Posted on 09/16/2007 7:48:07 AM PDT by shrinkermd
...But here's the funny thing: Neither could I. Last year, in third grade, as Nathaniel's homework mounted to more than an hour a night, we found ourselves locked in constant combat. I begged, pleaded, cajoled and screamed for him to finish. Sometimes I even resorted to bribing him. He procrastinated, whined, cried and did everything he could to resist. Very quickly, his homework became the most stressful part of my day.
Making matters worse, I couldn't help but wonder: How valuable is this stuff? Many of the exercises that came home -- endless packets asking the kids to find misspelled words in this or that paragraph or to measure the length of the kitchen counter using a cutout ruler -- seemed more like busywork than anything substantive. Still, I understood that these assignments were supposed to reinforce what was being learned in class, and who was I to argue with experts in pedagogy? As it turns out, I wasn't the only one with doubts.
Harris Cooper, a Duke University psychology professor, is widely considered one of the nation's leading researchers on homework. He has found that there is no positive correlation between heavy homework loads for elementary-age students and academic achievement. "Kids burn out," he said. "Homework for young students should be short" and "lead to success without much struggle."
Not everyone is calling for less homework. USA Today, for example, warned in an editorial last year that a growing backlash against homework, as seen in books such as "The Homework Myth" by Alfie Kohn and "The Case Against Homework" by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, could leave "U.S. students less prepared to compete in the global economy."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
An hour a night in third grade is child abuse?
My take: homework of more than say 15 minutes’ duration on a regular basis, is basically forcing the parents to do the work during the evening that the school system did not do during the day.
I didn’t do an hour a night in high school, let alone elementary. I’m reminded of science projects - they used to be optional & simple. Now they are mandatory in many schools, and parents spend more time working on them than kids.
Count me as someone who thinks homework is largely a waste of parents’ time.
I MOSTLY agree with you. The only exception that I have is for the memorization of addition and multiplication tables and the basic sound / spelling rules.
Basic parenting maxim. Don’t try to fight school battles at home. If the school has not built in sufficient carots and sticks, tough. It’s their problem.
If you're doing your kids homework or science project for them then you are doing both your children and yourself no favors.
My oldest son struggled to finish his homework but over time he has learned to do it on his own and now he comes home, he does his homework, and his grades are up.
Our current education system is generating a group of people who don't know how to work on their own, don't know the basics, and want a star on their paper for doing things that everyone used to take for granted. We're too focused on "easy successes" and building egos and not on enough on teaching people to learn and work on their own.
Then we agree.
I buy my 9 yr old lots of books (she reads at the 12th grade level), including books involving math and history. My wife taught her to read before school started, and worked flash cards with her to get her basic math facts down.
We watch documentaries and take her to zoos, museums, etc.
But most of her homework has been a waste. “Copy each spelling word 10 times” - but she could already spell all the words correctly. “Build a poster board about your feelings on _____.” Basic skills like phonics, math and writing are best taught by lots of repetition and at home. But poster boards, science projects and book reports asking how she felt about the book are NOT preparing her for life.
ping
“homework mounted to more than an hour a night’
Oh, the horror. Throughout school, I managed to get my homework done during study periods, seldom taking a book home. But if I had to, an hour hardly sucked the life out of the evening. People like this are revolting.
Reading.
Such a basic concept, and yes it is up to the parents to make sure it is taught and encouraged.
Anything less is pretty much child abuse.
Sounds to me to be ineffective parenting, disguised as a school issue.
Now, I suppose, I will get flames from those who disagree. So what? I had to do homework when I was a kids. I raised two kids who did their homework. I now have 5 grandkids, three who are doing homework, the other two will when they get older.
The key is attitude, expectation, scheduling and consistency in repercussions should the expected results not be realized. This of course, takes time, efforts and work on the part of the parents, because the kids will test your rules, and exploit every perceived exception.
It's not easy but it's part of the job.
So true. Even private schools seem to love these grandiose "projects;" my daughter recently had to "invent" some functional labor-saving device and construct it herself...for history class coverning the Industrial revolution.
I was amazed that perhaps the most rewarding epoch to study and understand our modern world was being so trivialized.
Absolutely. If the school can’t teach children what they need to know while it has them imprisoned during the day, the school is a failure.
Sounds as though the child-prisons trained you well.
There is a classic line uttered by Helen Hunt in the movie, As Good As It Gets where, while writing a letter to her wacky admirer, played by Jack Nicholson, she turns to her mother and asks how to spell conscience; she then says “Con-science, that doesn’t make sense...”
Ever since that scene I have had no problem spelling conscience as though it were my own name.
I don’t think he would have liked Catholic school in ‘50’s and 60’s.
Yup, they sure did. Lugging those coal buckets and working the mill fostered discipline!
[/SARC] (I figure for you, the /SARC is necessary)
Setting a planned time each day for homework, and ensuring that I was around to answer questions isn't prison. Making sure that homework was complete or privileges were in jeopardy and minimizing the exceptions to that rule isn't prison.
Placing requirements and goals on children while showing that poor choices can have consequences is LIFE. How you teach your kids these lessons is up to you, I'm sure you are doing something. In my case (and that of the grandkids, via the same methods now used by my children) this is one of the tools in teaching this basic life lesson. As a bonus, we are/were also able to get the homework done without major day to day arguments and frustration.
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