Homework is wrecking our kids: The research is clear, let’s ban elementary homework

I don't remember doing much homework in elementary school. All I remember is memorizing some things for vocabulary, spelling, and history. It didn't take much time. I remember doing a lot of math problems in class.
 
I actually had a few classes in college where homework was graded for correctness, and it was sort of stressful. It was only worth about 10% of my grade, but if I wanted an A I had to get the bulk of it right. We'd get two problems that were due the next class meeting, and I'd say each one took me somewhere between 15 minutes and an hour. It would have gone faster if I hadn't had such a chip on my shoulder and insisted on doing it by myself.

And, of course, the only way this was possible was because the professor had an army of TAs to do all the grading.
 
Safe to say if your kid is constantly coming home with homework in elementary school, then that is a pretty good indicator that your kid is misusing their classroom time... Cause most hw in elementary school is incomplete assignments and redo's.

Sounds luke another way for the bad apples to sink thru
 
No, South Korea is 2nd in the world and have the lowest homework per hour.

Tell that to the kids that would come to private school to learn English and Math after they had their day of public school.

I remember having a debate one day in class back when I taught in Seoul.. The argument was: Is it better to be an adult or a student? One of the arguments the grade 4 students came up with was: Being an adult is better, you have more free time in life. You just work and then go home. As students we go to public school, then private school, then home to do the homework both schools have assigned to us.. When we grow up to be adults we will be free from responsibility..

I didn't have the heart to tell them that it may get slightly better, but for some it will get considerably worse.

South Korea is hyper competitive so the idea that these kids aren't at home studying is outlandish. SK's performance academically definitely doesn't come from lack of hours outside of public school LMAO.
 
Half my class doesn't do the homework assigned anyways and their parents just cover for the kids. Then wonder why the kid doesn't know anything.
This is why we left Cub Scouts last year.

We had all the kids over to our house to make their pinewood derby cars. Once kid came with his already pre-made.

I asked if his dad did it for him. He told me that they hired a carpenter to do it for him.

The day after the race, I found a couple on Ebay that were the same that were raced the day before.

I wonder exactly how much homework kids do today and how much parents do for them.
 
Eh now homework until middle school should be the rule but I found that homework helped me remember things better for tests and shit. Maybe we have too many classes at once.
 
So why does the education suck? I know it's hard work but it appears to be working as intended. If someone doesn't want to pay their dues, that's their choice.
Omg where to start? All classes are lectures from the books, so if the kids read the books they won't absorb any new info
The teachers are tired, so their knowledge doesn't advanced. I know more history than the social studies teachers, by a lot.
Classes are so boring. I can't stand them.
Basically Japanese classes are boring not interactive, and the teachers are boring and tired.
They are big believers in harder and not smarter.
 
Safe to say if your kid is constantly coming home with homework in elementary school, then that is a pretty good indicator that your kid is misusing their classroom time... Cause most hw in elementary school is incomplete assignments and redo's.

Sounds luke another way for the bad apples to sink thru
Not at all. My elem homework were assigned as such. You never had a chance to do them at school. But just blame this on kids being lazy. ...
 
Not at all. My elem homework were assigned as such. You never had a chance to do them at school. But just blame this on kids being lazy. ...
Im speaking from the perspective of a parent with 2 kids that left elementary school 2 &3 years ago.

Therefore I am speaking from a more current stance

Dig?

Now get out your lil feelings.
 
From what I have read on the issue, Nordic countries spend a lot less time on school work and more on playing/practical skills. German and Swiss schools have a broader curriculum for kids to explore interests. I am open to being wrong, but I went to a good public school and I never felt like I had options even though there were multiple classes to choose. Everyone was required X amount of credits to graduate, but at the baseline it was all the same. Nothing seems to vary.
Broader curriculum to explore interests =/= kids play most of the day. This is absolutely not the case in mainland Europe. Maybe a couple of private schools do this, but it's nothing like that in public/catholic schools.
 
You know what is too much? Playing video games/you tube for six hours a day 365 days/year.
Woah, no shit. What's your point? How does this in any way counter the anti-homework argument? It's either homework or video games/youtube?
 
Here is what I have observed with my 7 year old in regard to homework: it helps to reinforce what they learn in class. We have worked hard to try and help my son learn to read and work on his math to try and get him a solid foundation and improve his confidence. He has some anxiety issues that cause him to get all freaked out if he gets something wrong at school. By working with him at home, we see that frustration, but we help him work through it and he then realizes that he knew the stuff all along. I have been reading to him every night since he was basically an infant.
 
Here is what I have observed with my 7 year old in regard to homework: it helps to reinforce what they learn in class. We have worked hard to try and help my son learn to read and work on his math to try and get him a solid foundation and improve his confidence. He has some anxiety issues that cause him to get all freaked out if he gets something wrong at school. By working with him at home, we see that frustration, but we help him work through it and he then realizes that he knew the stuff all along. I have been reading to him every night since he was basically an infant.
Opposite side are kids who already understand the curriculum and are forced to sit through hours of menial tasks and stupid questions just because.
 
Woah, no shit. What's your point? How does this in any way counter the anti-homework argument? It's either homework or video games/youtube?
The point? The stupidity of the thread title is my point. If you think homework is what’s wrecking our kids you’re priorities are not where they should be. It’s called making excuses for whatever failures you need to justify. Do some fucking homework junior.
 
The point? The stupidity of the thread title is my point. If you think homework is what’s wrecking our kids you’re priorities are not where they should be. It’s called making excuses for whatever failures you need to justify. Do some fucking homework junior.
It's called addressing two separate problems separately. Whataboutism 101.
 
What's so unbelievable about this? Let's do some back of the envelope...

Over 9 months of school, you have roughly 9*30 or 270 days. Lets subtract three weeks for first week, Christmas, and last week of school, and you still have about 250 days. That's less than one book a day. In kindergarten, even senior kindergarten, you could have books that are very short, with only a single, short, simple sentence per page. That's less than one easy book per day.

Even if you take off weekends, you have roughly 9*4 weeks with 5 days per week or 180 days. That's still only roughly a book a day (ok a little more if you subtract those three weeks I mentioned above).

Anybody who had less than that just wasn't trying.


Not too many kindergartners know how to read come September. They are still in the letter recognition and phonic phases.

When the top reader of books in a class s more than twice as much as the second place finisher, then I feel like you have to take the results with a grain of salt.

That child could have indeed read all of those books by herself.

I also believe that Nessie could have been Jack the Ripper.
 
Not surprised to meet a close minded engineer, must be why so many are terrorists. No imagination. How about all the chemicals/pollution and weapons that engineers make?

Without social sciences we wouldn't know how mindless you are:

The two authors found the same high ratio of engineers in most of the 21 organizations they examined, including Jemaah Islamiya in Southeast Asia and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Middle East. Sorting the militants according to their 30 homelands showed the same pattern: engineers represented a fifth of all militants from every nation except one, and nearly half of those with advanced degrees.

One seemingly obvious explanation for the presence of engineers in violent groups lies in the terrorist’s job description. Who, after all, is least likely to confuse the radio with the landing gear, as Gambetta puts it, or the red wire with the green? But if groups need geeks for political violence, then engineering degrees ought to turn up in the rosters of all terrorist groups that plant bombs, hijack planes and stage kidnappings. And that’s not the case.

Gambetta and Hertog found engineers only in right-wing groups — the ones that claim to fight for the pious past of Islamic fundamentalists or the white-supremacy America of the Aryan Nations (founder: Richard Butler, engineer) or the minimal pre-modern U.S. government that Stack and Bedell extolled.


Among Communists, anarchists and other groups whose shining ideal lies in the future, the researchers found almost no engineers. Yet these organizations mastered the same technical skills as the right-wingers. Between 1970 and 1978, for instance, the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany staged kidnappings, assassinations, bank robberies and bombings. Seventeen of its members had college or graduate degrees, mostly in law or the humanities. Not one studied engineering.

The engineer mind-set, Gambetta and Hertog suggest, might be a mix of emotional conservatism and intellectual habits that prefers clear answers to ambiguous questions — “the combination of a sharp mind with a loyal acceptance of authority.” Do people become engineers because they are this way? Or does engineering work shape them? It’s probably a feedback loop of both, Gambetta says.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.html

I'm just an engineer, so I'm not that great at language or psychology. I figure you're trying to tell me one of three things:

1) You failed out of engineering school and you're trying to deal with the pain by stereotyping a large and varied group of people in negative ways.

2) Your significant other left you for an engineer.

3) An engineer developed a vibrator so good your significant other wont let you anywhere near them with your pathetic member.

I know it must pain you to use communications methods developed by engineers, so please take it easy on yourself and respond to me without the use of anything developed by an engineer of any kind. I'll wait... but I wont hold my breath.
 
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