Posted on 09/14/2014 9:08:28 PM PDT by MNDude
To the delight of its families, Hamilton Elementary has replaced homework for kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders this year with PDF — play, downtime and family time — along with lots of reading for fun.
Only a few days into the new year, life is already better, mother Sarah Rothberger said. Not only is there more time for family dinners every night, but evenings now are for playing UNO and Othello, and reading chapters from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “By The Banks of Plum Creek.”
Beyond that, he wondered, why should school dictate what families do, given that families can’t control what happens in schoo “There was a packet every week. It was a challenge at home to get him through a seven-hour day and then consider homework. He really, really hated it, ” Rothberger said. Weekends became all about pushing him to finish his sight words. His teacher believed it was important to start the homework habit.
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
Our high schools have completely flipped the paradigm. Students do homework in the classroom and video lectures are to be watched at home.
And now I see where the concept originated. Thanks
Homework is good preparation for a life chained to your desk filling out TPS Reports on a Saturday.
It really is a daycare center.
Good point about the home-schooling, though. A very rural area is perfect for it.
My kids is homeschooled so they are finished with school they know they are finished — no homework.
Since I NEVER let the schools determine the path of my kids’ education, I never cared about the homework they got. If it was a good assignment (fairly rare) they did it, if it was a stupid assignment, I did it for them.
I was too busy with making sure they learned math, INDEPENDENT OF THE SCHOOLS, to really care what went on there, nor did I have any trust in it, any trust at all.
“Just another way to wrest control of children from their parents.”
That is true...along with having the kids leave their textbooks at school, and teaching them “math” in ways so weird that their parents (and math professors) cannot make any sense of it.
...and don’t think that weekly “science projects” are intended as anything other to keep kids “busy” and separated from their parents, for that’s EXACTLY the intent, at least according the papers I was reading 30 years ago.
I completely agree with you, it is bee ess. I had maybe 15-20 minutes of homework a night through high school and I had all As in college and went to law school.
It makes me upset to see my child so stressed about homework. I don’t believe in it.
“my nephew had math homework. He would type the problem on the school IPAD and it would tell him the answer...seriously...What is he learning exactly?”
He was learning how to solve a problem in the quickest way possible, using the technology tools now available. What could be wrong with that? Maybe you should join the 21st century?
So much for me giving you the “Education Establishment” answer. What you need to do is get with his parents and make DAMN SURE the kid is doing math on his own, OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL, or he will end up being a useless slog, which is the intended result for white males in our education system (assuming he’s white here...but really doesn’t matter). The system is now design to FAIL THEM, and the only people still succeeding are the ones that make sure their kids learn math OUTSIDE of the education system (Kumon, anyone)...such as Asians and Indians and, actually, most other immigrant groups.
Our kids do a lot of their homework at school, in homeroom.
At home we are often mighty busy on the farm and it’s hard to juggle everything. I’m glad they are only in 4-H and FFA, not band and sports, too.
Yeah and most of it is pointless BS like make a collage or some poster board crap that requires $$.
My freshman son has minimum of an hour of math every day, sometime lots more.
Learning how to volunteer and get community service points since that is a more important qualifier for college than grades.
I did 3-4 hours of homework a year in high school. I took calculus, 4 years of science, 4 years of German, etc. After graduating, I tested out of 46 credits of college, and got my BS in Biology in 3 years.
I’m not buying the idea that kids need lots of homework. I’ve volunteered at the high school. It seems to me they fart around in class and then receive all their practice work as homework.
I thank God that I'll be in the grave soon.Things are gonna get *real* ugly here before too long.
you’ll be in the grave soon? What’s wrong???
Perhaps I should have said "may well be".Age is a factor (I had a draft card)...and bum ticker.I'm *certainly* far closer to the grave than I am to the cradle. ;-)
they are mainly managing the classroom... there is a big difference between teaching 30 9-year olds and 2 or 3 9-11 year olds... in our homeschool, we have experienced school with just us and school within a small co-op... 3-5 families a year... we had complete control over the days we taught... the length of the classes--which were 90 minutes... even for the Kindergarten-1st grade kids... it was wonderful... some years we met 2 days a week, some years it was 3 days a week... the remaining days were for the school work/homework, and individual learning each family chose for themselves...
two of the moms had been teachers... they both claimed that their experiences as teachers did not help them as homeschoolers...
last year i was working in NC while my family was in Calif... i Skype-schooled my sons... i went back 5 times during the year... this is not ideal, but better than sending them to government school--which was never an option...
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