Posted on 08/23/2016 7:33:07 AM PDT by rey
What studies I have heard of indicate that to learn something (meaning be able to use it successfully for many years) you need to “cement” it into your brain somehow.
The process that does this is to revisit the material several times. For example, suppose you want to remember your phone number. You study the number, and in the course of a few days you use the number and revisit the number. Experts say at least five uses is necessary for long term memory.
Now with homework, do you want the student to learn the algebra concept and be able to use it for life? (Lots of people believe you only need it until the course is over, but lets take the more serious view that the material is actually useful and will be needed from time to time.) Also lets assume that you want to be familiar with it without reviewing the old textbook when you want to do something like solve an algebra equation.
The answer is to see the material in class, revisit the material later in the evening (Homework) and then revisit the material the next day, (Homework review) and then bone up for the exam, and than take the exam. (Five times) Now you may be among those who know algebra and can use if all their life. How nice?
Oh, yes, I am a retired math teacher. And I assigned a little homework each day. (Practiced what I preach) The real truth is that if you want to learn it, try teaching it.
If designed properly, homework always helps. In the late 60’s, I moved from a school where I was doing two to three hours of homework a night, to a rural school where the district did not have sufficient funds to allow students to take books home at night, and so did not require homework. The difference in performance between the two school districts was significant. For an example of the difference, study hall would sometimes have 4 or 5 students in the back of another class. I was in 7th grade study hall, held in the back of the 8th grade Math class. It was the “B” section of the 8th grade. An exam was being given and I was bored, so I asked the teacher if I could take the test. I scored 12 points higher (92 of 100) than the highest grade in the class. It was all material I had covered before the end of the 5th grade (I started the rural school district in 6th grade).
Later, I earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering. There is no way a person could complete such a program without self-study and homework. Self-study and homework skills must be developed in elementary education. They can not be learned overnight.
Very few of our best and brightest enter education as a career. When they do, they are prize jewels to be cherished and adored. When you see something like this, where a “teacher” says homework is bad, you are seeing the results of a broken educational system. It is not the individual who is the problem, but the system itself has failed.
I wouldn’t disagree with that, but that was not math homework in elementary school.
It seemed they would have maybe 5 problems that were going over the topic and then lots of silly review topics.
If you are learning how to do multiplication of 135 X 155 it already also incorporates addition. There was no need to have 10 addition problems on the homework.
Now, the biggest issue I had was things like coloring homework. They would have sheets with math problems and a key to color. Well, coloring was exhaustive g for my daughter.
They would send home coloring maps too. Ugh!
There are many days I wished I had homeschoold my kids. Both of my daughters say they are going to homeschool their kids.
I never had homework really until college. Sometimes I would have a little math or a book report, but that was it.
I got an engineering degree in college without the homework of earlier years.
By college, I was making a choice and did what I had to do.
My dog sez it helps with his digestion. Good roughage.
I saw on Facebook a note from the teacher going home with students at an Anaheim Hills elementary school. She wrote that she was trying something new this year. The only homework would be something the student didn’t finish during the allotted time at school. She asked, instead, to have more family time with the student, more sports, and dinners together, and board games, and walks. I absolutely love this.
The only “homework” should be projects and reports that simply can’t be done at school, that take days of planning and preparation.
The busy work of reading chapters and answering questions, the too many math problems, not needed. I’ve homeschooled for years and there is enough time in school to have children participate. They shouldn’t just be lectured to.
Look at my post. I was originally a Chemical Engineering major at Texas A&M but switched to computer science with a minor in chemistry.
I did not have much homework all throughout my schooling. I had a little homework in calculus in high school, but I managed to do most of it at lunch or in free time in other classes.
I didn’t have a problem handling the work in college. I did struggle with Physics, but it wasn’t the work load. I got an A in the lab, but I failed the tests. Had to retake that class.
My two middle school kids have more homework than I did in college.
It boils down to lazy teachers passing the buck onto parents.
I work all day too and I don’t want to do homework when I get home...exceptions for test study and projects.
And before I hear the whine from the tenured about teachers working their evenings....you chose to be a teacher...
No doubt you in the right about this kind of homework. I did not ever subscribe to any axiom regarding how much time should be spent on homework or how much repetition needed to be included.
Some schools of thought have it that different tasks appeal to different kids. (This is where the idea that some kids should color the work of other kids in group work. — In fact this is often the rationale for group work).
The real motivation for homework should be to revisit the key to the learning task as often as needed so that it becomes part of a students tool chest. Certainly addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division are in this class. Coloring is not.
That just has to work better, one would think. Except that you actually should try, at least briefly, to do the homework before you view the video. Then you will understand better what issues the lecture addresses.
Perhaps the teacher should tease the night's lecture by having the students try, for a bit, to work the problems before they have seen the lecture.
I was starting to wonder if I was the only one who did as little homework as possible in H.S. and college...
I was in the top 5% in my H.S. class but carried a solid C average my first two years in college. Once I finally started into my business major, I finished the major coursework just shy of a 4.0.
I’m no genius but I didn’t find I needed to do work outside of attending lectures and taking test. Almost any “homework” was writing papers, or it was optional.
By this logic, eliminate school altogether. It’s not improving anyone’s performance either.
In our experience, homework for pre high school grades is nothing but inane busy work which reflects on the general IQ of the teachers involved.
If parents were somewhat intelligent, careful and alert, schools would back out of the homework business and allow parents to teach their children the basics of constitutional Republic civics, reading and math one hour per day. But so many parents are illiterate and brain washed.
Someone should come up with a parent’s guide to homework for the basics. Summers are a great time for alert parents to teach their children what is missing from the socialist and racist public re-education centers. No time should be wasted. If parents understood what is at stake, they would engage.
The only service public school homework does, is wake up parents to the incompetence they are dealing with.
Everyone who gets good grades also studies. There is no such thing as a student — however brilliant — who gets good grades without studying.
Yes! Teachers, realizing that their math and reading methodologies failed, would push off basic reading. spelling and math to parents. Most parents were homework is not enough “alert” time for parents to fill in for the failing schools.
“If parents were somewhat intelligent, careful and alert, schools would back out of the homework business and allow parents to teach their children the basics of constitutional Republic civics, reading and math one hour per day. But so many parents are illiterate and brain washed.”
That’s pretty funny. I am not laughing at you but there are a lot of big ifs. Many send their kids to government schools because they do not want to be bothered and they have been told they cannot teach their kids. If they are public/gov school grads, this may be true. Most put the entire burden of education on the system. Education is much to broad, or all encompassing to be done a few hours a day in the asylum known as public school. When my homeschooler is with me EVERYTHING is a lesson.
As far as teaching constitutional Republic civics, the school does not want to teach that nor do they want you to teach that. Government schools are about indoctrination, to prepare you for a world of same sex bathrooms and all perversity is equal and any sense of wholesomeness or recognition of evil is bad. They seek to espouse democracy, though that term is not mentioned in any of our official documents. They certainly do not want to create independent thinkers. If we had a country of independent thinkers we would not have the politicians we have nor would we have government schools.
But I did have to study the subjects I wasn't emotionally dedicated to, like math, English, etc.
Then in college, my science-related classes turned into math classes, because electrical engineering is basically applied math. At that point, I had to study.
She was working three hours a night and she was in third grade. She had no time for play, hobbies or family time. And much of her homework required an adult to help for her to get credit.
It made no sense and it made even less sense when the teacher told me they had done it that way deliberately to make the parents to become involved with the homework.
But what about the child who did not have a parent to help them with their homework? That apparently was not her problem.
It also teaches discipline, something many kids are incapable of.
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