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Posted on 01/20/2005 5:10:29 AM PST by Obadiah
In an effort to teach educators a lesson about the importance of summer vacation, a Whitnall High School student and his father have filed a lawsuit against the boy's math teacher that seeks to bar teachers from requiring homework over the summer.
In the lawsuit, 17-year-old Peer Larson and his father, Bruce Larson of Hales Corners, argue that school officials have no legal authority to make students do homework over the summer because the state-required 180-day school year is over.
"It is poor public policy," Bruce Larson argues in the lawsuit. "These students are still children, yet they are subjected to increasing pressure to perform to ever-higher standards in numerous theaters.
"Come summer, they need a break."
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
"If you don't do the homework do they send you back to the grade you just finished? To whom is the work turned in, the former teacher or the new teacher?"
From my experience, if a student doesn't do it he is deducted points from his grade. And the work is turned in to the new teacher and part of the first semester grade.
Hey, How are you doing?Haven't seen you around for awhile.
I'm snowed in. #$@^^@
8 inches of that flaky white stuff, and still coming down.
I saw this kind of stuff every year when I was in college. Some of the instructors had the horrible nerve to assign homework the first day of class. You wouldn't believe the fuss put up by some of the students. The horror!! Being expected to work on the first day of class is like being boiled in oil, I guess. I would piss them off by asking, "What do you want, breakfast in bed? If being assigned homework is such an awful thing, what the hell are you even doing here? Do the world a favor, disenroll now, and go work at McDonald's."
Also, the class is not a core-curriculum class, it's honors pre-calculus. Since it is an honors class, it isn't wrong to expect a student a step up and do something above the bare minimum. If dad and son are that pissed off about it, then disenroll him from the class and have him do something else. This shouldn't be a court case.
Well, some people do get excited ... in fact, just about everyone has some issue that he gets in a raucous fluster over occasionally. But mostly, people are trying to live up to high standards, I believe.
How true. But it does depend on the nature of one's statements and how they are represented. I love to seek out the "right-minded" people, those who are trying to do good deeds in this world, but who are not ones who blame others for their own problems, just good old down-home type people. I actually did talk with a liberal the other day who is one of those kind of people. She runs a flower business and puts forth her best effort to please her customers. The funny thing is that she turned out to be more anti-illegal immigration than any conservative I've ever seen (but she did stop short of blaming them for everything).
I believe that your highness, the Nuclear Niceness One is one of those down-home people. :)
Thanks for your thoughts. I perceived your passion for teaching in your posts upthread. I subbed at mostly the HS level about 3 years and taught one year 7th grade special ed, Mild/Moderate disability (in most cases which pertained to hi-sugar diets and broken homes and kids brought up without boundaries.)
I salute your efforts. Yes, I do have a passion for teaching that only grows with each successive year. I may become one of those people who teaches until he's 70. I am doubly lucky that I live in the city where I teach and thus I can be of service to those in my own neighborhood. I am blessed every year with good kids and wonderful parents of them.
My late grandmother would have translated your "down-home people" as "plain dirt folks," and that was a compliment. So thank you! I like to think I can live up to that, at least most of the time - there's nothing like a crowd of children to give you a kick in your pretensions :-).
It sounds as if you're an excellent teacher, and a fine member of your community! (Do you sense the Molasses Miasma of Niceness there?) Just kidding, that was a sincere observation, based on your comments here.
The entire argument pivots on the whether or not teachers have legal authority to require schoolwork during summer 'vacation'. Or to put it another way, do teachers have the authority to create defacto year round school, school that is absent classroom instruction for roughly 3 months of that 'year'?
I, speaking as a student myself, actually endorse the idea before taking some advanced classes. From what I hear, teaching some of the AP classes would be impossible without it.
Not to be a smartass, but that is what is called 'hearsay'. I would need a lot of documentation that attempts to prove that a boat load of summer homework is anything other than 'busywork'. Without formal classroom instruction--that is real 'teaching', I fail to see how assigning 2-3 months of homework actually accomplishes much of anything, especially in mathematics classes...or anything that can't be accomplished by the 'refresher' that is a standard part of teaching post-summer vacation. As to the AP argument, isn't the amount of material to be covered the reason why there are classes in Algebra I and Algebra II? Or the English classeS requirement for graduation? Or formal 'summer school' classes? Or magnet schools?
How can you have homework over the summer? Last years classes are done, and next years classes have not started yet.
The school year starts the first day of school and not one minute before.
Nuff said.
Reading assignments. Our kids do homework over the summer to keep their minds from turning into jelly.
(sarcasm) The same way you do you IRS income tax forms to keep YOUR mind from turning to jelly.(sarcasm end)
Busy work, is busy work, no matter if it is homework or government paperwork, it is all designed strip you of your freetime, and by extention your freedom.
>>Reading assignments. Our kids do homework over the summer to keep their minds from turning into jelly.<<
Yes, but it's not part of next years classes. They haven't started yet. My kids had all sorts of "assignemets" during the summer, but they were in no way connected to the public schools they attended. The public school does not assign homework or assignments until the first day of school. They can't assign retroactively. This whole thing is just silly.
On the other hand, I would be in favor of year-round school. Then, if there was a summer class, then the class would be authorised to assign homework. But that is not the system we have now.
I wouldn't sue, however. I would merely tell my child they were under no obligation to do the work during the summer and I would write a note excusing them from the work. For starters, if the teacher got snooty about it, I would explain that the summer is the time for ME to assign my children assignments. He/she can have them beginning the first day of school.
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