Family negotiates homework ban

[HeyYo]

news.sympatico.cbc.ca/ConsumerNews/ContentPosting?newsitemid=calgary-homework-school-students&feedname=CBC-CONSUMER-LIFE-V3&show=False&number=0&showbyline=True&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc&date=True

Sorry if this has been posted but I haven't seen it anywhere.

I usually don't post on this board for the simple reasons that I have an extremely busy life and I only check the boards about once every 1-2 months, in addition I feel I have little to contribute as a lot of the posters share the same opinion I do and I don't want to just say "yeah man!"

But I feel this is ridiculous, should be posted, and I would like to hear your opinions. I mean really, what kind of example is this setting?

[Evilution E5150]

Home...work?
What is this home work that you speak of?
Mother have you ever heard of such a thing?

[Vice honcho room temperature]

Why couldn't my family do this

[Milkman Norm]

I'm all for this for any student before 6th grade. Homework prior to that is mainly just busy work. It does nothing to help students learn concepts beyond recalling information and imo is only given out because parents expected children to be busy with "school work" because they were as children, not because is necessarly helps with learning.

[silentrage]

Awesome. Homework shouldn't exist to begin with (with the exception of stuff you didn't finish in-class). Home time is when a child's brain relaxes and re-cooperates from hours of "working out". Just like actual work outs, time off is needed.

Also, can you imagine if your employer gave you some sort of home work? Can't find any logic behind that? Right, it's the same with school. They don't control you after the bell rings at the end of the day.

[Goldenbane]

Kids are too spoiled and have it too easy as is. If I had to do homework when I was their age...they can do f***ing homework. Sorry, toughen up and get it done. ;D

[Error]

Nov 19, 2009 2:26:37 GMT -5 @silentrage said:

Awesome. Homework shouldn't exist to begin with (with the exception of stuff you didn't finish in-class). Home time is when a child's brain relaxes and re-cooperates from hours of "working out". Just like actual work outs, time off is needed.

Also, can you imagine if your employer gave you some sort of home work? Can't find any logic behind that? Right, it's the same with school. They don't control you after the bell rings at the end of the day.

I somewhat agree. I mean, I don't think they should give kids too much work and fry their brains but, I don't see the harm in giving them some work at home that forces them to study.

[Dave at the Movies]

Nov 19, 2009 2:32:04 GMT -5 Goldenbane said:

Kids are too spoiled and have it too easy as is. If I had to do homework when I was their age...they can do f***ing homework. Sorry, toughen up and get it done. ;D

Exactly. I can see how homework being busy work is stupid especially in the high school level but this is really dumb.

Kids need homework. Homework has always existed in schools. If you have a real good job most likely you are doing work at home as well. It helps kids learn that they need to go above and beyond to succeed.

I know that if I never had homework I would have never improved in school. In elementary school I had a lot of learning disabilities and it was hard for me to keep up. Then I went to a private school where the classes were smaller and the teachers actually knew how to teach and went back to public school in tenth grade and by the time I graduated I had an average 3.7 GPA which is way above average for most public schools.

[Dave at the Movies]

Nov 19, 2009 2:37:00 GMT -5 Error said:

Nov 19, 2009 2:26:37 GMT -5 @silentrage said:

Awesome. Homework shouldn't exist to begin with (with the exception of stuff you didn't finish in-class). Home time is when a child's brain relaxes and re-cooperates from hours of "working out". Just like actual work outs, time off is needed.

Also, can you imagine if your employer gave you some sort of home work? Can't find any logic behind that? Right, it's the same with school. They don't control you after the bell rings at the end of the day.

I somewhat agree. I mean, I don't think they should give kids too much work and fry their brains but, I don't see the harm in giving them some work at home that forces them to study.

I'll agree with this. Busy work is not homework. I hated this in high school when teachers did this. Stuff that actually teaches you is what should be sent home.

BTW I had to work so hard in high school that I usually ended up spending two to three hours a night working on math alone.


We have this stupid mindset in society today that says IF YOU JUST TRY THEN YOU WIN. THAT IS NOT THE WAY SCHOOL OR REAL LIFE WORKS at all.

[Back to being Cenanuff]

I remember being in school, and on homework assignments in classes I excelled in, I would sometimes wait to do it until about 5 minutes before class, because that's how long it would take me to knock out the assignment. That's why I don't buy into the whole "spending time on homework for classes they're good at is a waste of time" idea. If they're good at it, it shouldn't take but a few minutes to finish the assignment, and move on to the next. Homework teaches time management skills that are essential to higher education. When you go to college, you're given a syllabus, so you know when your exams are, and it's up to you to be prepared for them. If you never learned how to manage your time, you'd be ill-prepared for every exam you took. Just don't think these differentiated homework plans are a good idea.

[Pervy Stone Cold]

If the kid takes AP Calculus in high school like I did, I can see him not applying himself to homework which is what caused me to drop out from that class.

[Methusael86]

If I was 10-years-old I would call this the best freaking news of all time. These days I...oh screw it, that's still awesome.

[Triple H buried SnS]

Assume 8 hours of sleep each night.

During classtime, a teacher has about an hour to spend on each subject a day. 5 days a week... that's 5 hours out of a 112 awake hours each week.

My state requires 187 school days a year. So that's 187 hours(again, per subject) out of 5840 awake hours a year.

All this is done (for most) in a group environment, and one on one time with the child is limited.

And while, yes, some students excel and don't need the homework and call it "busy work", there are those that struggle and NEED those homework assignments to better understand the material. And teachers can't discriminate and only give certain students that homework. This happens in almost every class, even in excellerated classes later on, as even then there are those that don't pick up the material as fast as the others.

Been a big issue in my area... where parents are basically alluding to the fact that the teacher is punishing them(the parent) by sending homework home with the student, and that the parents have to sit down with their child to do it. The parents don't want any of the responsibility for the education of the child, then complain when their child struggles in school.

[angryfan]

We sorta had negotiations over doing homework when I was a kid. I could start by saying I din't want to do the work and the proposal was a simple one. I could do the homework, or, I could do the homework standing up, and the choice was entirely up to me. Somehow, I always just did the homework without any more argument.

[Milkman Norm]

Nov 19, 2009 2:40:05 GMT -5 Dave at the Movies said:

Nov 19, 2009 2:32:04 GMT -5 Goldenbane said:

Kids are too spoiled and have it too easy as is. If I had to do homework when I was their age...they can do f***ing homework. Sorry, toughen up and get it done. ;D

Exactly. I can see how homework being busy work is stupid especially in the high school level but this is really dumb.

Kids need homework. Homework has always existed in schools. If you have a real good job most likely you are doing work at home as well. It helps kids learn that they need to go above and beyond to succeed.

I know that if I never had homework I would have never improved in school. In elementary school I had a lot of learning disabilities and it was hard for me to keep up. Then I went to a private school where the classes were smaller and the teachers actually knew how to teach and went back to public school in tenth grade and by the time I graduated I had an average 3.7 GPA which is way above average for most public schools.

So because homework is something past generations had to do future generations should do it as well? Because it well make them"tougher" even if there is no statistical data that pre-middle school homework helps kids develop higher level thinking skills?

I would think that smaller classes sizes and quailty teachers were able to better prepare you than the kind of one size fits all homework that is assigned in public elementry schools. I have no problem with take home assignments starting in the sixth grade, after students have had years to learn how to properly read a docuement, how to break down a mathmatical problem, how to translate a word problem into numbers, after they have learned a basic understanding of the scientific process. But before the skills are taught and retaught as school homework serves no purpose.

[Psy]

"Busy work" is just stupid. Home work that reflects upon the lessons learned to further drive those lessons "home", as it were, is perfectly fine. Kids shouldn't have daily homework from a single class that takes more than a half-hour on average to finish though. Obviously that changes as they get older and the subjects change and get more challenging.

[angryfan]

Nov 19, 2009 12:54:04 GMT -5 Psy said:

"Busy work" is just stupid. Home work that reflects upon the lessons learned to further drive those lessons "home", as it were, is perfectly fine. Kids shouldn't have daily homework from a single class that takes more than a half-hour on average to finish though. Obviously that changes as they get older and the subjects change and get more challenging.

I agree with you, save for the "more than 30 minutes" part. My youngest neice, for example, was given math homework this week that was 24 math problems. We sat with her, to make sure she understood the problems, and wound up going over the problems for some six hours before she finished the problems.

Obviously that wasn't the teacher's intentions, but sometimes work may take far longer than intended. Like I said, I agree with ya, but just wanted to make that distinction.