Should Schools Get Rid of Homework? (npr.org)
- Reference: 0183047380
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/04/29/0357216/should-schools-get-rid-of-homework
- Source link: https://www.npr.org/2026/04/28/nx-s1-5795647/should-schools-get-rid-of-homework
> Federal survey data shows that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students, in particular, has been steadily declining for the past decade. [2]Some educators and parents say this is a good thing -- students shouldn't spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework is complicated. Some studies show that students who spend more time on homework perform better than their peers. For example, a longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the amount of time they spent on math homework performed better in math, even one year later.
>
> Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed. More homework was also associated with negative attitudes about school for younger children in the study. "The best educators figured out a long time ago that we can control what we can control," and that's what happens during the school day, Superintendent Garrett said, not homework. "There has been a shift away from it naturally anyway, and I felt like this made it equitable across our entire school system."
"The best argument for homework is that mathematical procedures require practice, and you don't want to waste classroom time on practice, so you send that home," said Tom Loveless, a researcher and former teacher who has studied homework.
Ariel Taylor Smith, senior director of the Center for Policy and Action at the National Parents Union, said: "The thing they point to is that it's an equity issue, and not all parents have the same availability and ability to support their students. I would make the argument that if a kid is really far behind in school, that's an equity issue. They need the additional time to practice." Kids, she said, "need more practice ... Sometimes, you do have to practice the boring stuff, like math."
"The interesting issue for folks to consider is not should there be more homework, but should there be better homework," said Joyce Epstein, who has studied homework and is the co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. "Better homework in math might be knowing the fact that kids don't have to be practicing for hours, 10 to 20 examples," when they could establish mastery in less time.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~Tony+Isaac
[2] https://www.npr.org/2026/04/28/nx-s1-5795647/should-schools-get-rid-of-homework
No (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather us reverse the trend of creating an ever dumber society.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The plan is to reduce the average American to being an absolute dispirit that obeys authority without question, is completely incapable of critical thinking and is willing to murder anyone they are commanded to by their Christo-Fascist masters so that Jesus will return to earth after righteousness and holiness has been restored
Re: (Score:3)
Mindless homework foisted on the students doesn't necessarily make them smarter.
The summary did a solid job of presenting some perspectives toward that end.
I will particularly agree that *maybe* practicing math has value beyond the classroom setting, but will counter that in my experience that is only valuable if a parent has the availability and skill to check their work and help them identify missteps.
Re: (Score:2)
Society is dumb, that's just the way it is. The problem is normalizing it so that everyone thinks they are educated when they actually aren't.
But even if we fix that, people are still going to be dumb.
Re: (Score:2)
then stop teaching math.
If something exists only as an abstraction dependent on observers to define and sustain it, then it does not possess objective reality in the same way physical objects are understood to exist. Therefore, mathematics, being entirely composed of such abstractions and dependent on human cognition for its meaning, can be concluded to not be real in any independent or objective sense.
Re: Its not the "Homework".... (Score:1)
The would-be Trump shooter was not a school teacher, he was a mech eng/comp sci graduate with a tutoring gig.
And just generally dude, chill... most teachers are just trying to teach and take care of their kids while navigating a tangled mesh of rules, methodologies, and liabilities in an environment where technology is disrupting everything and parents either don't care or are hyper-defensive.
Will probably be the opposite (Score:2)
Homework will get rid of schools.
Re: (Score:2)
2 hours of homework on the weekend is excessive. Should be zero. And maybe 10-15 minutes on weekdays.
WHY? (Score:2)
You assert that without offering any reasoning ;)
Re: (Score:2)
You are right, but also ... someone who is half-assing everything and gaming the system is not going to learn more from two hours than from fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, someone who is actively engaging with things, might spend the fifteen minutes and then go on to do two hours of additional exploration - but maybe not in the same direction as the specifically-assigned homework. You can't beat learning into people, but you can beat the love of learning out of people.
The crazy part is in assuming that a piec
Great answer; thanks (Score:2)
I suspect that we need to think a lot harder about what school education should look like, and that probably won't conclude that the present approach is fit for purpose. One of the more interesting options is - and don't freak at its origin - the 'Accelerated Christian Education' approach, which has each kid working on their own with a computer that teaches them the ideas and then tests whether they've got it. If they're struggling they can either ask for help - and do something else until the teacher arriv
Re: (Score:2)
OK, if you're employed, please sign up for two hours of extra work on the weekend. Thanks for volunteering!
Re: (Score:2)
I can't even say if you're right or wrong. How do we determine these amounts?
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Well, I'm just going by my own experience from when I was in school, many decades ago.
It was useful to me to have some homework to practice things that needed practicing, like times tables when I was in the early grades and more advanced mathematics in the later grades. But any day where I had more than about 20 minutes of homework, I became very resentful and fed up.
Invert the process (Score:4, Insightful)
There's long been a school of thought that the homework should be the learning portion of the curriculum, and the classwork should be the practice portion. The exact opposite of how it's currently done. Students can read the assignments or learn at their own pace using whatever methods they find suits them, and then can demonstrate their understanding and practice their new knowledge under supervision of a teacher who can help them with any difficult spots and recommend tools/methods that might work better.
This also solves the "cheating" problem because you can't copy someone else's knowledge without actually learning it and an LLM can't learn it for you either.
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:2)
That's how a lot of classes were in my high school (Montessori). We were told to read certain chapters of the syllabus ahead of the class, perhaps do a few exercises. In class, the teacher helped with difficult problems, walk the class through the tricky ones, and expand on the material that was studied. And the amount of homework we got was very reasonable.
Re: (Score:2)
There's not one right way for students to learn, because different people learn best in different ways. The idea that all students will benefit most from trying to learn from books at home is a ridiculous one at best.
> Students can read the assignments or learn at their own pace using whatever methods they find suits them, and then can demonstrate their understanding and practice their new knowledge under supervision of a teacher
After they practiced doing it wrong for an hour at home as their first exposure to the idea? Great plan with no drawbacks!
Re: (Score:2)
> After they practiced doing it wrong for an hour at home as their first exposure to the idea? Great plan with no drawbacks!
No, they would not be practicing anything for the first time at home. The whole point is they review the lecture/reading materials/youtube videos or whatever on their own in a way that suits them and the application of that knowledge happens in class.
> There's not one right way for students to learn, because different people learn best in different ways
Which is exactly why you le
Re: (Score:3)
That seems like it makes sense for older kids (high school) who can be more self-directed. But for elementary or middle-school age kids, having a teacher to interact with as they are learning seems far more likely to have a good result.
My Algebra teacher in Middle School did it this way, and it was not a good fit for me at the time. I didn't have the discipline to learn the material independently, so when class practice happened I was often not far along enough to ask meaningful questions. Somone needed to
homework is not the problem (Score:4, Informative)
I teach regular students in the morning and talented students in the evening. I don't need to tell the evening students to work at home, they already do it out of passion and love for the things we teach. Traditional education is boring and devoid of real-life relevance, so you need to assign homework with grades to incentivize students to learn the topics and do well in exams.
Re: (Score:2)
I always did well on tests and found homework redundant. When I was in high school homework was 50% of your grade. I could get perfect test scores and still fail a class. The reality is that school failed me with unnecessary dogma. You can be talented and not give a shit about school. You can be talented in non-academic ways.
Better idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think getting rid of homework is a solution to the current issues facing kids. I think a better idea is to stop trying to cram ten bazillion extra curricular activities into every moment of their lives so that they can never have any actual downtime. Homework becomes an overwhelming impossibility when you also have way too many other activities to ever fit in a day. I sat and chatted with my nieces one time about their weekly schedules and my mind was blown by the time they got to Wednesday with how many scheduled activities they had. There's truly never a down moment for them. I don't know how they have time to get addicted to the devices they all carry with all the shit they're trying to cram into a day.
I think light, but steady, homework is fine. The argument to get rid of it is just as ridiculous as the idea that we need to increase it to the point it's the only thing kids have time to tackle. How about we have a debate about the right balance, instead of the black or white, all or nothing approach we tend to take toward everything else?
Re: (Score:3)
> I'm curious, exactly WHO is to blame for the ADD FOMO Generation raising the ADHD YOLO Generation of screen addicted junkies whose collective attention span is that of a fucking hummingbird, and are now wholly addicted to needing ten bazillion "activities" scrolling/moving/running past them for every waking second of every day?
Years ago I was an adult leader on an event where we took a group of teenagers to a remote island with no services (we took our own food and water and used composting outhouses). When we got back to civilization, the kids all engaged in a bunch of physical activities, variations on tag and simon says and that sort of thing, while the adults all huddled around the wifi access point. It was disturbing to the point where I put my own phone away.
The kids are just doing what their parents taught them. As thos
Re: Better idea. (Score:2)
Extracurricular activities would not be a problem if kids were not also wasting time on video games and the internet. Kids that are not addicted to gaming, short videos, and social media do just fine with extracurriculars. The extracurriculars keep them from getting bored. I took my son's devices away and now he is happy with three music lessons a week, music practice, math tutoring, and rocketry.
yes but it should be longer (Score:2)
Schools should have twice as many teachers and the school day should be one third longer. Good luck finding funding though?
Hot take? (Score:3)
Kids are already in school doing far too little, for far too long. Then as adults it's much the same, we're spending far too many hours at work but not truly productive. Granted this isn't universal, but I'm sure many will agree more common than not.
I'm an advocate of focused instruction vs. "standardized" bulk rote learning. I'm sure many will disagree but it's hard to argue against the reality much of our college bachelor programs have devolved into an overly expensive repeat of high school level education. But school districts are often tied financially to this model, where butts in seats equals money. The teachers hate it. The kids hate it. Some parents probably like it because "I need my kids in school so I can work my full 8 hours" but is that smart? No. It's not. None of it is.
Re: (Score:2)
> school districts are often tied financially to this model, where butts in seats equals money
School districts are tied a model where the executives and consultants can make more than the teachers. It's a travesty and it needs to stop.
> The teachers hate it.
The teachers hate it because they're getting fucked over bigly.
> The kids hate it.
The kids hate it because it's shit. If only we allocated funding correctly and didn't fuck over teachers (these things are related) then perhaps they could have decent schooling.
> Some parents probably like it because "I need my kids in school so I can work my full 8 hours" but is that smart? No. It's not. None of it is.
True. It's really fucking stupid to have everyone working more hours than necessary to do more work than necessary because we have
Depends on the reason for the homework (Score:1)
Is it to improve understanding of the required, basic-standards subject matter?
Is it to provide an enrichment opportunity?
Is it work that literally cannot be done in school, like "interview your grandparents about New Years Day 2000"?
Is it to instill good habits that will be needed later when "all work is homework" such as college/university?
The answers to these questions will drive the answer to the question "how much homework should students have, and what should the homework be?"
More homework? (Score:2)
I mean, 21% of Americans are functionally ILLITERATE.
Does having a lot of homework keep kids busy? (Score:3)
I always attributed half of the homework I received to be an effort at preventing kids from getting in trouble. Seemed to go up a lot when we hit puberty...
Homework is an advanced learning skill. (Score:1)
Kids might be able to get through K-12 curriculum without homework. But if they have not learned to work at home they will not succeed in advanced education. College and many trade schools will continue to require work outside of class. Kids who do not know how to manage the workload, how to do their own research, and how to write without a teacher on hand will fail in adult education. So they need some homework to prepare them for life beyond high school.
Re: (Score:2)
They'll continue to require study out of class. Graded work? Doubtful, for anything written, outside some elite honour system colleges.
ChatGPT grading ChatGPT is a waste of electricity.
But should there be better homework? (Score:2)
Yes, now they're asking the right question. Most traditional homework is designed for one type of brain who can easily perform the task and learn from it. But not all brains are wired the same and while one student may excel with homework, another may struggle due to various factors.
Maybe (Score:2)
I certainly don't think kids should be loaded down with an hour or more of homework every single day. But I think 10-15 minutes per day of drills or practice exercises is fine.
Also, do not give kids homework they can't handle, especially if they have to rope parents in to help them or do it for them. That's just nonsense.
Homework does not work* (Score:4, Insightful)
Teacher here, not a homework fan. Very simply put, the good ones put effort in it and learn little because they payed attention in class. The slouches copy it from a friend, use chatgpt or deliver something miserable. So I rarely give homework as it is ineffective in my view. Only in classes that do not pay attention. I have deadlines to meet. If they do not cooperate in class, they can do it at home. Luckily that rarely happens. (I am lucky to teach in a nice school.)
What does happen is that students fail in December. They get guidelines on what to do and have ample of exercises to try at home. They can chose which ones they make. I provide constructive feedback every week. It works reasonably well. In other words, homework for those kids that need it. Parents are motivated to help, kid is motivated because there is a good reason to do better. But yes, I have stories where it works very well and other ones as well. It is not a golden ticket.
Education is a struggle. If it is not, you are not doing a good job ;-).
* in general
Schools need major redesign (Score:2)
Traditional school has several major problems.
It's organized around showing up on time and following rules.
It rewards memorization and conformity and punishes creativity.
It's a mix of good students and bad.
Instruction proceeds at a fixed pace, usually slow enough that the bad students can follow while the good students get bored.
Even the good students sometimes miss a critical bit.
Hopefully, AI can lead to personalized instruction where every student can learn at their own pace.
Re: (Score:3)
"tracking" is the solution to that (or at least minimizes the impact)... e.g remedial, normal, and honors classes... magnet schools, etc.
but the focus in the US education thinking and efforts for the last 30+ years has been more "closing achievement gaps" between ethnic groups rather than increasing average gains.... because "equity".
so that's exacerbated the focus on bringing up the bottom performers in general and ignoring the top.
Yes and no (Score:2)
Yes, do have EXTRA-work, but in the school and supervised by a (different) teacher.
The problem with classic HOME-work was that, more often than not, the results would depend A LOT on parent/adult involvement, from no supervision, to light supervision, to prodding*, to downright the parent doing the work instead of the children.
Lower the ammount of EXTRA-work, supervise (by a neutral adult, i.e. a different teacher) to be sure the children does it, and offer a tiny wee bit of aid, just to unstuck the childre
As someone who works in education (Score:2)
Schools are nothing but babysitting dens until the kids turn 18. Yes, there are some kids who take advantage of their environment, are fascinated with learning, and strive to excel knowing that knowledge creates opportunities. Assign all the homework you like but unless school policies, graduation requirements, and parental involvement changes absolutely nothing is going to happen. I spent my formative years in private school in the mid to late 1980's with my 2 main friends who went to public school and had
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"Schools are nothing but babysitting dens until the kids turn 18"
If this is your attitude, I'd suggest another career path. My public-school education was more rigorous than college and the graduate degrees I later received from famous name schools. I could not have excelled later without that foundation. They were far from "babysitting dens". If they are, then the educators should not expect parents, students, or state policies to fix it. The problem is in the mirror.
Asking the wrong question (Score:2)
It's not 'How much homework' they should be looking at, or 'is homework a good thing,' but 'what sort of homework results in the best academic achievement. A lot of teachers use homework as a sort of ongoing assessment tool to determine if students are understanding the content- which is a really good thing to do! But, there's probably better ways to do that in the classroom where you can correct misunderstandings in realtime. And based on the subject, there's probably a lot of reinforcing instruction that
The Grind (Score:1)
Homework teaches you to be comfortable with the need to GRIND.. which helps you in real life. If you don't do homework, where will you develop your work ethic that will make you shine as an adult?
Homework is where I actually learned to WORK.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I think you mean: Homework teaches you to be comfortable with the need to GRIND.. which helps you become exploitable. If you don't do homework, where will you develop your work ethic that will make you easy to exploit as an adult? Homework is where I learned to put my happiness aside and make a profit for someone else.
Some things need rote learning or private study (Score:4, Insightful)
Multiplication tables, history dates, state and country locations on the world map, Chemical formulae including the Periodic Table, Physics equations, foreign language vocabulary and reading set texts in English. There is no virtue in learning / doing those in school time.
To a large extent however this debate is avoiding the main issue; why are we spending vastly more on education than lots of other countries and achieving far less...
HOMEWORK = PRACTICE (Score:2)
I did almost no homework. not that it wasn't assigned in my day. some parents complained; they wanted their gen X kids busy when nobody was home before they returned home from work!
You still need homework and some habits formed from having to do that. People forget that the child does not require any parent at home to do their homework. If you don't let the GOP put your child into a child-labor job they will have the time.
NOTE- the schools should provide free daycare services after school. For many childr
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> NOTE- the schools should provide free daycare services after school.
Then the government should fund it.
> For many children, this would be safer and better than being at home!
OK, but how much of that is due to the deliberate dumbing down of the populace by the Republicans since the Reagan era, which we can only combat with more education? Instead of free day care, we should spend the money making school longer, and instead of cramming it with more shit, give more time for personalized instruction and alternate learning methods.
Re: (Score:2)
There are a few things like multiplication tables that require rote memorization, but most things shouldn't. This is especially true now that basic facts are available instantly anywhere.
History classes shouldn't waste time making kids memorize long lists of dates or names. Memorizing the extract dates of the battle of Gettysburg is pointless if you don't understand the broader context of the Civil War and the battle's role in shaping it.
Re: (Score:2)
Multiplication tables
Meh. I as always shit at multiplication tabled at school. I'm still probably worse than a good school student, but I actually understand maths, so I can do fast order of magnitude estimates and sanity checks. Precise digits are for calculators.
Chemical formulae including the Periodic Table
I mean you need an idea of what goes where and what that means, but rot memorization of it is kind of pointless. How much does it help knowing Bismuth is a pnictogen? I guess if you work with pnictides
Yes (Score:2)
Do away with home work, bring back study hall/add it to all grades, and give students the option to put on noise-canceling headphones and work independently. And give them access to optional practice material.
So basically have them do the same things they would do for homework, but mostly during school hours. Students that need even more practice still have the option of practicing outside of school.
I did my math on my 45-60 min bus ride home. (Score:2)
Pretty much immune to car sickness.
Re: (Score:2)
Well aren't you all preppy and well prepared. I did my chemistry homework in the bus in on the day it was due. Yeah I could not do anything without a deadline looming.
No, homework should stay (Score:1)
One of our kids went to a middle school where they were a "no homework" policy. The reason? Some kids didn't have parents to hold their feet to the fire to get it done - socioeconomic problems, home/life/work issues, etc. So it was considered an "equalization" tactic.
This would all be fine, if everywhere, including private institutions, everything was equal. But it's not, and neither is the kind of education kids receive both on and off campus. Certain things require extra effort outside of the school sys
Recently finished Int Algebra @ a comunity college (Score:2)
And if it weren't for the homework, I would have bombed. The homework was all online (using ALEKS product) and brutal. But the drill is what made me get an 'A' grade. As one professor said, "you don't study math, you practice math." You don't get that from in-class lectures.
I don't see how grade school kids can effectively learn math just in classroom time. Keep the homework, please.
The paradox (Score:2)
If you know how to do the work in math class, it's a waste of time. If you don't, the teacher isn't there and then what do you do? That sort of tracks for history homework, aside of literal studying and memorization. I can see literature class requiring reading a book, as that's the point. Homework was such a waste of time that I took a study hall instead of a useful optional elective to finish it all daily. It still was 95% busy work that I already knew and needed no practice on.
Not if mastery comes from repetition (Score:2)
In many cases students need to not only know something but be fast at getting to the answer in order to progress in their studies. This is especially true with math and science. It is not enough to have a generally correct idea of how algebra works when taking calculus, to succeed at calculus you have to be fast at algebra. You get fast by doing boring homework ... over and over.
My son got an A in high school calculus, but I was suspicious because I never saw the homework coming home. College calculu
Best to discard equity concerns (Score:2)
If there are any other arguments - real arguments - pay attention to them, but the equity concerns should be filtered out of the conversation and their advocates seen as having wasted people's time.
The high-performing kids are getting more not less (Score:1)
In my area all the high-performing kids are going to Kuman and getting more homework to do. All the kids in honors classes are getting more homework to do.
Getting rid of homework is not the ticket to success.
Short answer: Yes (Score:2)
Long answer: Homework has spiraled out of control. We need to have a critical debate of what the actual point of homework is. Should it be a daily slog because that's what the curriculum demands, or is it because kids need repetition to learn a difficult subject.
A US middle school student will have 6-8 classes per day. If they all demand 1hr of homework... how does that not lead to burnout?
Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
It was always wrong to acclimate kids to work colonizing their home life. "Preparing" people for the workplace just means conditioning them to believe their suffering is deserved.
Re: Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on the kid. It needs to be adaptive. I'm a listen to the teacher type. Others are book learners. Still others need homework. What's needed is an understanding of what works best for the individual child, and the actual test should be the ultimate basis for the class grade.
Re: (Score:2)
Doing work that doesn't result in additional comprehension or knowledge is not only non-beneficial, but because it's emotionally defeating, it can be worse than not doing any homework because all the student learns is that they don't get it and likely never will.
The big problem with education is that many/most teachers aren't good at tutoring/teaching. That is, they say stuff in class that doesn't help the students learn new concepts. Or with many teachers, they don't even both with the lecturing. They s
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe, but the real risk comes from this bit:
> Ariel Taylor Smith, senior director of the Center for Policy and Action at the National Parents Union, said: "The thing they point to is that it's an equity issue, and not all parents have the same availability and ability to support their students. I would make the argument that if a kid is really far behind in school, that's an equity issue. They need the additional time to practice." Kids, she said, "need more practice ... Sometimes, you do have to practice the boring stuff, like math."
What the parents' union person misses is that quite often doing more or less homework ends up being a symptom, rather than a cause:
If a kid doesn't understand it, doing more incorrect practice won't result in improvement, and could even reinforce problems.
Not doing homework can be a symptom of problems in the student's home life, and those problems can bleed over into the classroom.
In both cases, a better way to handle that is doing more supervised practice du
Re: (Score:2)
You didn't address the comment to which you replied AT ALL. Not even a tiny bit.
Follow the Money. (Score:2)
> Depends on the kid. It needs to be adaptive. I'm a listen to the teacher type. Others are book learners. Still others need homework. What's needed is an understanding of what works best for the individual child, and the actual test should be the ultimate basis for the class grade.
That final class grade, has been turned into a school funding plan. And we know what happens when you inject a profit motive into something that shouldn't have it.
The core problem in the American educational system, is it was reduced to little more than teaching students how to pass a standardized test at the end of the school year by literally taking the same damn test over and over and over again until the final final final we-mean-it-THIS-time final grade is tallied that maximizes school funding based
Re: Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
I have children in every phase of schooling in one of the top 10 largest school districts in the US. My kids essentially do zero homework. Almost straight A's. Even things like book reports and research papers all mostly done in class. Actual work at home amounts to maybe 30 minutes a week at most.
The big problem I see isn't the HW learning feedback cycle it's my daughter who is a freshman in college has no idea how to plan college hw and projects.
Re: (Score:2)
Teachers are under political pressure to give students As. The grade they give to the kids is implicitly a grade they are giving to themselves and to the school district. So, they have strong incentives to inflate those grades.
I don't know anything about your kids, of course. Maybe yours are exceptionally bright. In any case, your anecdote isn't evidence, and the grades received in high school are not a measure of their actual level of understanding and performance (given these pressures).
It is basicall
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whether it's in class or at home there's no way afaict to learn math or anything that requires selecting and applying algorithms to a problem to solve it without practice.
however in these days of video, I could see asigning kids to watch the lecture at home... and then do the practice in class.
ofc most of the kids still wouldn't... but there's little advantage, imo , to having a teacher stand there and give a live chalk talk for 30 min over a video. and watching videos as hw seems easier ...
Re: Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
> Teachers are under political pressure to give students As.
Bullshit.
Teachers need to teach children.
We used to have curriculums that teachers were supposed to teach, but over time, they strayed from covering that material, so states started achievement tests to measure the effectiveness of school's programs (note, most state achievement test scores are not included in student records, they are about the school). Then teachers started complaining about being forced to be 'teaching to the test'... YES! The test captures the required material teachers are supposed to
Re: (Score:2)
Common core and no child left behind has absolutely destroyed the education system. Because funding is tied to it, my kids spend WEEKS being drilled on EXACTLY what is on the test, not one iota more, with no thought to intellectual curiosity, no ability for the teacher to explore a tangent that gets the kids excited about the subject. Then the kids spend days grinding out meaningless standardized tests that don't go towards their grade when they could be learning.
And because the testing and the lead up to
Re: (Score:2)
> I have children in every phase of schooling in one of the top 10 largest school districts in the US. My kids essentially do zero homework. Almost straight A's. Even things like book reports and research papers all mostly done in class. Actual work at home amounts to maybe 30 minutes a week at most. The big problem I see isn't the HW learning feedback cycle it's my daughter who is a freshman in college has no idea how to plan college hw and projects.
While I don't have a problem with homework per se, When my son was in middle school and beyond, the amount of homework they assigned the kids was mind boggling. Some nights he would come home from school, and not be done with homework until it was time for bed.
And looking at it, it wasn't proving much - maybe an hour would have been more than enough. If the child could understand and figure out the first few problems, the rest was just busywork.
And then there was the common core math. Taking utterly s
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't colonial, it is industrial. The current format of school is that of preparing for a factory workforce. We are post industrial, knowledge/AI/Whatever it will be called workforce.
Educators need to come to grip with getting EVERY child their MAX educational value we can. This means breaking the rows and columns of desks in a classroom, and getting kids their most valuable education they can get. This means some will do much better than others. Talent has gradations. Not everyone can be a Astro Physics
Re: Yes (Score:3)
Schools are making factory workers? Then why did so many schools drop auto, wood, metal, etc classes?
The worst thing the educational system has done in my lifetime was, I think, was perpetuate the lie "every child can and should go to college." How many lives were ruined by schools/teachers telling unprepared students to go to college, only to fail and incur massive student loan debt.
Re: (Score:2)
Schools are making factory workers? Then why did so many schools drop auto, wood, metal, etc classes?
Those are skilled things, factory workers are ideally low skilled and replaceable. That was one of the main points of the factory system and later the American system. You're not skilfully chiselling wood or hand turning machine parts in a factory.
Re: (Score:2)
> The worst thing the educational system has done in my lifetime was, I think, was perpetuate the lie "every child can and should go to college." How many lives were ruined by schools/teachers telling unprepared students to go to college, only to fail and incur massive student loan debt.
The problem is figuring out which students "should go to college" when they are in 7th / 8th grade, and their brains are still developing, and much of their performance at school up to that point has more to do with their SES and family situation than with innate ability. This 'tracking' system sent many bright, capable poor and non-white students into tech / vocational tracks when they were extremely capable of performing well in college. Having high expectations for all children does make a difference in
Re: Yes (Score:2)
The important thing is that students be asked to independently reinforce/demonstrate their mastery of the subject matter. This does not have to be taken home and done - this could/should be done in a study hall setting during the school day.
Re: (Score:3)
If you take your employer's work home with you, that's something you're doing for your employer . They probably (assuming illegal shit isn't happening) pay you to do that.
If you take your school work home with you, that's something you're doing for yourself . You might even be paying them for it.
You're preparing people for Life. Not work. (Score:1)
> It was always wrong to acclimate kids to work colonizing their home life. "Preparing" people for the workplace just means conditioning them to believe their suffering is deserved.
Life, is pain. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. And it's LONG past time we start waking the 18-year old voter to that concept. Especially the delusional unaccountable women who are being raised that way by other delusional unaccountable women. Part of actually growing the fuck up and maturing, is realizing you cannot behave like you did when you were a child. Which is why concepts like "girl math" and using excuses like "I'm just a girl" should have been left on the fucking elementary
Re: (Score:2)
How do you teach a literature class in a world of no homework? All class time would just be taken up reading the novel. Also forget about learning how to write an essay. We should just skip that too I guess.
Same with mathematics. You can learn the theory of how to apply integrals or trig formulae in class, but until you've worked a few hundred problems, you don't really know calculus or trig.
Same for foreign languages. You can practice speaking in class and learning about grammar rules, but you need to