bribe it, you taint it. I’ve seen this happen with my friends’ kids. Parents were always either brandishing the carrot or the stick. Now as high schoolers and beyond, while incredible kids, they appear disillusioned, disaffected from their learning, apathetic and depressed. The parents are baffled. But we always rewarded them, they exclaim. I used to read a lot of parenting philosophy so friends would ask for some advice. I would tell them, if you have only have time to read one parenting book in your entire life, make it “How to Talk so Kids will Listen and how to Listen so Kids will Talk.” It gets you away from that constant lure of bribing to something deeper and more substantive. You would think that nothing but the carrot and stick works in the classroom, and there too, you would be wrong.

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@Tracy: Salaried positions often have work that extends beyond the 40 hour week. I remember a job where I worked 60-85 hours a week (Microsoft).

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I hear you, dar. I had jobs like that too. But children are not adults. Their capacity for executive function and organization is not that of an adult’s. They’re kids. It’s not the same. You think you are preparing them for a good workaholic life later by burning them out now. It simply ain’t so.

As for your workaholic job, I’ve had those too. I was a director, I worked all the time, I ate, slept and breathed it and I loved it. I doubt I could have done it forever but for that time, it satisfied many needs. I can tell you I NEVER would have been able to produce that kind of singular devotion and commitment to that position had my childhood been compromised.

Children have to play. Yes, even teens are children. They are not adults. They need downtime. They need time for incidental learning, the kind of serendipitous learning that comes from happenstance. The book they trip over in the hall that they pick up and read, unprompted by “you have to” and a bribe for doing it. The computer they want to take apart to see how it works. The hike they go on where they climb rocks and test their limits. The necessary judgment that comes from navigating the world. They can’t do any of this if they are always hunkered down with homework, only engaged in adult-directed pursuits. Self direction is more valuable than yet one more assignment.

You make a grave mistake when you assume children are miniature adults. Lately I hear of so many high performing high achieving straight A students, the good girls and boys, the ones who aimed to please, the ones you like because they did everything adults told them to, coming home from college in a depression. I am hearing it so often from friends of friends that I have to question whether this is the tip of the iceberg.

I’m a baby boomer. I remember with great fondness my education; the teachers who inspired me, who turned me to writing, the ones who encouraged adn guided. Are our children getting enough of these kinds of mentors today?

I couldn’t wait to go to school. Most high schoolers I know today who take their education very seriously wake up sleep deprived, exhausted and many are depressed but hide it well. My generation has been wildly successful. I’m not nearly as optimistic for their children.

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I played with the children on the 60 hour work weeks.

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I commend you. So did I, so did my husband. But when you have a sixty hour work week and so do they, I can assure you, there won’t be a whole lot of playing going on.

Thank you Sandra. You said that perfectly.

I haven’t read all the comments, I admit. I just want to practically scream and say, no 6th-grader should be doing homework until 10 o’clock at night! (Well, maybe if the kid had so many extra activities that he didn’t start until, oh, at the latest 8.) It’s not productive and I doubt he’s really learning anything, other than that school is awful. I don’t know when the whole “let’s give lots of homework” started; I just know I’ve lived through it. And then, sometimes your kids gets an offbeat assignment that lights his/her fire and they go after it like a dog with a bone. And guess what — they learn a lot more! Years ago, when Obama was sitll a senator, a teacher came off as critical about him. My youngest protested. He challenged her to find out his positions on whatever the topic was. She did. This is a kid who’s classic underachiever (and now finally diagnosed with ADD!) — so it was great to see her tackle something like that. For a look at what our public schools could be, take a look at “Lives of Passion, School of Hope,” by Rick Posner. One school, in Colorado, has shown how it can reignite the love of lifelong learning, with the way it approached education, the way it designs its curriculum — and this book follows alums who are, yes, successful and engaged in life. It’s a school where personal growth comes first (there’s a concept) — These alums take care of themselves, have meaningful relationships and they give some of the credit to their school experience. Can the grads of our schools say the same?

@Liz: My love of learning was not killed in school, nor in church, nor even in “progressive” indoctrination seminars.

“And how these mothers and fathers including you talk about how much better they are than others with their commitment since they homeschool, make sure the kdis do not get too much homework, the right homework… I am just tired of parents seeking a communication tool to talk about how well the raise their kids.”

You completely made that up. I have not ever claimed that my kids are better or that I am better or more committed because I homeschool, and others may have, but it couldn’t have been often and I haven’t ever actually seen it.

When I bring up homeschooling, it is because it is what I do, and it fits the context of what we’re talking about. Yes, homeschooling allows me to do certain things, which are among the reasons I do not. No, I have NEVER claimed that I am a better parent because I homeschool, or that homeschooling solve all problems or deals with all issues that are raised. It is simply the context in which I deal with those issues and attempt to solve those problems, so I reference it. If this is a “communication tool to talk about how well we raise our kids” then that’s unfortunate. However, I’ve never regarded it as that and I doubt the majority here have, either. Most of us, I think, are trying to share what has worked for us and why we think it’s worked. If you think that constitutes self-aggrandizement, then your problem is with the whole education and child-rearing oriented blog format, not with this site, or particular people here.

I confess I’m not going to address the rest of your comment, because if that first paragraph accurately describe your thinking about what people here homeschooling and not, are trying to do, you’re proceeding on false premises anyway.

dar205: No, it doesn’t presume that at all. Homework is geared toward the median level of the class, perhaps even lower.

Again, this presumes that all of the students fall into an easily identifiable range of skill levels. It takes the individual component out of the problem. Kids are individuals, and schools are notoriously bad at assessing their individual skills.

The overriding assumption by so many that they know everything so are able to adequately determine how worthless something is or is not actually boggles the mind.

This is disingenuous. You don’t have to “know everything” to be able to judge whether or not something is worth your time. You just have to know your goals and your preferred methods of arriving at them.

The role of the parent is to assist them in realizing that they need to limit their indulgence (the pleasure principle) to what is effective for them to succeed in life (the reality principle).

But are saying you know what success in life is? Isn’t “success” personally defined? “Success” in our family is being happy, kind, and independent. And there may be, in the future, some kind of homework which leads to independence, but we’ve not experienced that, yet.

For some, homework is a means to an end which will make them happy. For some, homework is even fun. But there are many for whom homework serves no purpose, practically or aesthetically. For many it’s a complete waste of time.

So, what’s wrong with people rejecting something they find to be a waste of their time?

@pentamom. My “wow” was merely concerning the vehemence of all the postings prior to mine. It was meant in no way to reflect on any particular poster’s view. My apologies if it was taken as otherwise.

@J: Just to clarify for the record, intellectually understanding and practicing are two totally different things.

dar205: Schools are composed of classes. Classes are aggregates of people, not “individuals.”

This is where we seem to most fundamentally disagree. Having spent many years as a teacher, I found that the students who were treated as individuals responded much better than those who weren’t.

Back on topic, it seems to me that your objection to homework is more in line with it interfering with your dreams & goals that you wish to enact through your child.

Above, you were complaining about people who think they know everything. Then here, you pretend to know things you can’t possibly know. I’ve avoided making baseless assertions about your motivations for embracing homework for all of your children. It would be nice if you could return the courtesy, if you’re able.

Success is personally defined. It seems odd that you equate self-discipline with group-think. That speaks more about you than undermine my position.

You’re misrepresenting my argument (which says things about you) as I’ve never equated self-discipline with group-think. You’re defining “self-discipline” as “what dar205 believes is self-discipline.”

Doing what you’re told for the sake of it doesn’t equal self-discipline. If you’re able to do the things necessary to meet your personal goals, while managing distractions, you have self-discipline. The fact that some people don’t see homework as a means to an end doesn’t mean they don’t have self-discipline. It only means they approach their goals differently than you seem to think they should.

Homework is only a waste of time for those who cannot control their need for self-indulgence & instant gratification.

This is so broad and subjective that it becomes, literally, nonsense. Replace the word “homework” with “running” or “praying” or “abstinence” or “philosophy” or “religion” or “fasting” or anything any number of people feel strongly about.

You feel strongly about homework and its benefits. That’s great. Other people don’t care for it. It’s wrong for you to judge those people because they don’t share your passion for the road to success you’ve chosen. There are many roads and not all of them include homework.

I have no problem with people rejecting things that they feel are a waste of time. However, you should expect mockery, derision and scorn when it turns out you were wrong & doubly so when you ignore the warnings of others that you are wrong.

I have no problem with people expressing strong feelings about things they enjoy or feel are very useful. However, you should expect mockery, derision, and scorn when it turns out you reflexively judge people you don’t know in a negative light because they make personal choices in their lives that you wouldn’t make.

The actual average figures are less than 30 minutes a night in elementary and less than 60 minutes a day in high school. Now, those are averages, so some kids have more and some less, but these are National averages. I have never met any child with 3 or 4 or even 2 hours of homework @@every single night.@@ That indicates either a serious self-discipline problem, a learning disability, or a serious problem with an individual teacher that can be addressed with the administration

I was a GT student. My mom taught GT classes for decades. And she never would have tolerated from me the excuse that I could not manage to copy out my vocab definitions because “I learn differently.” Never. Of course, she also gave pre-lesson quizzes in her classes, and, if you got above a certain score, you did not have to do the homework or listen to the lesson (you could read instead) because you had exhibited mastery of the content.

@LJM: 1+1 is simple also, complexity does not make something more correct. If you want to posit the ditch digger paid minimum wage as being as successful as the renown sculptor, the Nobel prize winner or even the wage-slave at the tech support center, more power to you. I would consider you an idiot and dismiss anything further you have to say as irrelevant.

Your use of the word wrong, in this context, implies a moral framework. The logical term is “unprovable” or “irrelevant” (there are some others that might work).

You also betray your objectives in this whole conversion example. I already know that you won’t respect my opinion. To do so would require a re-evaluation of your morals & values, & frankly you are too invested in them to look at them dispassionately. Frankly, I don’t really enjoy responding to you. However, you keep saying things which, if anyone believed you, would be detrimental to my children and the world in which they will live. Thus I refute you. Our strategies are different, I don’t need to convert you, so while you are trying to convince me that you are right & that I should believe you, I just have to demonstrate that you are wrong. I’ve already posted what I think is wrong & what needs to be fixed in regards to our school system.

The standard if A then B is not useful in demonstrating that those who avoid homework are lacking in self-control, self-discipline & motivation. However, that is why we have science. It is empirically demonstrable that barring other factors (such as the introduction of character building activities like scouting or even stealth homework) children who avoid completing homework show a strong correlation with such traits as a lack of self-discipline, etc.

Btw, most people hate homework. It is strength of character that enables one to do something even when they don’t want to because it needs to be done (in this case it needs to be done to get a good grade, if you want bad grades…). Sure there are exceptions, but they are notable because they are exceptions. Not every slacker turns into Einstein. To encourage a child to poor scholastic performance in the hopes that they will become an Einstein is the height of idiocy.

“That indicates either a serious self-discipline problem, a learning disability, or a serious problem with an individual teacher that can be addressed with the administration”

Sky, it’s amazing how quick you are to blame the student. That’s not to say that there aren’t indeed lazy and unmotivated kids. But I’m willing to bet you their parents are not the ones writing in here.

My daughter gave up two activity periods today to work on a paper and came home and sat solidly for another three hours tonight. Her total homework time today has already amounted to five and a half hours tonight. That is hardly unusual for her school. And she’s not finished. It’s 8:41 pm, she hasn’t had dinner yet, and over our meal, she and her dad are going to review the news headlines for a quiz tomorrow. I’d hardly call this kid lazy and unmotivated. Or undisciplined.

Yes, some students have learning disabilities. And don’t think that because they do, it’s so easy to get less homework. As for taking it up with the administration, good luck. You think we haven’t tried?

And for the person who felt some derision towards us for homeschooling? To echo pentamom, please don’t think it’s an easy decision. For many families, it comes as a last resort. Yes, in most cases, it turns out to be an incredible blessing in disguise. But it’s not lost on us that we are paying taxes to educate other people’s children.

Homeschooling is hard work. It was a magical year. But don’t think the decision wasn’t reached after months of agonizing, soul searching and well, initial terror. It’s like taking your child under your arms, jumping off a cliff, and discovering you have wings. I don’t regret a single second of it. I only regret not having started sooner.

dar205,

Again, this has nothing to do with morals or values. It has to do with facts. You assert that thinking homework is a waste of time indicates a character flaw and that kids who do poorly in classrooms are stupid. I’m just pointing out how silly and baseless these assertions are and asking for evidence to demonstrate that they’re true.

I’m not surprised you don’t enjoy responding to me. Maybe you’re not used to having people challenge you on your baseless assertions. But as long as you keep making them, I’ll keep challenging you to demonstrate their truthfulness.

However, you keep saying things which, if anyone believed you, would be detrimental to my children and the world in which they will live.

This is more nonsense. It’s a fact that many people believe that homework is a waste of time (many successful people, by the way) and that “success” means different things to different people. How does this fact harm your children?

Our strategies are different, I don’t need to convert you, so while you are trying to convince me that you are right & that I should believe you, I just have to demonstrate that you are wrong.

Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? You haven’t demonstrated that homework is necessary for everyone to be successful. You haven’t demonstrated that people who believe that homework is a waste of time “cannot control their need for self-indulgence & instant gratification,” or that kids who don’t do well in class are “stupid.”

So, why not provide some evidence that clearly demonstrates these points?

It is empirically demonstrable that barring other factors (such as the introduction of character building activities like scouting or even stealth homework) children who avoid completing homework show a strong correlation with such traits as a lack of self-discipline, etc.

Please provide the research which demonstrates this and which has controls for family dysfunction.

It is strength of character that enables one to do something even when they don’t want to because it needs to be done (in this case it needs to be done to get a good grade, if you want bad grades…).

The non-parenthetical part of this is a truism. The parenthetical part is utterly subjective and baseless. It presumes that grades given by the state are an objective reflection of the quality of one’s character (or even one’s intelligence), which is so obviously wrong as to be laughable. Again, history is filled (along with the present world) with accomplished people who were poor students.

I said before that it’s fine that you value homework and it works for you. What I object to is your condescending attitude that people who don’t see the usefulness of are of weak character. It’s a juvenile assertion.

We are nearing the end of the school year in Australia and I am dreading my son getting a particular homework overload teacher for 2nd grade next year.

My son is the type of kid who just can’t concentrate when he is tired. Earlier in the year, his supposed 10 minutes of homework was taking about 30 torturous minutes during which time he would cry in frustration and I would need to sit by his side keeping him company while he copied out spelling words, tried to write sentences using these words and did half a page of maths.

We ended up having to give up music lessons as it was like pulling his fingernails out trying to get him to practise and he was just getting further and further behind the other kids in his music group and becoming even more despondent about everything. It also cut into other fun, relaxing evening activities and even at time, meant a later bedtime (a big help with a tired child).

Fortunately he had reasonable teachers who were more than happy to reduce the load significantly when I told them what was happening. I got the impression that they were only setting so much homework because it was ‘expected’.

Another parent with a child in the other 1st grade class was not given such a good reception but had the teacher tell her that her daughter’s problems with reading and writing were obviously due to the fact that she worked full time and therefore obviously wasn’t spending enough time helping her daughter at home with her homework.

This teacher also teaches 2nd grade and I am dreading my son getting her next year as her ‘pile on the homework at all costs’ approach sounds like the complete opposite to what my son needs. Also if she makes any cracks to me about working mothers, I am afraid of what I might do to her!

“Well, gee, Sky, I wish my daughter was in that class. Because she always got a near perfect score on that pre-test. I rest my case. She knew the words. She knew the meanings.”

I wish more teachers did this. Some kids know the material, and some don’t. The point of teaching is to get kids to learn and understand the material. If they come in knowing it, or if they grasp it quickly, they should be able to move on to something else as soon as they know it, or at least do free reading while the material is reviewed, so that the teachers can concentrate on getting the kids who don’t know the material to grasp it. (There are varying levels of skill even in GT classes.) So I agree that some homework (I might go so far as to say 50% of the homework I had) teachers give out is not necessary for some (I’d go so far as to say 40% of) kids. Not necessary–but I still don’t understand how, if they are beyond it, they can’t complete it, and complete it quickly. Being smart should be an advantage – it should mean you are able to complete menial academic tasks FASTER than others, not that you should not be able to complete them at all, or that you should take much longer to complete them than others. This is the part of the argument I don’t understand. If being gifted means it takes three times as long to complete a menial task (such as copying definitions out of a dictionary) as it takes a person of “regular” intelligence to do the same task, what happens when that gifted person must confront menial tasks such as doing taxes and filling out job applications? I can’t understand why it should take a long time to do this task. That it is boring and unnecessary for a student who knows the words, I can understand, but that it should be difficult or overly time-consuming?

Sky, email Linda Silverman at Gifted Development Center in Denver. Ask her about visual spatial kids. I”m sure she’ll give you the answer you are looking for. Ask her about 2es as well.

“Sky, email Linda Silverman at Gifted Development Center in Denver. Ask her about visual spatial kids. I’m sure she’ll give you the answer you are looking for. Ask her about 2es as well.”

Do you mean kids with a visual spatial learning disability? I have that, but it wasn’t identified until I was in 10th grade (when we were given a standardized test containing a spatial section), and nothing was done about it, because I was doing fine in school academically. It did, however, prevent me from getting beyond Calculus II in college, at which point I just accepted my limitations and switched majors to something at which I could excel. It certainly affected my spelling and handwriting in elementary school, such that those were the only subjects in which I got C’s. And I do remember that homework bringing me to tears…but that was because I wanted to be better at it than I was. Eventually I just settled for C’s, and soon spelling and handwriting became less important as we moved to typing papers using dictionaries and spell checks. Grades don’t matter in elementary school, only in high school.

I’m confused. I thought your daughter was in high school and taking AP classes? Is she in elementary school? If she is in high school, as for time spent on papers – if she is in AP classes, this is standard preparation for what college will be like. She will have to write papers of greater length and magnitude for many classes in college. Maybe she isn’t ready for it now and should not be taking so many college level classes in high school? I never took more than two AP classes a year in high school because I made a decision that I did not want to spend that much time on homework in high school. In college, I took 5 classes a semester, which left me with two more hours for study and papers than a 7 hour school day does. But if you are taking college level classes, that workload is the reality. Students should know their limitations, and not take more college level classes than they can handle. I still managed to earn 18 hours of credit for college by the time I graduated high school, with taking only 1-2 AP classes a year, and I still managed to graduate one semester early from college. Kids today take SO MANY of these AP classes in this area, while STILL doing tons of extracurricular activities. They are killing themselves, but it is their CHOICE to take on these activities and these workloads. So maybe if they don’t they won’t get into an ivy league. But maybe they don’t need to be in an ivy league. Maybe they’ll do just fine at GMU and get a great job when they get out. The solution isn’t to lower the workload in AP classes (this is realistic preparation for college), but to lower the number of AP classes being taken; to learn one’s limitations and how to make choices, trade-offs of time, sacrifices.

Dar, I need to help you make a distinction between helicoper parents and nurturing ones. The helicopter parents are not writing in. They are the ones clamoring for MORE homework, not less! They are the ones I encountered at a meeting last year, the one who told me her son is an “extreme high achiever.” Not just a high achiever, but an extreme one. Kind of like Evil Knievel. These are the parents who call for more homework under the misguided belief it’ll help their kids get into Harvard. These are the parents who think play is frivolous and that every moment of a child’s life must be prescribed by adults.

Fortunately, for every Stepford Wife there are ten others, quietly seething at the homework load but too afraid to buck the trend and speak up.

You see these moms at school. They treat parenting as a job. They are always at school, volunteering, photo copying. On the surface, they look like very involved parents. But they are obsessed with grades, transcripts, accolades. These are the hyper-competitive baby boomer parents, over-invested in their child’s achievements. They are the ones who commandeer the PTA.

At the risk of over-generalizing, I’ve been brushing up against these parents for years in the “elite” GT programs my daughter has attended. I pick my friends very carefully. I resist parent peer pressure. These by and large, are not the parents sad because they can’t take their kids to a museum or a hike. When you talk to them, you come away with the distinct impression they care more about their kid’s resume than the child herself.

@J: If I might summarize: “Helicopter Parenting is what other people do.” So long as you believe that you are incapable of doing something you will never be able to identify that behavior in yourself. I have to combat my desire to hover & do things for my children all the time. I want things done, not to wait for them to get done.

@LJM: So the pot leans over to the kettle and says “Hey your black.”

Oops, a lot of mistakes on that last post :(. To correct one, double negative there. No child should, meant to write.

Dar, I’m not helicopering. I don’t do my child’s homework. Let me try to make this easy for you. Let me boil it down. I love my kid. I actually like to spend time with her. Get as much done as school as possible. You teach, I parent. Deal?

“I want schools to get rid of the time wasters and fluff.”

I’m all for that, but the problem is that some of the “time wasters” involve reviewing for the slower children, and you can’t really get rid of them. You can track better (divide up classes according to ability better), but you can’t ever entirely eliminate that waste of time when you have 25 kids in a class with one teacher. When the teacher is reviewing stuff you already know, however, that is a good time to do your homework from other classes (which is what I always did).

But, yes, there’s a lot of useless “fluff” also in school. I’d like to see that eliminated, but I think I’d rather see a 5 hour day with research papers done at home than a 7.5 hour day with research papers done at school under the supervision of teachers. Doing it on their own time is more realistic preparation for college, and it leaves more responsibility in the hands of the kids (so they aren’t constantly being nudged/supervised and must learn to do it on their own). The problem is that so many parents have come to see school as a giant day care facility. Well, there are many problems preventing this possibility, many things hampering teachers and administration. This is why homeschooling is so appealing to many. There are real, and I think some of them are even inevitable, limitations to any system of mass education, especially one such as ours, where education is mandatory for every student until the age of 16-18, no matter how ill-behaved the child, no matter how unwilling to learn. (Education is more of a privilege in many other countries.)

The problem with having study hall is that (from what I hear) students rarely actually study in study hall. Why lengthen the day and have study hall when you can just let them out an hour earlier and have them do it at home? That way kids who work quickly aren’t locked up in study hall when they finish, but can go out and play. We never had “study hall” when I went to school, though I have heard of people who have. But I still got most of my work (except for papers and book reading) done during school hours.

I do think homework is necessary as a regular, daily thing in math classes for reinforcement of the concepts by practice (it’s easy to forget both math and languages without that), and for the teacher to see where students are having trouble, but the way it was always handled in my math classes was that we were given the last ten minutes of class to “start on our homework.” Most of the time, I finished it during that ten minutes, but students who did not took it home.

I guess it is my experience of finishing homework in school by managing my time well and seeing so many other students not finish and bringing it home that makes me skeptical of the homework complaints. It was also my experience of never staying up past 10 in college to study, and yet seeing people constantly pulling “all-nighters” that involved a lot more socializing than studying that has made me skeptical as well. I wonder how much of the perceived homework load is really due to an inability to manage time well.

This topic gets my blood pressure boiling. We have a small window of opportunity when our children get off the bus at 4:15pm to bedtime, usually 8:30pm. And I’m fortunate enough to only have to work part-time. It is exponentially worse for the families who have 2 working parents that don’t walk in the door until 6:30pm or even later from picking little ones up from daycare.

This homework nonsense is a travesty.

Approx. 4 hours to decompress from their day and actually be a kid, eat dinner, chat with the family, bathe and to add homework to this equation is just not the answer when kids are still in elementary school, at least.

Teachers either get complaints from parents, “where is the homework?!” or “its too much!” that they can’t win either.

Calgon, take me away.

Hey, Michele, who let a sane person in? Such justified outrage is just not allowed.

Dar, the school psychologist (a mental health professional, no less!) told me three years ago that the students in our school are expected to work 92 percent (of did she say 95? I can’t quite remember) of their free time. I’m not making this up. I forgot to ask her if this included sleep hours.

You do the math. Let’s take a typical day that year, a day in which she comes home right after school. By the time the bus brought her home it was just after five. Let’s say that equation roughly gives my child six free minutes every hour.

Let’s assume she’s going to make it to bed on time. Teenagers need on average nine and quarter hours sleep. In a five hour span, my daughter gets around 30 minutes of free time. And that still puts her in bed at ten, too late if she’s going to take the bus. But of course she isn’t. According to this plan, I must drive her.

30 minutes to have dinner, shower, go to the bathroom (god forbid she should need to go twice), and maybe just maybe have a conversation with her parents. I can just see it. She comes to me, upset over something that happened at school. I reach for the stopwatch. I tell her she has exactly two minutes. I snap my fingers, set the timer, and shout GO!

Guess who gets blamed when the kids get into trouble? You guessed it. The parents. With cries of, where were you, why weren’t you paying attention? A very wise man said some words in a lecture many years ago. I have never forgotten them and live by them: “Never make the mistake of thinking your teens need you less, not more.”

dar, when I hear the word “fluff” in connection with school, I don’t think of band, orchestra, drama, art, and sports. I think of these sorts of things that occurred when I was in school, and I do not doubt still occur:

– Group work: Break into groups and answer this question together. (A question that would normally take one minute to answer on your own becomes a ten minute exercise in socializing.)

– Watching movies: We’re going to watch this Hollywood movie in English class for the next three days, because it happens to be based on a famous book; we’re going to watch this Hollywood movie in math class for the next three days, because it’s about some guy who used his math skills to win in Vegas; we’re going to watch this Hollywood movie in government class for the next two days, because it’s about some jurist and a court case

– Putting on plays in non-drama classes, or doing art work in non-art classes: I’m all for offering drama and art, but not everyone is so gifted, and I don’t like seeing it required in English, history, math, and science classes. In English once, we were assigned to break into groups, cut a Shakespeare play down to 45 minutes, and perform it. So we spent a week doing this (as well as several hours after school) and then spent a week watching the other group’s performances. Fine for a drama class. In English, how about we READ the plays and WRITE papers on them? How about we learn some grammar while we’re at it (which I had to learn from my parents), so the college professors don’t keep asking—didn’t anyone teach you kids grammar in high school?

– Playing computer games that are supposedly “educational”

– Going to hour-long assemblies where some business gives the kids a motivational speech to get them to sell their pet rocks, wrapping papper, or cookies

– Going to hour-long assemblies where some group indoctrinates the kids into their version of morality

– Making artistic posters for non-art classes; making a newspapers for Ancient Egypt, complete with crossword puzzle and horoscope for Western Civilization class

– Project presentations that involve pretending to be on TV shows, with a little history thrown in (watching various groups of kids perform these for a week) for U.S. History class

– Making a “Tale of Two Cities” cookbook, cooking tarts, bringing them in to class for people to eat, having a party (in English class)

– Sitting outside the classroom for the first ten minutes of first period, waiting for our always late teacher to show up and unlock the classroom door

I could go on. There is PLENTY of fluff in public schools that could be eliminated. They are time fillers to kill a 7 hour babysitting day. Homework is the work that either wasn’t taught in school, or reinforcement. **The reinforcement type of homework I’m all for.** But the stuff that wasn’t taught in school? Cut out the crap and TEACH it, OR, cut out the crap and shorten the day by two hours and give the kids more free time to learn it at home. And the silly artistic projects for non-art classes? The dioramas? The posters? Cut that stuff out. They teach very little about the ACTUAL SUBJECT. Give the kids an option of oral or written reports to show they’ve mastered the ACTUAL subject.

@J: I am seldom concerned with other peoples ideas of what I should be doing — unless said people are paying me to be doing something specific.

The quote from Challenging Success is fine, end and of itself. The problem is most people’s instincts are screwed up. I am also pretty sure that the context has the author putting some touchy feelie social engineering bs put forth as “instinct.”

I don’t really care what the school psychologist said. One guy making up a statistic on the spot to answer a parent’s question should not be taken as authoritative. Why don’t you take the time to, over the course of a couple of weeks, plot out exactly what is being done. Even if my children had 4 hours of homework a night, even the elementary students would get to bed on time.

(re: time) Who the hell are you indeed. What is your job? Why are you still around? You (& the others arguing against homework) are the ones who posited a dichotomy between homework and play time. Don’t blame me for it flaws, it belongs to you.

Even so, I didn’t put forth that you did not value scholastics. I tire of this continuous stream of straw men. I put forth that you value your play time more. The biggest complaint seems to be that the parent doesn’t get to interact with the child in the way that they wish to interact. Instead there is the dreadful homework which must be drudged through. No wonder it takes so long, you are telling them that it is stupid, bothersome & dreary — and inside you are agreeing with their delaying tactics.

@Sky: I don’t have a problem with the introduction of art or an artistic aesthetic into non-art subjects. It tends to render the subject more memorable & the different perspective can make it interesting again. Group work, when done properly allows people to reinforce concepts by “teaching” them to the other members of the group. I do agree that far to often it is used as a break, but that is the fault of the teacher not the technique. I also agree that an over-reliance on pop-culture is fluff (the movie adaption should be replaced with class readings, pretending to be on a tv show should be replaced with a standard class presentation). The late teacher is a separate issue altogether. That has to do with the power of unions and the nature of the school administration.

dar–I don’t mind the introduction of art if you have choices about what kind of project/presentation you want to do; what bothers me was that virtually every project I can recall from elementary and even junior high and high school favored the artistic; you were judged on how good you could make something “look” as much as on whether you knew the actual material for the actual subject at hand. I was very greatful when, in 10th grade, I had a teacher who finally said – you can choose to write a report on this book OR do an art project on it. Imagine that! But my other problem with art projects is that they do not always evidence to the teacher that you have actually read and understand the material, the way a report (either oral or written) does. Making a diorama of The Tell Tale Heart does nothing whatsoever to evidence that I have actually read and understood The Tell Tale Heart, but it does consume a large chunk of my time, which I could instead have spent reading the complete poems of Edgar Allan Poe.

@Sky: Yeah, Open ended projects are typically best, since they allow the child to choose their strengths for the presentation. I am also thinking more along the lines of “Science Fair” type projects.

(re: sleep) I was referring to my children. They get home around 4. They go to bed around 9. Even if they had four hours of homework a night, they’d still get to bed on time. However, they don’t get 4 hours a night. It seems more like 4 hours a week (if that) for the elementary and an hour to two for the high schooler. I get a lot more homework than they do.

Sky – the part about being a public school wasn’t directed at you. Every time I post anywhere about my class and the projects we do – I get Oh you must be a small elite private school.

Still the sage on a stage method you prefer caters to a very narrow type of learning style. Yes it has been the dominate form of learning for a long time, since the industrial revolution.

Also the CONTENT of the projects are what I give the most weight to, when grading. I do grade on presentation, but I grade that according to ability. Meaning – I know child A can turn out detailed drawings with perfect penmanship and I know child B struggles with handwriting. So they turn in posters (remember their choice). A’s is fantastic but missing content B’s is a bit of a mess but has all the content – B will be getting the higher grade. It is right there in the rubric. (Content has 2x the points presentation has). B can even earn full points if the presentation is up to what he is capable of producing

The ONLY time I show full length video is when we can’t go outside for recess. Meaning it is actively raining, we have an ozone/pollution warning, or is cold and my kids don’t have jackets. (I don’t mean they forgot them I mean they don’t have them because it is rarely that cold in Texas and their parents don’t have the $ to buy a jacket they may wear 2X before outgrowing). If the playground is underwater (AKA lake Smith) we still go outside if the blacktop is above water.

I do use video segments especially in science to show my kids things they haven’t experienced and we can’t do in the classroom. Sometimes that will be in a presentation, more often they are on the I-touches, CD-ROms I make, or Flashdrives.

BTW = the total amount of homework I gave in the last science unit – 0. I did have kids bring in info they found. THe total amount of math homework 30 min. We reviewed math problems and they had some left in each section they could do at home to study. This was the night before the test. (Those were 2 week units)

“in the ONE HOUR a WEEK they get for science and/or history and/or social studies.”

What caught my eye as I read your comment is amount of time wasted in school and how what’s left isn’t being put to the best use, far more than with lauding this very creative project. One hour a week for science and another for social studies in elementary is a travesty. As I see it, they are spending their day test prepping (to make themselves look good) and then sending home this very “creative” project. Gee, thanks.

I’m not denying this project has merit. As projects go, I’ve seen some really bad ones, the worst being those that are deeply time consuming yet have no educational value. Yes, this one works. In our homeschool year, my daughter did tons of in depth projects that were multi-disciplinary, as you describe above.

But I’m not going to applaud the school for wasting my kid’s time and then sending home something “crreative.”

When it sent home to plug up holes my reaction is, thanks but no thanks. We are not at a loss to come up with meaningful things to do here in our home and I don’t need the school micro-managing our free time. The assumption that children will only pursue selfish self absorbed activities unless being made to do otherwise by an adult does not hold water in my house and I am sure in many others as well.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I want school to do school so home can do home. Deal?

Laura, I hear you, really, I do. And I commend you for putting a positive spin on this project.

But on this and other school blogs, I keep hearing about the unfortunate teachers whose hands are tied. I’ve always been very sympathetic to their plight but I’m getting a little tired. NCLB has been around for several years and I am wondering what the teachers’ unions are doing about this. Why is it we haven’t seen better progress in dismantling it? Where the chorus of teacher voices? I see them in anonymous posts on blogs. We need them front and center, waging this battle publicly with us.

We know what the teachers are up against but at the end of the day, our children need an education, not an excuse. It’s time for someone to stand up and cry, The Emperor Has no Clothes!

Your son may knock his daily portion out in fifteen minutes. Not every kid can. My daughter is very artistic and perfectionist and what the teachers often think takes mere minutes can take hours.

I’m not surprised your daughter now hates reading. It’s not the additional emphasis on reading, it’s how they go about it. My daughter is a ravenous reader and I shudder to think what would have happened to her, had she been in public school those early years. I’m an avowed bibliophile too and I cringe when I read how reading is taught today.

Accelerated Reader, reading logs (not that DD didn’t have those), tedious reading responses…these all conspire, for various reasons to turn kids off to reading. My favorite is the “read for twenty minutes a day rule.” Many parents are advised to use a timer. Ick. I don’t want to impose some artificial time limit on reading. I don’t want to send the message that you read for twenty minutes and then you can go play, positing that reading is yucky.

I want my kid to read to abandon, to get lost in the story. And I don’t want her to have to worry about constant questions, as she’s reading it. As Sara Bennett, author of “The Case Against Homework” writes, that’s like tapping someone on the shoulder in middle of a movie every ten minutes and asking them to comment on what they’re viewing. You want kids to get carried away to some magical place in their reading, not to hack up the novel and drearily dissect it.

Nexist, huh? I can’t debate you because you are not making any sense, my dear.