It's not the amount of homework that is the problem

Athens Banner-Herald ^ | 12/13/03 | Brian P. Gill and Steven L. Schlossman

[netmilsmom]

>>Second, it's not true that most parents object to homework. Today, as in the past, most parents strongly support it. A Public Agenda poll in 2000 found that only 10 percent of parents thought their children had too much homework, while 25 percent thought they had too little and 64 percent thought the amount was about right.<<

I have no problem with homework. I have a problem when my 1st grader is doing an hour's worth of homework and she has an hour's worth of free time in the classroom.
When I find that she does 50 papers a week and we have three a night, it makes me wonder how we can get three papers done in an hour but it takes them six hours to do seven.
With my FRiend 4mycountry help and God's Grace, Netmilsdad will let me homeschool.

[Holly_P]

With my FRiend 4mycountry help and God's Grace, Netmilsdad will let me homeschool

I hope you are able to do that if that's what you want.

Private schools are another answer for some. I believe just about any private Church operated school is better than public schools. I say that from the perspective of having attended both.

[international american]

I averaged 3-4 hours of homework a night in high school. I was in advanced placement courses though. The workload was about double that of the regular college prep courses.

[HairOfTheDog]

I am always surprised at the amount of homework friends say their young elementary school age kids have.

I don't remember doing homework until high school.

Little kids are in school all day. I can't imagine their evenings need to be filled with more.

[LasVegasMac]

The homework my 9 yr old (4th grade) brings home is usually a joke. He tries to con his little sister into doing some of it - and she can! She is in Kindergarten.

We give him additional assingments to do, makes him mad, but at least he is learning something - no thanks to the school system.

LVM

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

Sounds like some boring highschool years.

[ServesURight]

Publik skools need to be abolished ASAP! Kids are force-fed liberal gobbledygook for 8 hours then they take home a pile of crap that the teachers will reward with an "A" anyway.

[truthkeeper]

My memory is the same as yours, and I agree with you.

[boris]

I did homework--lots of it.

Yesterday I asked a nurse at the cardiac rehab center where I work out--a college-educated woman: "You have a calculator with no square-root key. Determine the square root of 5."

She had not the inkling of a clue how to approach the problem.

My friend's bright eldest daughter cannot solve a quadratic equation...indeed she does not know the quadratic formula even exists.

This is "education" in America, circa 2004.

--Boris

[international american]

I graduated from high school in 1972. At that time, my school was ranked number one of all public high schools. Today, it is ranked at 350. The liberals even managed to water down the curriculum at my old school:)

[TontoKowalski]

With my FRiend 4mycountry help and God's Grace, Netmilsdad will let me homeschool.

I'm a homeshool Dad, and I was VERY against homeschooling at the outset. Now I'm very PRO. Here's how we handled things and why I changed my mind.

We agreed to "homeschool" on an experimental basis during the pre-school years. Now, that may be too late to you, but you can still do some things. Tonto Junior wanted to read his own stories, so my wife taught him to read. He wanted to do crafts, so she did them. They did all sorts of learning activities at home, at very little cost, thanks to the Public Library and the internet.

I saw how he responded. The boy was reading at three. When first grade rolled around, we took him to local public school for a tour. I'll never forget that day. They were going to start out by learning the alphabet. At the time, Junior was half-way into a biography of Jefferson. Clearly this wasn't going to work.

Also, I liked that my wife didn't talk about "keeping him home" which implies an overly agressive "sheltering" of children. She spoke of "educating our son at home."

I was also concerned about the social aspect of homeshooling, and your husband may be, too. The key is to understand what you want in terms of social interaction for your child. Do you really want "socialization" if that means you child assimilates the values of children in the community at large? Or do you mean "socialization" in the sense that you want your kids to have friends, work and play with other kids, and so forth. If that's the case, there are homeschool groups in just about every community, church youth groups, Scouting... all sorts of ways to avoid the hermit syndrome.

Just a few thoughts. If you'd like any private insight, let me know.

[The Louiswu]

I'm doing homework right now (in between posts of FR) studying for finals. I have been doing a lot of homework all semester and expect to do even more next semester. If you want to do well in school...do your darn homework, ask a lot of questions, be organized and learn how to take tests....oh ya..and NO WHINING about how much homework you have.

'nuff said

[Pure Country]

Why would she necessarily need to know the quadratic formula anyway? Tell me when she would use it except in the next math class?

[international american]

"Why would she necessarily need to know the quadratic formula anyway? Tell me when she would use it except in the next math class?"

College entrance exams.

[ladylib]

We were told to expect three hours a night when I was in high school and that was just for regular college prep -- not honors.

[international american]

Add another 8-10 hours of study every weekend.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Isn't there something wrong with this picture?

I think it is called "special projects." You know the stuff you have to go to Hobby Lobby to get the materials needed. I was home schooled and I never did a "special project."

What a child is suppose to learn by building a model of a colonial farm is beyond me. And then the teacher called the farm we built, "inappropriate!" I think she didn't like the still we stuck in to show how the farmer turned his bulky low-value crop into a easily transported high value commodity.

[demkicker]

Why would she necessarily need to know the quadratic formula anyway? Tell me when she would use it except in the next math class?

I made the same mistake of asking that question and complaining about classes that did me no good. Until students are exposed to such classes, no one can tell who has a "knack" or talent for that particular subject. The system is sort of like a colander. Put kids into the class and see who sinks or stays alive. Every kid should at least be exposed to such classes.... One never knows who the next genius will be.