Homework wars are wearing me out.
 

My 15 year old son tries every way to get out of doing homework....anyway, it's down to if he doesn't do his homework, he gets soup for dinner......the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.....I guess and hope.

Me and my brother did our homework so what's the problem? I don't get it..we had to read things like "The Merchant of Venice" and "Tale of Two Cities and such....we didn't like it, not even Evangeline, but we made the best of it and just didn't fight it.....

Blah!!!!!

:eyebrow: :rar:

Two words:

Good. Luck.

15 is, whew, a time of considerable turbulence. I think you're on the right track by connecting his actions to his consequences. That's the way life is. But being hungry isn't a natural consequence of not doing the homework, and can seem punitive.

We found success in rewards for success. The best reward is the satisfaction of a job well done, of knowledge gained. But we managed to find an acceptable substitute in internet access, game time, phone time, going out with friends time. A strict quid pro quo. The nice thing is that none of these rewards were necessary for their well being, unlike dinner, and missing them *did* hurt them.

The hardest part was to be steadfast in the application. We strove to not waver, not be drawn into an argument, just applying the rules, without emotion. We felt emotion, you betcha. But it was "If you want to play you have to pay". Not having the homework at home equalled no homework done equalled no play. Read a book. I hated to have reading a book the "punishment", but the other pastimes were all too much like play (computer, game, phone, play outside). Sorry. Your choice, your action, your consequences.

Naturally, I'm no parenting expert, I only quack like one on the internet.

There can be other valid, hidden reasons that are obstacles to homework. Mere teenage belligerence and blossoming independence is not one of them. But poor vision was. Also unknown conflicts in the classroom with teachers and with other students. Shame at one's ignorace. Communication problems in the classroom (one deaf student). Medical problems (one child with epilepsy). And of course mixing these and others can make a very murky situation.

What does the son say? Have you asked why the homework doesn't get done? Is it "dumb"? Too hard? Don't understand? Don't care? Is it getting done at home and then stuffed in the backpack **forever**? Yes, that's a true story. :rar: His input is critical.

Thank you all!! I really don't use negative reinforcement unless I have to. Positive has never, ever worked. We can take away any games videos, or whatever, that doesn't make him budge.

He thinks he should get paid for doing homework, honestly!!!! He says he feels like a slave in that he is working for no pay and that's how he has felt since he was a little kid. He is very smart and cunning. I have to communicate with teachers via E mail because he tries to blow off stuff and he is such a smart kid that if he would just do the darn stuff, it wouldn't take as long as it does to throw a fit about it!!!!!!

Is this a continuing pattern from the past? Or did he used to do his homework in earlier grades but is not now?

Edit: I just read your reply. After the shit day I had at work I'd be HAPPY to do a page of algebra problems or write 500 words on the causes of the Pelloponesian War!!

Damn straight......I keep telling him...you will never have it so good....work is shit and sometimes being a parent takes a special kind of bravery!!!!!

P.S. This has been going on since he was 6 years old!!!!

I am not kidding; in 2nd grade he called the principal a moron and asked him if he knew about Einstein E = Mc2, like he did.....and he did understand it, I think, then....he went on a recycling binge a couple of years later.....which was a positive, to try to get the school to stop using styrofoam for everything......(ahem) he is very environmentally overwrought....


:eek:

Fleur, I failed to properly welcome you to the cellar.

Welcome to the cellar, Fleur.

Now that that's behind us, I had another thought this afternoon about your common situation.

Why not pay him?

I personally disagree with the proposition that I as a parent should pay for chores, homework, etc. Behavior that is expected or required isn't free, but I don't feel like paying money for it. But.

You may feel differently about the whole idea. I have known parents that used cash as an incentive for grades. I think the key point for me would be to pay for performance, that is, grades, and not just clockin' time grindin' out the homework. If he's so smart, (I say tongue in cheek), and you're open to the idea, start a conversation with him about it. Maybe you don't have to pay in dollars, or maybe he could earn cash but have to pay cash for something else he used to get "free".

What is he expecting? Apparently he's already raised the subject with you. Perhaps he's already given you the answer you're searching for. If the price was right, (strictly a negotiation, all the way), I might be inclined to get what I really REALLY wanted (good homework habits) by doing something I didn't really like so much (like paying cash).

Dunno. I'd really want to get his read on it. Is it all subjects? What does he like to do that can be perverted into an academic exercise? See. Just more questions. Sorry.

One way or another the solution is to convince him it's in his interest, that he will gain something out of it. And that's damned hard at this age... especially since it sounds like the habit is ingrained.

Have you taken him on any college visits? Perhaps the idea that lower grades will limit his college choice may help. Of course it could have the opposite effect and get him psyched up for a party school where the classes will be easy.

Or beat the smartass senseless. :eyebrow:

That's totally the angle I would use--if he wants to get paid for doing homework, he has to also pay you for cooking him dinner and cleaning the house and maybe even pay rent on his room. Being an adult means being an adult.

One of my buddies is in a kind of advanced stage of that.. Except he has kind of a catch on his situation. He went to school for a year, commuted from his parents' home. Then the next year, his dad told him pay me rent or get the f out of my house because he wasn't doing great in school. The catch being, uh oh, I only have money for either school, or rent to my parents. He chose the latter so he wouldn't have to do his homework under an overpass. But now he has to take time off school for who knows how long, to work full time at Wendy's and save up enough to go back to school.

Moral of that being be careful how far you take the whole pay us rent thing. It could end up hindering your kid's schooling instead of helping.

V's idea is good and may be the way to go. I think, though that your boy is old enough to learn more about what he's headed into. Show him what various types of job pay and what it costs to rent or buy a home etc. It's his future he'll be throwing away if he doesn't do the homework.

One other thought. It sounds like he might be sharp. Are you sure the homework he has to do is challenging him?

I would make him read some books about successfull stories ( i just finished DESERT FLOWER and i was like, wow!! I am so lucky!) and i was inspired to com eto work and do better. Maybe take him to some insirational and motivational talks ect. i know its corny but they work for me.. Get him Motivated!! and let him know how damn good he has it! Let him know how lucky he is to even HAVE homework.

failing that i would slap him with a ruler once every 10 mins of homework time that he doesnt do homework.

Perhaps he's protesting meaningless and degrading busywork that is often foisted upon students. School is very prison like in my view. It's the only place outside of prison you have to ask to go to the bathroom. Also many classes lump everybody together (can't discriminate based on intelligence) so your son could be stuck doing the same stuff even if he knows it well.

In prison you get to take a dump when you want. You don't have to raise your hand to ask permission.

But you are right about the meaningless and degrading busywork.

Like learning to do math without a calculator. It's horrible what they ask of kids these days.

I don't see how anyone could stand for kids who ask their parents for money to do stuff like homework or housework. Seriously ungrateful. It's like, you're part of the family and you contribute your bit. I might have sympathised if it was only because the homework was boring (I had my share of it, didn't do it anyway; got into trouble but I suppose the advantage of the Singapore system is that they don't require you to do any consistent work and if you can score for exams, you're still okay, grades-wise).

The message I get from my parents is that, if I don't study, I have to go out and work. They'll provide for me as long as I can't. Fair deal, imho. You just can't expect others to take care of you forever.

Even I think this kind of policy is for my own good. I absolutely detest parents who spoil their children. Kids have to be taught discipline and responsibility because they're going to grow up one day and find they aren't kids anymore. And when they're adults and act as if they were still kids, what do you have but an absolute nuisance to society. It's a little ironic that it's coming from me but I have no patience for soft parenting. I know I'm no parent but please, for the love of your own kids, do them the favour and teach them to become adults.

Sounds to me too that he is smart, and the homework to him is a stupid waste of time. So, why not make a bargin with him. In 'real life' we all have to do things we think are a waste of time...but we reward ourselves by doing something we like to do when we are done. So, find out if there is something he would really like to do, and based on what it is come up with a tit for tat plan. Maybe something really big like take him to New York to *whatever* if he does his homework all semester (or of course whatever his fancy is). Maybe you could bait him with a free day off from school do visit some museum or aquarium or something. Maybe an NFL, or NBA or some other big sporting event you normally wouldn't get to go to. I dunno your kid, but I am sure there is SOMETHING you could (hopefully) tempt him with.

Well, he is taking mostly honors classes......but honestly we just had a break through!!!

My mother was over yesterday, and somehow he overheard me talking about how my kid was doing his homework, and no, she couldn't disturb him because of blah blah blah.........so after she left, he said, "does grandma know about this homework stuff!!!!!

I said yes, of course, she is my mother, whom else would I talk to about it...a stranger? She is my mother. I tell her a lot of things I wouldn't discuss with anyone else.

Well, he finally seemed really ashamed that his dear grandmother would be put through anything not nice, on his account, (she spoils him rotten, of course); BUT he then took hours to get all his homework caught up and up to date. I think a light may have come on!!!!

He felt so bad and guilty and his grandma would be so worried about him; the heck with me.....

Let's see if it lasts? I only hope so....

I wonder......

One man's poison is another man's meat.

You seem to have found his meat. Good luck.

Fleur, your son sounds a lot like I was at his age. I never turned in any homework, never did any of the classwork, but aced every single test and term paper. I couldn't understand why my teachers wouldn't just give me a semester grade based on my final exam, and not hassle with the homework. If homework is the tool to accomplish the learning, and the goal is being reached without the tool, why bother with it?

All that to say, we sometimes do turn out OK. When I got to University, classes started getting hard, I started getting interested, did all the work, graduated with honors, did the same with my graduate degree. At some point we turn a corner.

I'm now back teaching a few courses at a local University, and my views on homework haven't changed; the students can decide at the beginning of the semester if they want their final grade to include homework or just the exams and projects. About 70% choose to do the homework.

You were fortunate to get into a decent college if your grades weren't good. The teachers here usually base about 30% of their grades on homework; be damned or not.

I am not for so much homework, but he needs discipline FOR college or else he will wind up at a Community College and fool around there, being BORED.

We live in a good school district which is very oriented to getting kids into decent colleges, and 97% or so continue their education.

Anyway, things will work out in the end, one way or another, I am sure.

Random untested idea: use peer pressure.

Tell him the kids who don't do their homework will wind up working for the kids that do.

Ask him what kind of car he wants to roll up to his ten-year reunion in. How's he going to like it when his hard-working classmates drive up in nicer cars.

What are his "hot" buttons? Usually, at 15, girls. What other things motivate him? You have to find a way to connect the two. Homework = better grades = better college = more $$$ = one less reason for women not to go out with you. Drive him through the fancy neighborhoods and explain that no one who didn't take school seriously lives there.

Find someone he respects and ask them to talk to him. It may just be that he resents the food for algebra program you have going on and he's simply expressing control over his life. Punative measures are not wrong but at 15, positive reinforcement is much more effective. Instead of trying to control him, swerve him into making the decision for himself by providing a scenario he can embrace and claim as his own.

At 15, on the List Of Reasons To Do Something, "because Dad told me to" is at the absolute rock bottom. And the harder you push, the harder he's going to resist. I definitely recommend switching from "bad things that will happen if you don't" to "good things that will happen if you do." And those good things should not be associated with you (e.g., money will fly out of your pocket into his). If you are the rewarder, you are the controller and control is exactly what he's fighting so try not to get in the way.

Pulling back for a minute, if he is not passionate about his homework but displays a passion for something else, I wouldn't worry all that much - he'll get around to connecting the dots. If he's not passionate about anything - if he does not exhibit some self-discipline or some behaviour that demonstrates that he understands the tradeoff of sacrifice today for benefit tomorrow, then I'd say its not about the homework and is a sign of a more fundamental life lesson that he hasn't grasped. If this is the case, I would pull back on the specific issue of homework and teach the greater lesson of sacrifice/discipline today brings rewards forever after. Make it very clear to him the future (unquantified and uncontemplated) cost of the decisions he makes today.

Teenagers need to hear it one thousand times a day that the decisions they make today really do affect their quality of life over the next 60 years. I'll spare you the example of how unbelievably stupid I was when I was 15 and how it took me a very long time to escape the corner I had painted myself in.

Good luck - report back.

Rather than trying to trick, force, guilt-trip or coerce him, I encourage you to look for ways that the homework could actually be appealing. Education shouldn't be unpleasant.

And really, that's why American universities work at all (vs lower education): there is enough free choice and diversity of topics that people can find something they are interested in, and thereby keep themselves motivated. Very few people get a college degree in a topic they don't care about because they have to, and the few who do are the least happy. (The most happy, and I'd say most successful, are those who find something they love & in turn love learning about.)

Certainly, there's always some degree of bureaucratic bullshit to deal with in any school, but it shouldn't be embraced as the only way to do it.


I realize that's basically idealistic bullshit. Practical advice, then:

Find out why he doesn't do it. If it's boring, talk to the teacher about ways to keep him motivated, if he /is/ in honors classes and bored despite that. If it's too hard, find ways to make it easier.

If it's just that he's not interested in the topics, see if there isn't some way for him to have more control over what he's learning. (Life is long enough that nobody is going to suffer for not knowing particular factoids from highschool, & people learn better when they're interested, anyway.) In my personal experience, one of the cheaper thrills in an institution is to exist outside the guidelines: special projects/privileges, different subjects.

School exists to teach, not assign homework & then get penalized for not doing it. As the parent, it's your power &, I would argue, right to make the school or school district give your son something educational to do.

Yes. we have met with the old superintendant; he left, the current superintendent is leaving after 5 years......he was a self promoting beaurocrat in the worst way..and I am being kind.

Soon enough, we will be done with high school and this will just be a memory; albeit not the best one; teen years are damn hard...I do recall them.....and he has a lot of backbone and smarts, it should serve him well if he gets some common sense and that the future is today when you are a teen. I had family problems and $$$ problems when I was his age...you don't even want to know, but he has two loving parents who would give their lives for him...he is a WANTED child.

Planned Parenthood.....where it's at.

So students are treated even worse than prisoners in some cases? Sheesh, I'd have committed a crime to get better conditions. And the calcs are a hard issue. The speed up a lot of stuff once you learn the ideas behind it, but many use it as a crutch to get through class. Ultimately those who want to learn will learn.

That's because they're fed so much self esteme they think they're in charge. Damn shame. :eyebrow:

If I hadn't done a slop job on most of my work; I might have been a contender. As it was then, the big 3, nurse, teacher or secretary was a drag along with getting married at 19.......

Things were different then, and I am glad for changes to make men and women's education a lot more equitable than when I was in school as the "women's movement" in the late 60's early 70's was in it's infancy.

Oh well...there was plenty of sex, drugs and rock & roll, not necessarily in that order!!!!

But of course, like everyone says, if I had to do it over...eh?

Paul Graham has written an interesting comparisons of school and prison.

Paul Graham has amazing insight.
:thumb:

Interesting article, thanks Steve.

Well, I lived in a crummy little bigoted town where all us whites had parents who were mostly blue collar, some white collar and the rest was the doctor, the dentist, and so forth...and their offspring.

Bob Scarborough was the one who turned the whole region into suburbia, but he lived in a crummy little bigoted town, in a real nice house, himself. We had a main street and stores.

When the malls came, things were bad for the shops in town. Now there is a renaissance of sorts and people want to have that "small town" feeling, so it is being "gentrified" of sorts.

Carl MacIntire, the town's now deceased, chief bigot (Bible Presbyterian) would be turning over in his grave if he knew what a melting pot this town had turned into.....

And so would Arthur Armitage rip, who holds the record for the longest running mayor in the USA, would be too.

From the second half of First grade, after we transferred to a new school district, until probably 11th grade, every day of my schooling experience was at best soul crushingly boring, at worst abusive (at the hand of my new first grade public school teacher, no less). To say I hated school would be like saying the ocean is damp.

Even in elementary school I would become so bored of how slow everything was going that I would entertain myself with my thoughts, or just browse the dictionary. The only way I managed to finish high school was to get into one of those alternative education programs. Classes were smaller, independant study was an option, there was a chance to design your own curriculum, subject to approval of course, but at least it may have been something of interest to you.

Anyway, the boredom may be part of it, the rebellion, and grandma all add to the mix. It is hard to add to BigV and the others insightful remarks, but please don't make food a punishment/reward.

I cut and pasted a rather long article by John Taylor Gatto. I usually ask my (college) students to read it at the beginning of each semester. I am not going to teach anymore for a number of reasons, not least of which is how "crippled" so many of them are by their long "education" experiences. The worst question I hear that breaks my heart is any variation on "What do you want me to say, write, or photograph so I get an A?"

I am asking them to make photographs of things that interest them and I get these questions. They are conditioned to please the teacher.



AGAINST SCHOOL


How public education cripples
our kids, and why
By John Taylor Gatto
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John Taylor Gatto is a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the
Year and the author, most recently, of The Underground History of American
Education. He was a participant in the Harper's Magazine forum "School on aHill,"
which appeared in the September 2001 issue.
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I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.
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Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn't get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?
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We all are. My grandfather taught me that. One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainty not to be trusted. That episode cured me of boredom forever, and here and there over the years I was able to pass on the lesson to some remarkable student. For the most part, however, I found it futile to challenge the official notion that boredom and childishness were the natural state of affairs in the classroom. Often I had to defy custom, and even bend the law, to help kids break out of this trap.
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The empire struck back, of course; childish adults regularly conflate opposition with disloyalty. I once returned from a medical leave to discover t~at all evidence of my having been granted the leave had been purposely destroyed, that my job had been terminated, and that I no longer possessed even a teaching license. After nine months of tormented effort I was able to retrieve the license when a school secretary testified to witnessing the plot unfold. In the meantime my family suffered more than I care to remember. By the time I finally retired in 1991, 1 had more than enough reason to think of our schools-with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers-as virtual factories of childishness. Yet I honestly could not see why they had to be that way. My own experience had revealed to me what many other teachers must learn along the way, too, yet keep to themselves for fear of reprisal: if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness-curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insightsimply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.
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But we don't do that. And the more I asked why not, and persisted in thinking about the "problem" of schooling as an engineer might, the more I missed the point: What if there is no "problem" with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would "leave no child behind"? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?
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Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest. Even if they hadn't, a considerable number of well-known Americans never went through the twelve-year wringer our kids currently go through, and they turned out all right. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever "graduated" from a secondary school. Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at all. Ariel Durant, who co-wrote an enormous, and very good, multivolume history of the world with her husband, Will, was happily married at fifteen, and who could reasonably claim that Ariel Durant was an uneducated person? Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.

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We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of "success" as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, "schooling," but historically that isn't true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prisons. Why, then, do Americans confuse education with just such a system? What exactly is the purpose of our public schools?
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Mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much earlier and pushed for throughout most of the nineteenth century. The reason given for this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural traditions was, roughly speaking, threefold:
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1) To make good people. 2) To make good citizens. 3) To make each person his or her personal best. These goals are still trotted out today on a regular basis, and most of us accept them in one form or another as a decent definition of public education's mission, however short schools actually fall in achieving them. But we are dead wrong. Compounding our error is the fact that the national literature holds numerous and surprisingly consistent statements of compulsory schooling's true purpose. We have, for example, thegreat H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not
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to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim everywhere else.
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Because of Mencken's reputation as a satirist, we might be tempted to dismiss this passage as a bit of hyperbolic sarcasm. His article, however, goes on to trace the template for our own educational system back to the now vanished, though never to be forgotten, military state of Prussia. And although he was certainly aware of the irony that we had recently been at war with Germany, the heir to Prussian thought and culture, Mencken was being perfectly serious here. Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern.
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The odd fact of a Prussian provenance for our schools pops up again and again once you know to look for it. William James alluded to it many times at the turn of the century. Orestes Brownson, the hero of Christopher Lasch's 1991 book, The True and Only Heaven, was publicly denouncing the Prussianization of American schools back in the 1840s. Horace Mann's "Seventh Annual Report" to the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1843 is essentially a paean to the land of Frederick the Great and a call for its schooling to be brought here. That Prussian culture loomed large in America ishardly surprising, given our early association with that utopian state. A Prussian served as Washington's aide during the Revolutionary War, and so many German-speaking people had settled here by 1795 that Congress considered publishing a German-language edition of the federal laws. But what shocks is that we should so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens 11 in order to render the populace "manageable."
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It was from James Bryant Conant-president of Harvard for twenty years, WWI poison-gas specialist, WWII executive on the atomic-bomb project, high commissioner of the American zone in Germany after WWII, and truly one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century-that I first got wind of the real purposes of American schooling. Without Conant, we would probably not have the same style and degree of standardized testing that we enjoy today, nor would we be blessed with gargantuan high schools that warehouse 2,000 to 4,000 students at a time, like the famous Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. Shortly after I retired from teaching I picked up Conant's 1959 book-length essay, The Child the Parent and the State, and was more than a little intrigued to see him mention in passing that the modem schools we attend were the result of a "revolution" engineered between 1905 and 1930. A revolution? He declines to elaborate, but he does direct the curious and the uninformed to Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education, in which "one saw this revolution through the eyes of a revolutionary."
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Inglis, for whom a lecture in education at Harvard is named, makes it perfectly clear that compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table. Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever re-integrate into a dangerous whole.
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Inglis breaks down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:
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1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.
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2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.
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3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.
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4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.

5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.

6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.

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That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country. And lest you take Inglis for an isolated crank with a rather too cynical take on the educational enterprise, you should know that he was hardly alone in championing these ideas. Conant himself, building on the ideas of Horace Mann and others, campaigned tirelessly for an American school system designed along the same lines. Men like George Peabody, who funded the cause of mandatory schooling throughout the South, surely understood that the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. In time a great number of industrial titans came to recognize the enormous profits to be had by cultivating and tending just such a herd via public education, among them Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.
*
Tre you have it. Now you know. We don't need Karl Marx's conception of a grand warfare between the classes to see that it is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don't conform. Class may frame the proposition, as when Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." But the motives behind the disgusting decisions that bring about these ends need not be class-based at all. They can stem purely from fear, or from the by now familiar belief that "efficiency" is the paramount virtue, rather than love, lib, erty, laughter, or hope. Above all, they can stem from simple greed.
*
There were vast fortunes to be made, after all, in an economy based on mass production and organized to favor the large corporation rather than the smallbusiness or the family farm. But mass production required mass consumption, and at the turn of the twentieth century most Americans considered it both unnatural and unwise to buy things they didn't actually need. Mandatory schooling was a godsend on that count. School didn't have to train kids in any direct sense to think they should consume nonstop, because it did something even better: it encouraged them not to think at all. And that left them sitting ducks for another great invention of the modem era - marketing.
*
Now, you needn't have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children. School has done a pretty good job of turning our children into addicts, but it has done a spectacular job of turning our children into children. Again, this is no accident. Theorists from Plato to Rousseau to our own Dr. Inglis knew that if children could be cloistered with other children, stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up. In the 1934 edition of his once well-known book Public Education in the United States, Ellwood P. Cubberley detailed and praised the way the strategy of successive school enlargements had extended childhood by two to six years, and forced schooling was at that point still quite new. This same Cubberley - who was dean of Stanford's School of Education, a textbook editor at Houghton Mifflin, and Conant's friend and correspondent at Harvard - had written the following in the 1922 edition of his book Public School Administration: "Our schools are ... factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned .... And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down."
*
It's perfectly obvious from our society today what those specifications were. Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives. Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to entertain oneself; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions. We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we're upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don't bat an eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to "be careful what you say," even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free. We simply buy that one too. Our schooling, as intended, has seen to it.
*
Now for the good news. Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.
*
First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants. Don't let your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a pre-teen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.

I knew that (in general)...and paid dearly for not conforming. :o

I have the same issues with my 13 year old... he is such a pain in the ass! He is extremely smart, but very lazy. And, his laziness started 2 years ago! We tried everything - he is into dirtbikes, go carts, quads...so we even offered him a quad if he got all A's and B's.....he wasn't even close.

I do believe in positive rewards, but it didn't work with him. We even tried paying him for his good grades. Nothing. What worked was the opposite. He gets punished for anything under a C. 5 days of nothing for a D and 7 for an F.

Now when he says he has no homework, I tell him that is fine, but when your report card comes out I hope you don't have to do any "time". It alleviates some of the stress for me and it seems to work. I went out of state last weekend and I made him come with me (which was just ruining to his weekend) and he actually started one of his reports because he was forced to stay in on a Saturday night!

Is transporting a minor across state lines to do homework, legal? ;)

Only when on the return ride back home, the transfer is 2 minors. :D

I didn't conform, but was able to be amiable about it and thus, got around it.

We just found out that my son has CAPD....Central Auditory Processing Disorder and are taking care of said problem.

So he hears things, but can't interpret them?

I think it's medical for "Well, we can't find anything structurally wrong, but it's like, well, he doesn't pay attention to you when you're talking ..."

I believe that used to be known as "being a teenager."

Yeah, he hears what he wants, like most teens, and turns off what he don't, like most teens. But this video game is GAME OVER.

My BIL is a family practicioner. He says almost 3/4 of the guys who come in to have their hearing checked:
a. Have perfect hearing
b. Were sent in by their wives under suspicion of being deaf

So, Fleur, how about an update?

I've just jumped in here without reading the thread but I'd like to say my fourteen year-old has a boatload of homework every night and it's difficult, dammit! It REALLY is! I don't recall all this jazz when I was in 8th grade...yikes!

What pisses me off is when I can get the correct answer to a math problem - but I can't get to it the right way! That's frustrating to me because math is so important in life, why in the hell would they make it harder than it really is?

The "right" way has changed since you were in school. Based on my friend's kids' textbooks, I'd say it's changed at least three times since I learned Math.

The stupidest innovation in Math education that I can think of is "understanding the process without worrying so much about whether or not you get the right answer." I sure as shit hope that kid never ends up doing my taxes for me.

A few years ago, I pissed my son's 4th grade teacher off when I sent a note to her requesting that she send something home for me so that I could help him with something they were doing at that time. I wrote to her that "I had learned it in shcool, but since I'd never used it in the real world, I couldn't remember how to do it". She wasn't pleased and didn't help me at all!

American schools long were (in)famous for handing out very little homework. Probably because the teachers hated grading it. Then, in the 80's and 90's, the blame for the relative lack of education of American students compared to European and (especially) Asian students got pinned on "not enough time in school and not enough homework". Articles contained lines like "Japanese students in school 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, 60 weeks a year, and are assigned 25 hours of homework a day; why can't American students do the same?". There was some movement towards a longer school day but inertia and teacher's unions won out in most districts. But more homework? Hey, that's easy. Just assign more of the same crap being assigned before. Make it either easy to grade (like math problems) or impossible to objectively do so (so the teacher can make something up). Doesn't do any good, does much harm.

As for the school/prison comparison -- well, in schools you get to go home evenings and weekends. And the violence between students is less often allowed to escalate to rape and murder.

I've had at least a B average for my entire school career(senior in College now) and have never studied or done homework for any more than a couple-three hours per week. Granted, I've never had Honors, AP or gifted classes.

My brother is a senior in high school, has a borderline A average, is in mostly Honors classes and plays football. He doesn't study much if any more than I do.

Most homework that teachers, in my experience, will assign is do-able by a monkey and fakeable by any reasonably intelligent person in a fraction of the time it would take to actually do the work.

Math is really fucked up in the public schools I was exposed to. On what planet does it take 9 months to teach a 3rd grader how to multiply and divide? Timed multiplication and division exercises are all I recall doing in 3rd grade math. Also a lot of the Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry I got in High School was so out of context that it was nearly incomprehensible.

Sorry about the mindless rant but the U.S. school system fucked me up something fierce.

Are you saying that I am a monkey or a stupid person? MY SON'S HOMEWORK IS ACTUALLY DIFFICULT. Maybe you lived in a district that didn't have any standards?

My point is simply that 99% of the things you get homework for can be finished through mechanical means or have no objective correct answer and are therefore fake-able.

I attended public school in 3 very good districts. We had tons of assignments and evaluation and plodding, boring, repetitive activities. I had many teachers who were enthusiastic and cared about students and teaching, they generally weren't at fault. The big problem is the degree that they were tied to a curriculum and prescribed teaching methods.

I've noticed many of the same things in college (University at Albany and Hudson Valley Community College) that I did in the public school system. The primary difference between the two systems is that the college learning environment is a few degrees cooler.

...Moving right along...

This thread has real current meaning and value for me. I'll step in and invite your input.

Here and here are a couple of posts that have gotten me to this point.

As to throwing lumps of cold iron at his video-game-playing head...(good one jinx)

I use **every** bit of parental/tutorial/bribing/cajoling/enticing skill I have to extract those questions, and meet with only ... marginal success.

I am a big fan of the Socratic method. I understand it's usefulness. I am less skilled at managing the carrot/stick balance. Homework wars are definitely wearing me out.

BigV,
How old is your son?
Have you read "In the absence of the Sacred" or "Four arguments for the elimination of Television"? Both by Jerry Mander (I'm sure he loved his parents for that one.)

You will find them extraordinary reads, if not, I'll buy them from you. I bought 20 copies of the former and gave them all away.

I suspect that you need to undo some habits. For instance. I stopped watching TV in 1977. There have been a couple of times since then that I would go on a small jag of watching x files for about half a season, or miami vice for a season. but basically, no tv. Maybe we see a video a couple of times a month.

Whatever else you do, kill your TV. It will be no less gruesome than weaning or watching your son clean up from heroin cold turkey. Do it while you can afford the lack of sleep.

May I acknowlede the wisdom of your suggestion and bemoan its Herculean proportions without having to traipse over the the GenSup thread?

I'd have to kill five or six televisions. And I'd be alone in my relief, trapped in the company of three jonesing addicts. And then there's the several hundred videos and dvds. And the elimination of the tv would seriously dilute the threat of losing game console privileges.

Just typing that out makes me weary. I am not equal to that task. I can imagine I could put the heel of my boot to the throat of the monster--strict time limits on screen time. A program like that is already in place at HouseofV. Limits, yes. Absence? It's not really practical, not possible. For one thing, the television is one of two links to SonofV the Elder. You may remember he is enrolled at Gallaudet University (waaaay the heck over there), and since he's deaf, if we want a realtime conversation, we use the tv for videoconferencing. In the past we've used text messages, email, voice relay, tty, etc. They're ~ok~ but definitely lack the immediacy of seeing each other talk (sign).

Ok, I've revealed my weakness. I've shown my desire to make excuses. But my commitment to SonofV the Younger is undiminished. I know it's a harder road to travel when staying away from the tv requires discipline, compared to not having the temptation.

I'm not saying you're not right--I'm saying I'm not strong enough for that part of the task.

He and I sure do need to trade in some habits. The which and the how is the tricky part.

OK. Well read the books anyway, before you start anything drastic. The tv videoconferencing sounds great, you wouldn't want to lose that. But that is what tv should be about.

This is not an overnight quick fix a la "just do x and it works every time" After reading the books you'll have a lot more ammo to convince him that he doesn't want to watch tv It is an education strategy. You can get him to realize how awful it truly is. It will take a little finesse on your part and the bait and switch doesn't hurt either. You two go bike riding now, no?

Anyway. gotta go right now.

I know it would be hard, but you really should think about it V. One of the smart things we did was to make it a house rule when the kids were little, ~3, that there would be no tv on school nights. Other nights, the tv is only used as a monitor for the dvd and vcr.

I can't say for sure that the above is the reason, but we've never had trouble getting the kids to do homework. I like to think they're pretty interesting kids too.

Yikes!

Addicting him to reading may be your only hope. Good luck.