What are your thoughts on homework?

[steph72276]

My son is also in kindergarten and he gets a pack on Monday that's due on Friday. Assignments include 3-4 new sight words to practice along with reviewing previous weeks, 2 vocabulary pages and 10 or so math pages, along with reading everyday. I think it's a little much, but you can tell they are trying to prepare them for testing b/c all the math pages have to be bubbled in...gotta love no child left behind.

 

[Circe]

Dear sweet mike, please, for the love of all that is holy, give them homework early and get them into good study habits. I'm a college professor, and I've taught at all levels, from state schools to the Ivies, and I can tell you that in all honestly, 60% of my students across the board have no idea what they're doing. The rallying cry of my colleagues is "failed by the system," and we're doing yeoman's work to try to get them up to speed. The workplace is more demanding these days: graduate school is more competitive; colleges require basically the same standard from their burgeoning general population that they used to require from their highly elite students at the turn of the 20th c.; why on earth should early childhood remain an idyllic period of play? Frankly, it can't. HW should be assigned at a level that the child can do on his or her own, without involving the parent, but it should definitely be a component from early on.

 

[Maria D]

I have a lot of thoughts on homework, but do not have the time to write them all here because as a high school math teacher with 5 preps (5 different classes) I've got too much of my own #%&! homework!

I believe that students need to practice skills to master them. I also believe that they have to delve into more challenging problems *on their own* to really understand a concept. In class and study hall there is a lot of group work. Students learn a lot from each other, so this is a good thing. It makes sense to do the group work when you have access to the group. But they also need the deeper learning that takes place when they work on their own.

The homework I assign has a lot of drill practice and a few deeper problems. Many students don't see the point of doing the same type of problem more than a couple of times. For some of them, seeing me do it on the board a couple of times is all they think they need! How many times do you drive to a new destination with lots of twists and turns in the route before you are completely comfortable with how to get there and even more comfortable with having to take a detour should a roadblock occur? Wouldn't you rather have your root canal done by the dentist that's done it a hundred times?

The same students who can't be bothered doing practice drills are the ones that ask me if they are "doing this right" in the middle of a quiz or test. I used to get irritated when that happened but now I calmly answer that I'm not going to correct the test while they are doing it -- but I am *always* available for help on a homework assignment! In math, you can't move on to the deep critical thinking problems without having mastery of basic skills.

In lower grades, I think it would be great if kids were encouraged to read read read and do a bit of math every night. The kind of math "homework" I'd like to see in the younger grades would be practice of basic skills -- maybe 5-10 minutes a night -- and exploring patterns. Making a game of counting by multiples of 7, or saying the next number in the fibonacci sequence, or reciting the first 25 prime numbers for example.

OK, back to grading and prepping...

 

[dragonfly411]

I'll voice my thoughts as a current college student and what I agree with.
1. What age would you expect your child to come home with homework? First Grade Forward
2. Do you think homework should be given as a weekly packet to be completed throughout the week, or one page per night? I think a page per night will keep a child more focused day by day, vs. a week long can encourage procrastination and at the end an inability to stay focused
3. How many minutes (or hours, for older kids) would you like to see your child have? Would this depend on his/her grade level? This would depend entirely on the grade level and work being done
4. Do you always help your child with his/her homework or do you let him/her complete it alone? I will help my children when I have them. I had a hard time with no help from my parents.
5. Do you care if the homework assignment is a worksheet or would you like to see more hand-on activities? Both


Here's the thing, practice makes perfect. The more you practice writing, doing math problems, or repeating definitions of words, or spelling, the more you will retain it LONG TERM. I get tired of kids jam packing info in the night before a test long enough to remember it for a test and forget it. My current professor teaches in a fashion that encourages this and it drives me NUTS. We have no review, no homework, just notes and then cram for a test. It's not my style and I guarantee 80% of the class cannot remember the first 5 chapters worth of information. I do all of the chapter reviews on my own just to help myself retain information easier.

 

[yssie]

I have a lot of thoughts on homework, but do not have the time to write them all here because as a high school math teacher with 5 preps (5 different classes) I've got too much of my own #%&! homework!

I believe that students need to practice skills to master them. I also believe that they have to delve into more challenging problems *on their own* to really understand a concept. In class and study hall there is a lot of group work. Students learn a lot from each other, so this is a good thing. It makes sense to do the group work when you have access to the group. But they also need the deeper learning that takes place when they work on their own.

The homework I assign has a lot of drill practice and a few deeper problems. Many students don't see the point of doing the same type of problem more than a couple of times. For some of them, seeing me do it on the board a couple of times is all they think they need! How many times do you drive to a new destination with lots of twists and turns in the route before you are completely comfortable with how to get there and even more comfortable with having to take a detour should a roadblock occur? Wouldn't you rather have your root canal done by the dentist that's done it a hundred times?

The same students who can't be bothered doing practice drills are the ones that ask me if they are "doing this right" in the middle of a quiz or test. I used to get irritated when that happened but now I calmly answer that I'm not going to correct the test while they are doing it -- but I am *always* available for help on a homework assignment! In math, you can't move on to the deep critical thinking problems without having mastery of basic skills.

In lower grades, I think it would be great if kids were encouraged to read read read and do a bit of math every night. The kind of math "homework" I'd like to see in the younger grades would be practice of basic skills -- maybe 5-10 minutes a night -- and exploring patterns. Making a game of counting by multiples of 7, or saying the next number in the fibonacci sequence, or reciting the first 25 prime numbers for example.

OK, back to grading and prepping...

I don't, because a couple of times *was* all I ever needed, all the way through grad classes, and I studied in a very good programme, so I wasn't slouching off. My grade-school teachers universally disliked dealing with me: I was the problem kid who was thoroughly bored and made a right pest of herself trying to stay occupied, and there's only so many years you can skip a child before you run into problems of a different sort..

I truly find this mentality of 'requirement', that assumes everyone has has the same needs, to be both redundant and hopelessly pessimistic - or should that be optimistic? My DH can drive a twisty, windy road with lots of detours twice and he knows it by heart, I can drive it twenty times and I'll still need the GPS halfway through. It is a fact that some people are able to understand a concept fully faster than others, with less repetition than others, and for those that do, forcing the useless repetition is only going to incite resentment.

 

[Maria D]

Yssie, I don't make homework count for a large portion of the grade. If you were the type of high school kid who could solve a triangle using Law of Sines or Cosines by seeing it done once on the board, have it memorized and mastered for the test without doing a bit of homework or asking to review right before the exam, all the power to you! You would have easily earned an A in my class.

Actually I do not find this sort of rare student (believe me, it's rare) pesky in the least. Know why? Because they would not be in my class for long, I would have them moved up! I don't know about other courses but a student in a math class that can get an A without ever doing any homework is not placed correctly. Even Einstein pondered problems. If a student can master material without doing any work at all, they are doing themselves a disservice by not taking a higher level class.

 

[Haven]

Maria--You have FIVE preps?! That is insane. My condolences.

I agree with you that mastery often requires practice, as well as the experience of problem solving on one's own.

 

[katamari]

I agree with Circe. Homework early and often is the best way to get students prepared for college. At least to the extent that college preparation is a goal among a school population, students should have outside of class, independent work requirements. College expects 3-5 hours outside of the classroom for every hour in and the earlier this is normalized, the easier it will be for students to transition to college.

I completely understand why teachers don't assign much homework, though. It is hard for me to keep up my grading for 3 classes. I cannot even imagine having 5+, Maria.

 

[ksinger]

Well if this thread doesn't pretty much prove my husband's assertion that we really (collectively) have no consensus on what schooling is supposed to do/produce or how best to do it (that thing we can't agree on), nothing does. (And lest anyone think I'm snarking at anyone here, the paradigm clashes are just as bad amongst the ranks of teachers too, I've witnessed it with my own eyes) Whatever they do and when they do it will be wrong for SOMEbody. Frustrating....

I just keep wondering if the idiots at the top will ever peer out of their ivory towers and realize what the vast majority of the US population has known for awhile now: No Child Left Untested, has NOT improved education one bit...

 

[steph72276]

Well if this thread doesn't pretty much prove my husband's assertion that we really (collectively) have no consensus on what schooling is supposed to do/produce or how best to do it (that thing we can't agree on), nothing does. (And lest anyone think I'm snarking at anyone here, the paradigm clashes are just as bad amongst the ranks of teachers too, I've witnessed it with my own eyes) Whatever they do and when they do it will be wrong for SOMEbody. Frustrating....

I just keep wondering if the idiots at the top will ever peer out of their ivory towers and realize what the vast majority of the US population has known for awhile now: No Child Left Untested, has NOT improved education one bit...

Amen!

 

[yssie]

Yssie, I don't make homework count for a large portion of the grade. If you were the type of high school kid who could solve a triangle using Law of Sines or Cosines by seeing it done once on the board, have it memorized and mastered for the test without doing a bit of homework or asking to review right before the exam, all the power to you! You would have easily earned an A in my class.

Actually I do not find this sort of rare student (believe me, it's rare) pesky in the least. Know why? Because they would not be in my class for long, I would have them moved up! I don't know about other courses but a student in a math class that can get an A without ever doing any homework is not placed correctly. Even Einstein pondered problems. If a student can master material without doing any work at all, they are doing themselves a disservice by not taking a higher level class.

Maria, I'm sorry, I reread my response and it was overly defensive. It wasn't even actually aimed at you - I'm upset with people who so adamantly espouse any viewpoint that they refuse to even acknowledge outliers. I see that you're a teacher - I can't imagine the difficulties you face in your job, with so many children toward whom you have responsibilities.

I have only my personal experiences to comment on, and whilst I had some fantastic teachers and classroom experiences, unfortunately I can't say all were good. I remember being unbelievably bored, being forced to do more problems in class because I finished early and then seeing yet more of the same in my homework, but if I didn't do it my report card was noted poorly.. it got to the point where I just hated going to school. They moved me up a grade, and as I was already on the young side I was now the youngest in the class - and still bored and frustrated. My parents fought tooth and nail to make the school do *something*, and they finally got a tutor for me for a couple of hours every day - it helped a little but didn't really fix anything. At this point my family moved to the other side of the world, and I essentially skipped another half-year - I wasn't bored in class, but at this point most of my classmates were two years older than me, and when you're 12, 13 v. 15 - that's a *huge* difference..

So - obviously my issues aren't only with homework, I just have some dreadful memories of being forced to conform to a rigid academic system that I was wholly unsuited for

I completely agree that no child left behind has not helped matters. The failing inner-city school that I worked at had completely overhauled its staff, cut out absolutely everything except reading and maths., and I can honestly say it did the kids no favours

 

[Karl_K]

A big problem with homework in particular math is often the parents don't know how to do it.
I get calls all the time to help friends kids with algebra homework which I was very very good at 25 years ago and can most of time drag up enough memory to help, but sometimes I have to google it.

What kind of message does that send to kids about math?
How much stress does that put on home life for the entire family?
Let kids be kids until middle-school then a reasonable amount of homework is ok.
1 hour max total per day.

The trend these days seems to go to higher and pretty useless in the real world math at younger and younger ages even before many students have mastered the fundamentals.
Adding to the problem is teachers saying do this like this and not explaining the concept behind it.
That makes useful math useless in the real world because they do not know how and when to apply it to real world problems.
We end up with book smart people who have no concept of using that knowledge in the real world. (that is a problem at every level of education but that is another rant :{ )

Personally I never did homework all the way through high school other than term papers at home always getting it done in school or on the bus.

 

[zoebartlett]

I will say that I cannot stand classes where teachers reward "effort" over "achievement", which is generally a bigger issue in lower school - in grad classes I found they really didn't care how much you tried so long as you got it done, whatever "it" was! In real life, if you fail to deliver an adequate product on time, you don't get brownie points for working extra hard on it - you get fired, just like the person who put in very little effort, why should the institutions designed to prepare you for said real life hold to different, unrealistic standards?

Yssie -- I agree that in the real world, we're not really rewarded when we TRY to get things done. It's the actual result that counts. That reminds me of a few parents I've seen over the years and ones that I've heard about. A 5th grade teacher friend of mine was telling me of a meeting that she had with a parent who was unhappy with her child's math test grade. The child had gotten a few answers wrong and the parent was questioning the teacher's decision to take points off. The parent was saying, "yes, but do you see here (pointing at a question)? You can see that she tried to show her work. You can clearly see what she was thinking." The teacher was like, well, yeah, I can see where this student was going when she wrote out her answer but the answer is still wrong. I'm not rewarding her for a wrong answer. I think she had given the student a point or two for doing a good job of showing her work (which often is not the case), but the fact was, the answer was INCORRECT.

 

[zoebartlett]

My son is also in kindergarten and he gets a pack on Monday that's due on Friday. Assignments include 3-4 new sight words to practice along with reviewing previous weeks, 2 vocabulary pages and 10 or so math pages, along with reading everyday. I think it's a little much, but you can tell they are trying to prepare them for testing b/c all the math pages have to be bubbled in...gotta love no child left behind.

Don't even get me started on NCLB, Steph. I can't STAND it, but unfortunately, it's not going anywhere soon.

That does seem like a lot of homework! How does A. feel about it? Does he get excited that he has homework, like the big kids?

 

[lknvrb4]

I have one child in kindergarten and she has a book to read daily and then a packet of sight words to practice. I. addition to this we have a binder from her teacher we keep at home that has phonics for us to do. My son who is in first grade has a packet sent home on Monday and he has until the following Monday to complete it. He also has a book to read nightly and words to read nightly that he is timed on. I find that some nights its overwhelming to get it all done.

 

[Jennifer W]

I don't see any point or value to it for young children. I remember the resentment with which I approached the unnecessary homework for homework's sake from the age of 6 onwards. I got good at doing the pointless exercises with 10% of my attention. My mother was a teacher at the same school, and while she checked that I had done it, that was the extent of her input. I'm pretty sure she thought it was pointless too, although she was careful not to say so.

Circe's point about getting into good study habits is important, but I would argue that homework for homework's sake actually does the opposite. My ingrained approach to anything to be completed out of school hours became this is just unnecessary filler, and I have to do it with as little inconvenience and effort as possible so I can get on with something that matters... If I believed that from age 6, it was ingrained by highschool and hard to shake off at university. Hell, it was hard to shake off at law school. I really, really resent homework in any shape or form. It has to be a life and death emergency before I'll take work home with me even now (although I will work late happily, I have a strong aversion to anything like homework even making it into my car).

When I was 6, teachers in Scotland were still allowed to hit pupils. I didn't hand in homework once, and my teacher, Mrs Smith, slapped me. I did hand it in actually, but my homework book fell down the back of the radiator she'd balanced the pile on. I saw her last week, in a store. She's over 90 now, and I'm in my 30s, but I actually had to stop myself from going over and slapping her back. I wanted to do it so badly I had to leave the store and sit in the car until I had control again. Once for the slap and once more for your pointless, time wasting, spirit sapping, unnecessary homework, you old witch.

I can see it is necessary for a high school curriculum, and my own daughter will have the support she needs and wants with it, depending on her personality and level of maturity, but until it's necessary, I am not in favour at all. I'll decide how my own child spends her evenings, thank you.

My friend's little boy is 5, and has been getting homework since age 4. The problem with it is that it's also homework for his parents. Someone's taken a decision that parents should spend a set amount of time each evening helping with this stuff (which almost always needs adult help eg cutting something out or taking and printing photos etc). I think that's inappropriate and intrusive. It's also hard on the wee fella, because my friend is now a single parent and she's a surgeon who works unpredictable hours. Hard to see the value in her nanny doing this.

Ha. I think I just discovered stronger feelings about homework than I was aware I had! Does it help? I'm good at harbouring resentment, apparently.

eta reading doesn't count. I firmly believe that reading every day is important to children and I'll happily work through as many reading books as the schools here can throw at me. I won't be photographing a teddybear eating dinner anytime soon though (really)!

 

[ksinger]

Do let me remind many in this thread, what a rarefied world we (here) live in. We are virtually ALL college educated, many with postgrad degrees. Our children are, or will, be shunted into the best schools in the best areas that we can muster, and will have every encouragement and advantage that our educated savvy can provide for them. It's easy to fall into the trap of assuming that WE are everyone, but in the US, the college educated are still a minority (although concentrated areas of such people probably contribute to the perceptions to the contrary), and we need to keep that thought firmly in mind. There is a whole big world of kids out there who will never go to college - for any number of reasons beyond the control of the schools, and for whom college prep is unwanted, unnecessary, and a waste of time. Of course don't say that too loudly, because every child will be reading on level by 2014 and every child is college-bound. Oh, the tales we tell ourselves.

Last week on the day before break, at my husband's school, there was an incident where one kid resisted arrest (no details), another threatened to rape a girl, and 2 kids were found...in flagrante delicto, in one of the bathrooms. When the two were suspended, the mother of the girl came blazing up to the school and started screaming abuse at the principal... Anyone want to take a gander at whether homework is going to make one iota of difference to THESE kids?

As for homework, since that was the question, I do think kids should have it, and earlier rather than later. Kindergarten? I'm not seeing it, or the lower grades. But probably about 5th grade or so, light homework, increasing every year, isn't going to kill anyone's childhood. Just my personal 2 cents.

 

[soocool]

Yssie, I don't make homework count for a large portion of the grade. If you were the type of high school kid who could solve a triangle using Law of Sines or Cosines by seeing it done once on the board, have it memorized and mastered for the test without doing a bit of homework or asking to review right before the exam, all the power to you! You would have easily earned an A in my class.

Actually I do not find this sort of rare student (believe me, it's rare) pesky in the least. Know why? Because they would not be in my class for long, I would have them moved up! I don't know about other courses but a student in a math class that can get an A without ever doing any homework is not placed correctly. Even Einstein pondered problems. If a student can master material without doing any work at all, they are doing themselves a disservice by not taking a higher level class.

DD has a 9th grader in her AP Calc course this year. Of course he is brilliant. When she was a sophomore she had an 8th grader who would come over from the middle school for her Honors Geometry class. Because DD has been exceling in math she has taught some of the classes when she asked the teacher if she could. She also scored an 800 (twice) on the math portion of the SATs and 800 on the Math SAT Subject tests.

DD attributes her success in math because it was the one subject that she had homework in regularly since 1st grade. In 4th grade she was tested and accepted into the school's Math Enrichment Program. She was the only girl in her class. The entire program (grades 4-6) only had one or two girls for each grade level. In high school fewer girls take Honors or AP math classes.

 

[soocool]

A big problem with homework in particular math is often the parents don't know how to do it.I get calls all the time to help friends kids with algebra homework which I was very very good at 25 years ago and can most of time drag up enough memory to help, but sometimes I have to google it.

What kind of message does that send to kids about math?
How much stress does that put on home life for the entire family?
Let kids be kids until middle-school then a reasonable amount of homework is ok.
1 hour max total per day.

The trend these days seems to go to higher and pretty useless in the real world math at younger and younger ages even before many students have mastered the fundamentals.
Adding to the problem is teachers saying do this like this and not explaining the concept behind it.
That makes useful math useless in the real world because they do not know how and when to apply it to real world problems.
We end up with book smart people who have no concept of using that knowledge in the real world. (that is a problem at every level of education but that is another rant :{ )

Personally I never did homework all the way through high school other than term papers at home always getting it done in school or on the bus.

I don't understand? DD's elementary school had parent volunteers who would tutor student's for free after school. This was especially useful if parents could not help kids with their homework...which was usually math,

By middle school and high school, teachers have after school clinics, not to mention free tutoring is offered at the high schools 2 nights a week from 6-9pm. DD is in National Honor Society and she tutors one night a month at the high school and many times no one shows up. She tutors 3 (2 middle school, 1 high school sophomore) kids during the week for pay. This past summer she worked weekly with 5 kids to complete their summer homework packets because parents couldn't even help them with fractions. Why parents don't take advantage of the free tutoring is beyond me.

 

[Cehrabehra]

I think homework is sometimes necessary, but I VASTLY AND HUGELY prefer a very organized, premeditated system. For example, my 5th grader gets a packet of all of his homework on Monday and it's due on Friday. The only thing better would be a monday to monday deal. I am a fan of self pacing. Not EVERY weeknight is conducive to study in every home and it is very frustrating when a lot is expected of a child on a particular day that is just not a good day for the family. Giving work spread out over the week has seem my son skyrocket in school. My 4th grade son gets his work more traditionally and he and I both are always confused over what is due when.

That's pretty much my extent on it.

Also, when I was in school I had a teacher who on the first day said, "okay, there's 1000 points in this class. 250 points will be the final exam, 250 points will be for the tests you have every month, 250 points will be for the quizzes you have every week, and 250 points will be for the homework you have every day."

I loved that level of organization. I got almost 100% in that class.

 

[Karl_K]

I don't understand? DD's elementary school had parent volunteers who would tutor student's for free after school. This was especially useful if parents could not help kids with their homework...which was usually math,

By middle school and high school, teachers have after school clinics, not to mention free tutoring is offered at the high schools 2 nights a week from 6-9pm. DD is in National Honor Society and she tutors one night a month at the high school and many times no one shows up. She tutors 3 (2 middle school, 1 high school sophomore) kids during the week for pay. This past summer she worked weekly with 5 kids to complete their summer homework packets because parents couldn't even help them with fractions. Why parents don't take advantage of the free tutoring is beyond me.

It is nice that those programs are available where you are but here they are not here for the most part.
In private schools yes... public no
Also that would assume that the parents have someway of getting them to and from the sessions which is not always possible for many families.
There is a phone homework help line that has like 5 or 6 volunteers every evening but it is always busy.

 

[packrat]

If I'd needed tutoring in high school I'd have been screwed. I had a job and worked 5-7 days a week, and regardless I lived 10 miles from school, so no way could I have driven back and forth to school twice in one day.

I did my homework when I could at work, and anything I was unsure of I saved to go over w/mom quick before bed, or occasionally one of the guys from the pack would be able to help me. When I was a sophomore our Geometry teacher was..well, I can't say as I've ever had a worse teacher. We pretty much all stared slack jawed at her and glanced at each other like WTF? Not even the smarties in Math could figure it out w/her teaching. Heck, we even got a group together and went to the Principal to complain-and I ended up taking Math home to my mom every night, she'd go over it herself, and then walk me thru it over and over. Then I'd go to school the next day and during study hall before Math, we'd all gather around, and I'd show them how mom showed me. Glad I went to a small school and glad I have a smart mom.

 

[soocool]

I don't understand? DD's elementary school had parent volunteers who would tutor student's for free after school. This was especially useful if parents could not help kids with their homework...which was usually math,

By middle school and high school, teachers have after school clinics, not to mention free tutoring is offered at the high schools 2 nights a week from 6-9pm. DD is in National Honor Society and she tutors one night a month at the high school and many times no one shows up. She tutors 3 (2 middle school, 1 high school sophomore) kids during the week for pay. This past summer she worked weekly with 5 kids to complete their summer homework packets because parents couldn't even help them with fractions. Why parents don't take advantage of the free tutoring is beyond me.

It is nice that those programs are available where you are but here they are not here for the most part.
In private schools yes... public no
Also that would assume that the parents have someway of getting them to and from the sessions which is not always possible for many families.
There is a phone homework help line that has like 5 or 6 volunteers every evening but it is always busy.

Karl, in my area most moms are SAHMs. They could get their kids there, they just don't want to (they can get them to the mall or movie theater anytime) or don't know that their kids need help with homework. I doubt they even ask their kids if they have homework or if they even need help.

 

[ksinger]

It is nice that those programs are available where you are but here they are not here for the most part.
In private schools yes... public no
Also that would assume that the parents have someway of getting them to and from the sessions which is not always possible for many families.
There is a phone homework help line that has like 5 or 6 volunteers every evening but it is always busy.

Yes to that. All of it.

And Karl, at my husband's school, 70% (!!) of the kids are classified as special ed or ESL. (I said "classified" as special ed, not that they necessarily ARE special ed. Special ed classification is a whole 'nother issue, around here at least) If Jose is having problems in math, what are the odds that his parents - who almost certainly don't speak English and may very well be illiterate themselves- are going to bring him in for tutoring?

The issues are deeper and more intractable than most of us wish to acknowledge....

 

[soocool]

If I'd needed tutoring in high school I'd have been screwed. I had a job and worked 5-7 days a week, and regardless I lived 10 miles from school, so no way could I have driven back and forth to school twice in one day.

I did my homework when I could at work, and anything I was unsure of I saved to go over w/mom quick before bed, or occasionally one of the guys from the pack would be able to help me. When I was a sophomore our Geometry teacher was..well, I can't say as I've ever had a worse teacher. We pretty much all stared slack jawed at her and glanced at each other like WTF? Not even the smarties in Math could figure it out w/her teaching. Heck, we even got a group together and went to the Principal to complain-and I ended up taking Math home to my mom every night, she'd go over it herself, and then walk me thru it over and over. Then I'd go to school the next day and during study hall before Math, we'd all gather around, and I'd show them how mom showed me. Glad I went to a small school and glad I have a smart mom.

packrat, that is great that you worked during high school and managed to get your homework done and had your mother to help when you needed. It is just the area that I live in, most kids are handed things to them. In junior year 75% of kids have cars and by senior year almost 100% do. And yes, DD has her own car so she drives to the high school in the evenings to tutor. She said one evening driving to the high school she saw a bunch of the kids in her class just hanging out in the park. One of them was supposed to show up for tutoring according to the mother, but did not. The mom called here to ask DD if her son showed up and I spoke with her. I ask her if she drove him to the school and she said that she was busy geting her nails done and that her son has a car.

I think those kids who do want help will seek it, whether it is from a teacher, a tutor, a parent, or another student. I think it was great that you shared what you mom taught you with the other kids in your class.And it is great that you had a fantastic mom who wanted to help!

 

[steph72276]

My son is also in kindergarten and he gets a pack on Monday that's due on Friday. Assignments include 3-4 new sight words to practice along with reviewing previous weeks, 2 vocabulary pages and 10 or so math pages, along with reading everyday. I think it's a little much, but you can tell they are trying to prepare them for testing b/c all the math pages have to be bubbled in...gotta love no child left behind.

Don't even get me started on NCLB, Steph. I can't STAND it, but unfortunately, it's not going anywhere soon.

That does seem like a lot of homework! How does A. feel about it? Does he get excited that he has homework, like the big kids?

Zoe, right now he LOVES homework. I have to stop him and spread it out throughout the week b/c he would do it all in one sitting, but I take him to the park to play with his friends almost every day and want him to get in bed by a decent time, so I try to not spend more than 30 minutes a day on the actual work and then he reads to me at night. I just don't want him to get burnt out on it since he has so much so early. And I hear you on NCLB...I worked in a private school, so not nearly as much red tape to go through, I truly feel for teachers.

 

[elrohwen]

DD is a senior in high school.

When she was in kindergarten she had zero homeowrk, but like to write her ABCs and numbers for fun. She would play school at home and teach her dolls.

Once in first grade the rule was 10 minutes of homework for each grade level. There was some math homework assigned, but the emphasis was on writing. DD was also in the gifted program so she had lots of projects to do, the majority was started in school.

Once in middle school (grades 7- there was probably more tests than there was homework. Most writing assignments, science labs, research projects were started in class and finished at home. The classes were divided into teams so that that team leader knew the workload the kids were getting and the teachers would communicate with each other to keep the workload of their students reasonable.

Once high school started DD was not prepared for the amount of work that was dished out. She was mostly in Honors courses with an overwhelming amount of homework, research papers, projects. I remember in her freshman and sophomore years she had at least 5 quizzes and tests per week. She managed to complete her graduation project (25 page research paper, with a movie maker presentation) which had to be completed on her own time in addition to her regular school work. Now she is a senior and the homework has not decreased, but funny the number of tests have. So far she is 1 week away from the end of the marking period and she averages 2 tests a week. She has said that this has thus far been the easiest year so far even though she still has AP and Honor courses.

DD said that she wished that she was given more homework in the earlier years because it probably would have taught her time management at an earlier age.

Soocool, this is how I felt. I was given very little homework in the lower grades and I typically finished it half an hour or less, even into 7th and 8th grade. In high school, I was up to 3-4 hours per night, every night, and it was quite a change. Not saying that 1st graders should get more homework, but it could've been a more gradual transition from grades 5-8 maybe.

 

[atroop711]

I have 3 children..2 of them are in school (5th gr and 1st gr). I don't understand the needs for homework before a certain age. In our school (it's a progressive school) the children start homework in the 3rd grade. When they do start in the 3rd grade they aren't bombarded with hours of homework at night either. I know some other more traditional schools in my area which start homework in K (mandatory reading per night, worksheets every night, ect)...they're 5 yr old. They spend an entire day in school then many have after school classes (like chess, gymnastics, a language, ect)..THEN they have to do work? I think it's over the top to mandate a 5 yr old to do homework every night. I think if the child wants to bring home unfinished work from school and work on it..great but that should be left up to that 5 yr old.

As for homework in the upper grades, I'm ok with it as long as the kids aren't given an overkill amount of it either. The teachers in our school really speak with each other and do not bombard the kids with homework from all courses every night. They've come together and made up a great schedule for the work...so our 10 yr olds aren't up past their bed time working. In fact my oldest never spends more than an hour doing homework. It's been great and she doesn't mind having it to do.

I went to a traditional catholic school and my nights were always spent doing hours of homework. It really made me resent a lot of the studying because we would have math, science, religion, english almost every night. That's hard on a child in elem. school.

 

[Circe]

A big problem with homework in particular math is often the parents don't know how to do it.
I get calls all the time to help friends kids with algebra homework which I was very very good at 25 years ago and can most of time drag up enough memory to help, but sometimes I have to google it.

What kind of message does that send to kids about math?
How much stress does that put on home life for the entire family?
Let kids be kids until middle-school then a reasonable amount of homework is ok.
1 hour max total per day.

The trend these days seems to go to higher and pretty useless in the real world math at younger and younger ages even before many students have mastered the fundamentals.
Adding to the problem is teachers saying do this like this and not explaining the concept behind it.
That makes useful math useless in the real world because they do not know how and when to apply it to real world problems.
We end up with book smart people who have no concept of using that knowledge in the real world. (that is a problem at every level of education but that is another rant :{ )

Personally I never did homework all the way through high school other than term papers at home always getting it done in school or on the bus.

Quoting Karl but responding to a general issue ....

See, I was awful at math. I have no aptitude for numbers whatsoever. That homework felt utterly useless to me: it simply wasn't going to be a part of my daily life in the future, so it felt like a time-waster. My husband the engineer, on the other hand? Obviously found an excellent footing. And, like Yssie, I was madly bored in most of my Humanities classes: even at the AP level, they went according to the LCD standard set by the slower students in the class, which felt like a drag. I was an average B student in high school, between the low C's I scraped in my math classes and the easy A's I got in my humanities courses.

And then I got to college and had the option of selecting my classes by topic and level and graduated valedictorian.

I agree with KSinger (unsurprisingly) on a lot of points (though I'd argue bathroom nookie, while inappropriate in numerous ways, especially at that age, does not disqualify a student from higher education). But I do think we're doing a huge disservice to a large percentage of the population by insisting on a one-size-fits-all Renaissance model of education, where everyone is expected to be "well-rounded," and where a college diploma is a prerequisite for participation in modern living. I'm a *much* bigger fan of the Russian and Swedish educational systems, where you choose your general specialization between 12-16 instead of trudging through an additional decade of schooling before you begin to focus on your specific path, and where there's no shame in the more hands-on professions.

That said, since I doubt I'll be able to revamp the system single-handedly in my lifetime ... homework, please! I can't speak to the math side of things, but the large percentage of illiterate students I'm seeing concerns me greatly. A lot of my college-aged students have no grasp whatsoever of grammar, spelling, or logic: worksheets in elementary, and more complex assignments geared towards content at an early point in middle-school would do a hell of a lot more good than all the bubble-score reading comprehension tests in the world. Of course, that puts a heavy burden on our under-paid and overworked elementary and high school teachers.

Voting next Tuesday for the candidates who put increasing the education budget first, right?

 

[zoebartlett]

I just wanted to chime in and mention that it's really interesting to read everyone's opinions on homework and the broader educational system and expectations as well.