Haha! Suck that grouchy grandparents!

Yeah, but if they don't check it, what's the big deal?

sons o biatches.

Because the teachers are six times stupider.

Let them be children! Why must some insist their children are ahead of the rest? One doesn't get to be young very long, if given a normal lifespan, why fark it up with too much pressure? I believe we seek to teach our kids too much too soon, and in the process, teach them bad study habits, instead. When kids are very young, about the only way to hold their attention long enough to get any lesson across is to make a "game" of it. (See, kids, learning is fun!) When it ceases to be "fun", they tend to stop learning.

again we have a case of mistagging - this should be cool, well it is for me coz i left skewl like a zillion years ago and anything that causes students pain now delights me

We have a teacher here who is trying to make math optional after grade 6 or 7, since he says lots of the high school math is really useless unless you're planning a career that involves that kind of math.
So far, no adults are really listening and I had to take math intill grade 12, I'm so glad I'm out of high school.

Hell... they could assign it all they want when I was in school, that didn't mean I would do any of it. Do homework during one class for the next class...

So how come my 16-year-old stepson never has ANY homework?

I never had any homework. I stopped doing it around 8th grade. My grades weren't too good, but I graduated. Every teacher would assign some homework every day. Even if it's a minor half-hour assignment, it adds up quickly.
I'm glad I'm out of school altogether. No homework at all! I do some research on my own, occassionally, but my job stays at my office.

I'm with ya Dahaka, I usually aced just enough tests to make up for skipping the homework and pass the classes. Passed Algebra 2 by 1 point to graduate, that was a little scary, I'd have bought the teacher a beer if I'd been old enough.

Since then I haven't used much Algebra or Trigo except for a few years in the Navy, but then they taught it to us all over again anyway...

3Horn

The best part of going to a college-prep magnet high school was that they assumed we could pass the standardized bullshiat tests and taught us real stuff. Not spending 2 hours class time reviewing how many vowels were in the alphabet was a real time-saver, and meant surprisingly little homework.

Human knowledge is accumulating. Considering that, it's no surprise that people spend more time in school, doing more and more work. Taking this to the logical extreme: by 2080, it will take 17 years of college to get a job as a clerk at McDough's. They'll still get the orders wrong of course. But at least they'll be able to counsel you to get over the emotional trauma, or countersue if you sue.

45 minute of homework is considered a lot? What a bunch of whiny, lazy assed, losers.

When I was in high school in the early 1980's I had an average of 2 hours of homework every night, and I was taking an easy course load.
Oh yeah, and I had to walk 100 miles to and from school each day.... through 10 feet of snow.... uphill.... both ways.

Hey, the last part of my message should have been anclosed in

old guy rant
/old guy rant

\
\

how do I get the greater than and less than signs to appear in a post? They seem to be removed (along with everything in between them) even if I put a \ in front of them.

Damn my feeble typing skills. That should have been enclosed, not anclosed.

Any kid with a computer and a search engine can whip out 45 minutes of homework in about 6 seconds flat. Where was the internet when I was a kid?!??

Qwerty2: Yeah, but the kids with 45 minutes of homework are in 1st grade.

I'm with ya, Dahaka. I quit homework after I started working after school. Everything after 5th grade is either useless or a repeat.

What I dont understand is how they can force you to do it. If you are able to get A's on the tests, then why do you have to waste an hour or two at home, doing things you've already learned how to do... Homework is justified when a kid needs it to learn, but when they don't need it, it just makes the kid resent school that much more. The only thing worse than busy work is school was diagraming sentences. To this day I cannot figure out what the hell that was good for...

Diagramming sentences teaches you how to use parts of speech, and how to construct a sentence. This is a skill which many people sorely lack. I don't think they do this in public schools any more. And it shows.

Umm, the only homework I ever did was typing a paper at home the morning it was due. I got B- all the way through high school on those papers. First semester of uni, in my honors eng class I got an A+. The schools are farked up when your high school expects more than the university.

I had to do a book report as a senior in high school that I didn't do, so i found a report I did in 7th grade on Huckleberry Finn. I got a better grade in high school. That's farked up...

As a high school student, I can attest to the whole 3+ hours of homework every night. Yet, the only people that do this much homework are the few that are at the head of the class and maybe 10 other random students. Unless the homework is to study something and/or memorize it, I don't do it. If I know how to do it, why waste my time completing tedious worksheets? And if I don't know how to do it, I just wait until the next day at school for the "teacher" to go over it once more since most others have the same mentality. It's useless. As far as studying goes, neh, who is going to study the night before and waste their own precious time when you have a full hour and a half free the period before the test?

jeez, making learning fun is not the answer, at least to me it was. I had a teacher in high school who tried to make the class into some kinda pep rally. I didn't too well because it was insinuating that I was a complete idiot as well as being annoying.

Sempiter...: The problems occur when the teacher counts homework as 20% of your grade, so even if you ace the tests, if you dont do your homework you get a C in the class...

Why assign homework: It teaches responsibility, and teachers are able to accomplish more - i.e. teach more - than they would with limited class time. Assigning homework can, and *should*, setup what's being planned for the next day's class.

For example, if I were to be teaching US History, I might have my students put together a timeline of events for the Civil War or something. Doing this allows us to have more informed discussions about the war in class the next day.

Maybe not the best example, but it works.

As for why teachers are assigning more of it, I can say that in New York, gov't regulations require teachers to teach to the Regents tests. Sacrificing valuable class time to cover subjects that aren't necessarily critical, but are "on the test", means that non-classroom learning becomes more important.

Ex-teacher,
-slip

Pretty much what Fubar said. My mother is a teacher, and the homework grade (yes she actually collects and grades them) is an important part of your final grade. If you fail the homework grade, then the best you can do in the class is an B, period. Some people complain that they since they ace the tests, homework is not needed. My mother will argue and say that if the test comes that easy to you, then it isn't much to ask you to spend 15-30 minutes at home doing it, since it really isn't challenging to you. However, doing the homework might really help some other kid in the class to understand the concepts. So put up with your 15 fewer minutes doing whatever, and be glad that when you hire people to work for you down the road, they will have a basic understanding of the subject.

What is really scary is not that teachers give more homework, but how few kids do it, with whatever excuse they use to justify it.

I should also add that *three hours* every night is rather heavy a workload. When I taught, I kept homework to simple stuff that could be finished in probably 15-20 minutes...

Pheh. Public schools are useless. They inevitably turn into holding pens for the ignorant.

I understand how some kids need the extra time to learn, but why punish the ones who can learn faster. Shouldn't you grade in the class be based on how proficient you are in the skills you're supposed to have at the end of class? Not based on the ammount of stuff you do after school?

Fubar:
Ideally, teachers will teach to the highest possible level, thereby not punishing the 'fast' learners, and not allowing the 'slower' ones to slip even further away. Basically, if as a teacher you've got high standards across the board, all of your students win. It's hard to do, but it does work.

Using homework as a part of the students' grade at the end of a semester/quarter/whatever helps to 1) teach responsibility; 2) helps ensure that the homework is done, which leads to better/more effective in-clas time; 3) as Theseus said, gives some students a second chance.

Slippy:
Like I said, I understand the need for homework, and I think it should be assigned, but is should be voluntary, not mandatory. This makes it the responsability of the student, or the students parents, to make sure the they are learning the class materials. If they are not, then they should do the homework, and if they don't they will suffer the penalty of having a bad grade. If someone dosen't need to do homework to get an A on the test, why should they. All homework ever did for me was to make me hate school. And the best answer i ever got was, "well its what you're supposed to do", or "Because I said so". Now, that last statement was the one thing as a kid that just pissed me off, I always needed to know why I was doing something, and generally, when you explain your reason, I can agree with you. But when I'm doing something that to me seems like it's for no reason whatsoever, i get mad.

Fair enough, Fubar, you got some pretty lousy excuses from your teachers about why you should do your homework.

It *is* the responsibility of the student, though, and that's part of the point - the kids have to take some ownership of their own learning, and homework assignments, in whatever form, are a good way to help them accomplish this.

When I taught, I used homework as part of the grade - but not 20%, or even any sort of clearly definable figure. If parents asked, I always told them that it was about 10-15% of the quarterly grade, and that the kids needed to do all their homework in order to succeed in my classroom. But when it came time for the actual grading, I treated the homework assignments as sort of "swing" grades. If a kid was an absolute "A" student, but *never* did his/her homework, I'd knock them down to an A- for failing to be a responsible student. Conversely, if a kid was sitting on the border of a "B" or "C", and always did their homework (even if it wasn't always correct), I'd bump them up the extra point to get to a "B", because they showed initiative, tried as best they could, and took responsibility for their time in my classroom.

But back to the article: 45 mins from each class is ludicrous. If a teacher has to assign that much work to do at home, then they're just not doing their job in the classroom.

I did have some teacher who did that, and that seemed fair to me, but then again those were the teachers who actually seemed to give a damn, your standard, garden variety florida teacher is, to put it mildly, a rotting pile of monkey shiat. And all they're concerned about is getting their tenure and retiring. I had no problem doing work that made sense, but that usually wasn't the case.

The homework should be voluntary, and the students that do the extra work should be 'rewarded' with a few extra points added to their final grade, drop a low test score, etc etc.

I always told my teachers in highschool on the first day of class that I wasn't going to do 90% of the homework they assigned, unless I felt that I needed the extra practice. Now I did this after class, and told them that it wasn't anything against them or the class.

Most of them reminded me that the homework counted as a part of the grade, which would suffer. And after a while, most of them started to ignore the fact that I didn't do homework, and stopped counting it against me, as I was getting no less than a B.

I have to think that the biggest problems amongst teachers, more so once students hit 4th grade, or whatever grade it is where the school day is broken up into 'periods', is that teachers don't communicate with each other. It's amazing how many teachers decide to make major reports due on the same day. At the highschool I went to, most of the teachers seemed to think that their's was the only class that the student had, and assigned enough homework to fill a good part of the afternoon / evening.

On the possibility (as horrid a thought it is) that I ever have a child, if I see the teachers assigning so much work that my child can't go outside and play or spend time with his family, I'll tell him that he doesn't have to complete the homework, and then I'll bring the subject up with the teacher.

These are kids for chrissakes, they should not be forced to study for hours on end every night. Life outside of school does exist, and it is a VERY important part of growing up, of learning about social interaction.

Oh, and Fubar, i agree with your idea that your grades should be based on your knowledge not on the amount of labour that went into the learning. Hell, I slept or read a book three prolly 3/4ths of my calc classes in HS, and I still got 'A's in it. It made sense to me then, and I don't remember a damn lick of it now. However the teacher (Mrs. Tierney, a damn good teacher) understood that I was catching on very quickly, and was decent enough to accept that I didn't have to do homework, nor did she make me show any work on tests, etc etc. Mind you when I made a stupid mistake, she pointed it out to me, but I understood why.

Anyways enough of this rant

Oh definitely. Being a mediocre teacher really isn't that hard - you design your lessons, use them in class, assign your homework, keep the books and all that stuff. It's not the easiest job in the world, but neither is it going to turn you to jello. However, being a really good teacher is tough, takes *a lot* of hard work, and is mentally/emotionally draining. Which is one of the big reasons why I'm not standing in front of a classroom anymore...

Blackvampyr:
Kudos to you for learning to 'work the system' - that's one of the best things to learn in school. That does, however, point out one of the problems in our public schools, that teachers are highly inconsistent in the way they teach. If you let one kid slide on his/her homework, you have to let them all slide, or you're playing favorites and not teaching each student to the same high standards. If you lower those standards for one, it's virtually the same as lowering them for all of the students.

Agreed that teachers need to talk more, and not just about scheduling large assignments. Learning should progress across all subjects, and not be isolated in particular rooms.

And finally, as for grades being based on knowledge and not the labor, I again totally agree - I'd actually take it a bit further, and say that grades should be based on students' *mastery* of knowledge. I taught history; I could care less whether or not my students knew what year some tarriff went into effect, or how many points the stock market dropped in '29. What I *did* care about was whether or not they knew what effect that tarriff had on our economy/history, and what the stock market crash of '29 meant, and how all of it applies to life today.

It's not about what you know, it's about what you *do* with what you know. For example, if a student writes a paper arguing that Hitler invaded France because he knew that the French were p*ssies, and argued it convincingly with facts, etc. to back up the position, then I'd give the kid a reasonable grade like a high C or low B. Definitely not a top grade because it was wrong, but still decent simply because they *used* their misguided knowledge effectively.

You think homework is bad. My son has summer work. No not Summer school, but summer work. He has 10 essays due. I consider this insane and I am going to try to talk about this with his teacher

It's been too long and too many hooters to remember what school was like... But I do know that kids need to be kids, not prodigee's for the presidency...

not prodigee's for the presidency...

Guess you didn't do your spelling homework! [No offense intended, Jenna, it just struck me as rather funny...]

Just a poll, how much was homework worth in your schools?

Here it was about 40% of your Term mark, which means tests equal 60%.

We had two terms each term was worth 40% of my final grade,
plus 20% for our final exam.

So in the end, I'm guessing about 32% of my final grade depended on doing a semesters worth of homework.

They should give the little bastards more homework. And make school year round. And administer daily beatings ("Childrens love their beatins!"), whether they need them or not. And make them board at their school. And make them pee their pants. And lock them in dark closets for hours and hours and hours...

In case you haven't guessed, I hate children. My dogs have to be leashed, but brats are allowed to roam free...

What the hell?

Kids go to school for 6 hours per day, and are expected to do an additional 2 hours (approx.) per day? Ferchrissakes! Most aduts cant get off their asses for that kind of work. Let them be kids, Let them chase tail, let them have fun, this isnt nazi-germany.

Three hours a night? Oh those poor widdle farking high schoolers!! Three years ago when I was still in high school I had one class at the high school itself, 20 credits at a local community college, and a part time job that I was at for about 20 hours a week. I got straight A's in all of those and never once did I complain (that is, except for what I'm doing right now). farking crybabies.