tirob: There were a bunch of black kids in the (mostly white) school I went to. With a couple of exceptions, all of them studied hard, landed and held onto good jobs, turned into responsible adults who cared for their kids, the whole roll.

So, what does that prove?

That culture trumps race, which is what most people have been saying in here. At least the ones with any clue what they are talking about.

steamingpile: NannyStatePark: Now my kid hates me as well as her teachers. And is still flunking a subject because, apparently, sacrificing my entire life just isn't good enough.

Quit your whining and hire a tutor then, almost every school system has one.

I think you have seen the work of a good troll

/with an uneducated child

Fano: I think you have seen the work of a good troll

What? With a name like that, a single long post, and not responding to any of the responses? Definitely not a troll.

/Troll or not, i don't think her story is all that uncommon. I personally do believe homework is evil and that no benefit of ANY kind is gained from it. Unless you're a sadist, in which case that's just sick.

Melgania: I tend to agree with the people who say that a culture that values education is by far the most important thing. Like, I'd roughly put it as a 80-90%, if not more, influence in how well people do at school. The unfortunate thing about America (I'm not American but this is the feeling I get from all these threads, etc) is that low socioeconomic status is closely linked to race, so it's impossible to bring this up without being shouted down as a racist.

Just a few weeks ago I was thinking why certain developing countries did pretty well to pull themselves out of poverty over the last few decades, while others are still completely messed up. I was especially thinking of the likes of East and South-East Asia versus say Africa or Latin America. Of course it's not a single-issue answer (and I don't pretend this explains *everything*), but I think a culture that highly values education goes a very long way:

When you have a culture where parents are truly dedicated to their kids' education, and I mean, dedicated to a fault - Taiwanese "ghetto parents" locking kids up in their bedrooms with nothing but a bowl of rice, a jug or water, a potty and their homework - it is a very different environment to one where education is barely valued at all, if not outright rejected as "not keepig it real", or whatever the parlance is.

The Asian "tiger economies" were just the same sort of backwater shiatholes 50 years ago as bad bits of Africa or South America. You have to ask the question how they pulled themselves out of it, and why the others didn't. I personally think a huge part of it is this massive emphasis on education and betterment that's a central part of the philosophy and culture in most of the region. Also, there are issues such as civic culture versus a more disorganised tribal culture, etc etc. But at the root of the problem is the education thing.

At any rate, "failing education systems" almost always seem to me to be a symptom, rather than a cause. Simply throwing money at an education system or hiring more teachers doesn't solve much if the underlying social culture doesn't value education (if not outright rejecting it as a core social value).

/$0.02

Repeated for truth. If should be posted in bold, and put in every public school conference room in the country. Then sent home to every parent once a month.

If my three year old can read and your 10 year old can't, I'm thinking the issue is a little closer to home than teachers.

Most kids have an incredible capacity to learn, but the habits that foster enjoyment of learning in a child start very young - well before school age. We have read to our son since he was young, and have made reading, math, and science all very fun things for him.

The problem isn't stupid kids, it's parents that don't give a shiat until they can point the finger away from themselves.

/Had my kid in my teens
//Son's dad and I both work 50+ hours a week
///If I can do it, these people can do it.

My honest answer is to conference with the teacher and if that falls short, ask for a class change, or just tough it out for the next 5 months.

Cursive is a dead form, schools shouldn't be bothering with it anymore.

If she's not doing in-class assignments and it's because of boredom/she's already mastered material, I wouldn't worry too much. Besides, if she really farks up her grades, she can always go to community college for a year or two and then get her degree somewhere else.

And I do think your story is more common than most people realize and is one of the reasons I have serious issues with homework.

Kids need to have their intellectual curiosity stimulated and rewarded at an early age. And just put books in their room from the day their born. Eventually they're gonna reach to the top shelf and take a crack at that ancient copy of Scarlet Pimpernel.

Huskadoodle: Actually, refusing, or probably more resisting, to use cursive is becoming a common occurrence amongst middle and high school students who for the most part do not write by hand commonly outside of the classroom. It begs to compare to an employee who today can not add up and charge tax because the cash register is malfunctioning.

I don't agree with this at all. While it is true that cursive is used to make writing by hand easier, in what profession do people still write anything by hand that will be seen outside of the office? Whereas, being able to calculate someone's purchases and sales tax are rudimentary mathematics that I would hope anyone in the 7th grade and beyond could do.

And aside from that, cursive is rarely taught anymore because it takes time from math and reading.

In short, anyone who is still teaching cursive is wasting the time of their students. It is a skill, and a rather outdated one at that.

NannyStatePark: Heamer: Some of the kids I teach see me more in a given day than they do their own parents. Granted, some of those parents work an awful lot, but that doesn't excuse them from the simple fact that education begins at home.

My kids wake up at 7-ish in the morning and are off to the bus at 7:50 unless I have to take them to rehersal at 7:30.

The bell rings at 8:30

My kids have one "special" a day. So P.E., art, music, library, art and computers get less than one hour a week each.

They get a 25 min. lunch and some get that lunch at 10:30 in the morning. Recess? ROLFMAO! That's the ten minutes they run laps for "mouthing off"

They come home at 3:30 if I pick them up, 4:15 if they ride the bus, and 4:30 if they have a tutorial. Rehersal and tutorial? NINE hours for school in a day. OVERTIME. There is no choice, and I have to provide transportation for ANY deviation.

Then they have two hours of homework where I sit and attempt to teach them to do some weird depiction of math when they can already do the actual math in question, as can I, but we can't figure out how to "show the work" to the teacher's satisfaction. And she's the teacher I like. I loved my first grader getting four syllable spelling words. I really did blow that pantload off. Anyhow, just turning in that night's homework, how can I focus on making sure they mastered material that they flunked before? How can I revisit fractions? How can I read and discuss "To Kill A Mockingbird or do things that people have Norman Rockwell fantasies about WASP SAHM's doing with their children?" My time is GONE! If I have anything else in my life going on I may not be able to involve myself with Snowflakes until it is resolved, or if my daughter refuses to do her homework, well life gets complicated...

Then we have a dinner hour of preparing and eating food.

Then my children are lucky to have an hour to play or be children or watch TV before a normal bedtime at 8:30 or 9. Some nights I let them skip bathing because they've just been too put upon, and it's not like they got the honor of playing and getting sweaty or anything.

WHEN in the fark am I supposed to have time to finish a teacher's frigging job? They have my children as long as an adult is employed in a FULL TIME JOB. Do you go to work and bring two hours worth of work home and end up working 50 hours a week without suing someone or getting paid overtime? Why should children under the age of ten be subjected to this???

I pay 6k yearly in property taxes, 8.5 percent on everything I buy, federal income tax, have to purchase $200 dollars worth of supplies a year, $300 for uniforms, have to buy stuff for projects monthly, spent 50 bucks on a diorama once for example, and some people need jobs to pay for that. What if I was getting home at 7 p.m.? How is a middle class person making 35k or so a year going to be able to afford private or even homeschooling with that kind of tax burden?

Now my kid hates me as well as her teachers. And is still flunking a subject because, apparently, sacrificing my entire life just isn't good enough.

And DARE classes made damn sure I can't even have a few frigging beers. Thanks life!



I work a lot myself, and my son is autistic, moderately severe (which I refused to acknowledge until a specialist insisted I needed to get him help, since he can barely talk.) I make a lot of time every day to teach him how to interact with people, how to behave in a 'typical' way so he can make friends, how to deal with upsetting stimuli, all the while keeping him from spinning in circles until he vomits or flapping his hands until they turn purple. I literally spend *hours* a day coaching this child on speaking, manners, basic interaction that I have to translate into ways that he understands better.

He doesn't want to do this. He doesn't want hours of coaching on things he doesn't care about. He doesn't want me to sit with him for three hours to teach him how to eat with a spoon when he prefers to use his hands and feel the texture of the food. But I do it because it is for his own good, and I work on him and worry about him and make him do things he doesn't like because I am his mother, and it is my job to make this child a productive member of society.

Sit with your daughter and make her do the work. Put the pencil back in her hand over and over until she does it. She needs to learn to drudge through it, because life has lots of unpleasant tasks we have to just do. Just like the therapies I do with my son, homework is a necessary task. I'm sure my son hates me at times, but I'm his mother, not his friend, and I will force him to do what he needs to do, even if it is hard for both of us.

That is parenthood.

MidnightSkulker: because life has lots of unpleasant tasks we have to just do. Just like the therapies I do with my son, homework is a necessary task.

I agree with a lot of what you said, but not with this part. While life has lots of unpleasant tasks, I don't think that means we should readily accept them as immutable or even necessary. Homeowrk isn't necessary. At its best, it's simply harmless. Homework has no value academically or to development of life skills such as responsibility. It often creates conflicts in families, conflicts between students and teachers, and takes away time from families doing positive things together like cooking dinner together, going to a park, having a game night, etc.

Yes there are unpleasant things in life that need to be done, life is full of them. And it is precisely that reason that we should fight the unnecessary ones like homework.

John Dewey: MidnightSkulker: because life has lots of unpleasant tasks we have to just do. Just like the therapies I do with my son, homework is a necessary task.

I agree with a lot of what you said, but not with this part. While life has lots of unpleasant tasks, I don't think that means we should readily accept them as immutable or even necessary. Homeowrk isn't necessary. At its best, it's simply harmless. Homework has no value academically or to development of life skills such as responsibility. It often creates conflicts in families, conflicts between students and teachers, and takes away time from families doing positive things together like cooking dinner together, going to a park, having a game night, etc.

Yes there are unpleasant things in life that need to be done, life is full of them. And it is precisely that reason that we should fight the unnecessary ones like homework.

I agree that with regards to actual learning, homework is essentially useless - that does seem to be what research is indicating, and certainly fits with my experience. However, many schools put a great deal of grade value on it, and as much as I dislike that, it is what it is. For schools that grade based on homework, doing it is a necessity for academic success. I do a lot of redundant crap at work, but I still do it because they expect me to and it is my responsibility to do it until I can convince them to streamline things.

If the poster wishes to fight the school's homework policy and teach her daughter the value of fighting for what you think is right, I'd totally be on her side. But it's not worth complaining about unless you're willing to either do it or work towards changing it.

NannyStatePark: "Sit with your daughter and make her do the work. Put the pencil back in her hand over and over until she does it. She needs to learn to drudge through it, because life has lots of unpleasant tasks we have to just do. Just like the therapies I do with my son, homework is a necessary task. I'm sure my son hates me at times, but I'm his mother, not his friend, and I will force him to do what he needs to do, even if it is hard for both of us.

That is parenthood."

Thanks for the support, MidnightSkulker. I agree, and I had to get over some advice from the school and my husband's opinion to get there, and I'm at the point where I'm about to start going to school with her to get the work in class done. Homework time went from me trusting her to get it done to micromanagement, but I got my best reward ever when I heard her tell her brother one day, "She doesn't like to make us do things but it's her job."

I was like your daughter - had to be micromanaged to get homework done since I completely disagreed with doing it. My son, as much as I can tell at his age, is a lot like I was and will probably do better in a non-traditional school setting. We're looking at Montessori. It's not as expensive as many private schools. Have you considered it?

Also, have you considered fighting the school for homework exemption if your children are able to prove they know the materials on tests/quizzes? It is possible to get them exempt in many areas. I got that one year, and it was awesome. I spent most of my school day in independent study and then showed up for tests, and I worked a lot better that day.

Your daughter sounds intelligent - maybe with something a bit different than traditional school, you can find something else. It doesn't have to cost a ton, but there are options.

Sorry if I came across as harsh in my other post - I've read through the thread and like you more now, hah. :)

In addition, it doesn't let her get out of learning topics and methods she may find boring/repetitive, and even with a homework exemption, she would have to spend time outside of school working on it, but not repetitive worksheets. She'd have to be self-motivated, and drudge through boring topics, but would probably focus more on applying the material in a way that shows she knows it, hopefully getting the teacher off her back.

theigorway: This is what happens when you adopt the "Everyday Math" curriculum.

Thank you. I'm wary of asking questions about what other people think of the selected curricula and materials, so I didn't know if I was alone in thinking that program is garbage.