Posted on 06/27/2011 8:13:40 AM PDT by van_erwin
Vanessa Perez was a homework scofflaw. The Marshall High School senior didn't finish all of it — largely because she worked 24 hours a week at a Subway sandwich shop.
Alvaro Ramirez, a junior at the Santee Education Complex, doesn't have his own room and his mother baby-sits young children at night. "They're always there and they're always loud," he said, explaining his challenges with homework.
The nation's second-largest school system has decided to give students like these a break. A new policy decrees that homework can count for only 10% of a student's grade.
Critics — mostly teachers — worry that the policy will encourage students to slack off assigned work and even reward those who already disregard assignments. And they say it could penalize hardworking students who receive higher marks for effort.
Some educators also object to a one-size-fits-all mandate they said could hamstring teaching or homogenize it. They say, too, that students who do their homework perform significantly better than those who don't — a view supported by research.
But Los Angeles Unified is pressing forward, joining a growing list of school districts across the country that are taking on homework — including Fontana and Pleasanton, N.J. In many districts, limits are being placed on the amount of homework so students can spend more time with their families or pursue extracurricular activities like sports or hobbies. The competition to get into top colleges has left students anxious and exhausted, with little free time, parents complain.
In Davis, a policy that took effect this year specifies homework maximums, with some exceptions for advanced courses. And it prohibits assigning homework over weekends and holidays while also addressing the quality of the assignments.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Book learning, which most of school is, needs solitary time. Time for reading, time for studying, and time for writing. The problem is that kids are wasting their time in school every day, where very little of the time is actually spent on “learning.” Some is, when the teacher is demonstrating something, or explaining something, but often, what he is doing is not applicable to many of the kids. Some already know it, some are daydreaming or not following, and some are trying to follow but don’t “get it” or don’t learn from listening or seeing.
If you homeschool, those same 6 hours are not spent lining up, checking out the opposite sex, texting, walking through halls, or listening to a teacher explain something to a third person. You DO the work DURING your school hours, and need very little later free time to complete something. It just saves time, and allows the kids to have a sport or hobby.
If you can’t learn reading, writing and arithmetic in six hours, adding more hours of homework probably won’t help. The education system has failed the students for years. The “Why Johnny Can’t Read” book, published years ago, reported on the inferior methods of teaching as the problem. It has only gotten worse. If you look at textbooks from the early 1900s, they are about 1/2 inch thick and are used for the whole year. Now they have huge confusing texts for the same subject. There is so much wrong with public schools and not much hope of fixing it since the teachers are idiot Democrats for the most part.
I’m all for home schooling, but when you take a look at most (yes, most) of the parents out there this would be an unmitigated disaster of biblical proportions if done on a massive scale.
Half the urban parents out there never graduated themselves, and of those who did I would estimate most don’t have the self discipline to do it correctly, or be even willing to take the time either. Some kids can thrive in public schools because they have what it takes to get the most out of it, no matter how bad it is there for many it is far worse at home.
If you think that most public school teachers have an agenda they are pushing can you imagine what some of the kids being home schooled would be getting?
When my daughter had him she was routinely doing 3-4 hours of homework every day for her classes combined and more on the weekends.
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Your daughter was **AFTERSCHOOLING** herself!!! The institutional school was merely sending home a curriculum for her to follow! THAT IS THE FLAT OUT TRUTH!
The more I compare academically successful institutioalized children and homeschoolers the more convinced I am that institutional school teach almost NOTHING! The success is due ENTIRELY to the parents ( institutionalized or homeschooled) and the child's efforts IN THE HOME!!! Both groups of children are spending about the **SAME** amount of TIME at the kitchen table doing homework IN THE HOME!!!!
Personally, I would like to see the formal and controlled studies that PROVE institutional schools teach anything at all! I would like to see the studies that separate out what is learned IN THE HOME from that acquired in the classroom. I have asked this question many times on Free Republic and never ( NOT EVEN ONCE) has any teacher or professor of education provided a link that proves where and how children learn ( in the home or in the classroom).
Imagine that! We spend up to a quarter of a million dollars to produce a 12 th grade graduate from our collectivist government schools ( who maybe can read or not), and we do NOT NOT NOT know whether the child acquired his ability to read and his knowledge in the classroom or IN THE HOME! This is UNBELEIVABLE!!!
By the way, my homeschoolers **never** spent more than 2 hours a day in formal, at the kitchen table, schooling. Seriously!
Yet....All three were admitted to college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. All finished all college general courses and Calculus III by the age of 15. Two earned B.S. degrees in mathematics by the age of 18. The oldest was a world class athlete and represented the U.S. in worldwide competitions and will still earn a masters in accounting at an age typical for those who are institutionalized for their schooling.
And....I am also convinced that my kids are not any smarter than yours.
I’m all for home schooling, but when you take a look at most (yes, most) of the parents out there this would be an unmitigated disaster of biblical proportions if done on a massive scale.
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Our government schools are a massive failure on a biblical scale!
If every government school were to be razed to the ground tomorrow, the **same** children who are getting an education today would get one tomorrow. The **same** children who are wallowing in ignorance today would still continue their downward slide of illiteracy and innumeracy tomorrow!
Why?
Answer: Because the **ONLY** children who are getting an education in the U.S. today are AFTERSCHOOLED or HOMESCHOOLED!!! It is the parents and the children themselves who are doing the hard work IN THE HOME!
And...Yeah! As for this post and the previous post, I am shouting, jumping up and down, and having a fit!
As bad as you paint public schools the simple truth is a majority of parents could never do well there themselves, much less have the patience or discipline to educate their own kids now that they have them.
Take a look at the Detroit Public Schools. As bad as they are, and they are horrible, at least every kid there is given a CHANCE to succeed and learn. The truth is without that school to go to they would never have a chance, period.
Home schooling is a great choice for SOME people, but would be utterly disastrous for most kids. Think of the more urban areas where parents see them as nothing but a mouth to feed or hopefully a check from the daddy or government each week. For those tens of millions of kids their lives would be ruined forever if their parents were responsible for their education.
I don’t know where you live, or what kind of schools you have around you, but here in central Indiana my kids get a great education, especially in math and science. We’re a small town with teachers and administrators who still care about the kids, unlike most of the schools you seem to hear about in the news.
My oldest daughter is entering her second year of college now and is doing very well, my other daughter is going to be a junior and is holding a 3.947 gpa, something I am very proud of because she chooses to work hard to be the best in each class she has. I graduated high school with a 3.00 and I am to the point where I have to work hard just to help her with her advanced algebra and chemistry homework anymore. Do I think that some homeschoolers have it better than if they went to public schools? Of course I do, but half of homeschooling is dictated by the parents, and that is where I think that the biggest problem lay. Most, and I do mean most, parents are not capable or even WILLING to do this for their kids. Even you would have to admit that.
I don’t take work home at night and I don’t work weekends.
Schools should operate on that premise. They’ve got seven hours a day to teach something. That’s plenty. When you’re done for the day, you should be done for the day. Go read a book or toss a baseball around.
Homework is a crutch for lousy teachers.
They should just do as Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats did? Just deem the students to have passed. Give them all A's, shut down the schools and give the money saved to the teachers. Make them all happy.
Great Idea. On the first day of school they will be told they all have 100’s in every subject and as long as they show up (school gets $$ based on attendance) their grade stays there.
why not.
There would have to be rules of course. You can’t have order without rules.
Sex between students and teachers would be allowed only in certain rooms with separate rooms for male/female, male/male, female/female and the same for student with student sex. Drugs allowed only in the gym where there would be mats to prevent injury. Alcohol in the cafeteria. Pants must never be below the knees nor dresses above the waist.
Parents not allowed. Let them get their own.
Order is the rule of the day.
Sounds like a Bay Area School policy
/s
And I don’t believe in all my high school classes we ever got near the end of the book, anyway. Nope, institutional school is not so great. Not sure it’s much better than no school at all.
Oh, homeschooling is NOT for everyone, and it’s not for anyone who doesn’t want to do it, that is for sure. Smaller private schools or uniquely special public schools will do. But your average big city public schools are more often than not a JOKE. Sometimes they do more harm than good.
LoL, oh man. So true though.
I think L.A. schoolkids are too busy listening to sh!tty hip hop music, wearing their pants down to the ground with boxers showing, being gangbangers, and looking at internet porn.
Maybe only if the Teacher looks like Debra Lafave ?
Fascinating observation.
I didn't do this in high school, but in college I worked 32 hours each week and carried just above a full load of credits in school. The profs still wanted me to do my homework.
I couldn’t be more against homework.
Sit in school for 7-8 hours and then be expected to do up to several hours more in homework? When are kids supposed to have time to be kids?
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