Homework wars are wearing me out.

[russotto]

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.

[Perry Winkle]

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.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by grant

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.

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?

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by Brianna

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.