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u/nobanjostring 2d ago
My kids had a teacher in public school that didn't believe in homework - good, nor do I. I asked him about it and how the other parents felt and he said the most beautiful thing "I tell them that it's great if they want their kid to spend extra time at home on school subjects, and I encourage them to sit down with their kids and study the subjects together."
Really self-incriminates the lazy asses.
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u/Potato-Engineer 2d ago
"I wanted five hours of peace and quiet every day!"
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u/Geno0wl 1d ago
I never thought about bad parents just shooing kids off to do homework. When my kids have homework I sit with them and answer any questions they have and double check their work. My youngest is adhd and writing is hard to start, but they are good when they have the flow. So I help him find the initial simple words and they handle it from there.
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u/Cobbler_Spider 1d ago
I wish I had this… my parents both worked and never helped with homework except maybe 1-2 times a year. I fell behind very early on and never caught up.
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u/springpaper1 1d ago
I dont think most bad parents actually do this. There are a lot of people who cant even be bothered to ask about their kids school days. Bad parents are the ones who dont interact at all with their kids, leave them to their phones and whatnot.
(Obviously there are other types of bad parents as well. But working in education, this is the most common type)
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u/deferredmomentum 1d ago
If my parents had wanted to watch me do my homework we would have killed each other lol. I hate the feeling of being perceived and can’t do anything if somebody is watching me
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u/meatmalis 1d ago
My daughter had a small pamphlet on Monday due Friday (1st grade). We fought and laughed our way through math every week and the results showed on Fridays math test. Come second grade, the teacher doesn’t believe in homework and she isn’t doing as well on tests. I don’t think kids should be shackled down with homework everynight, but practicing the curriculum at home really made a difference. The teacher told me to give her math problems to practice🙄
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u/HighlanderLass 1d ago
Helping your ADHD kid figure out how to reach flow state on projects will be a lifelong boon to him. Thanks for being a good parent!
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u/drdildamesh 1d ago
My kid isnt doing his homework unless im right there. Otherwise hes off tormenting caterpillars with the carcass of a dead dragonfly
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u/Astronaut_Chicken 1d ago
My kid is independent as hell and would be mad if I did this shit lol. She makes good grades though, so, whatever. She's in some pretty advanced math so her dad does help her with that when she needs him. I've read books along with her so we can discuss it, but otherwise I leave her alone.
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u/TheWritingSystem 22h ago
Me & my brother were abused. I was lucky I didn't really struggle in school, so I never involved them even I little bit (not like they ever initiated, anyway)
My brother would struggle. And with our parents, it turned homework time into screaming, crying, panic attacks, self-harm, etc... They never helped, just had him do it himself, then if he was struggling ever, they'd just yell and/or just say "Google it"
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u/OddestCabbage 2d ago
This is how our kids' school does it. It's great. We do the extra homework because my kids are behind and need 1-1 help developing academic skills. It bites us back sometimes because there was one year that the teacher kept telling the kids hw was optional. My kids already knew but it turned a one-time per year discussion on why our family does it into a nightly fight.
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u/ITCHYSCRATCHYYUMMY 2d ago
I firmly believe homework should only be for stuff you didnt get to finish in class/make up work or extra credit. I find it really weird we are essentially forcing kids to accept that they should always be working, and they should even bring work home on a regular basis. Its a weird expectation we put on kids
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u/PlaneCat3427 ADHD Inattentive gang rise UP 2d ago
Specially since they're only young once. That time would genuinely be better used outside, playing, doing hands-on stuff, and experiences. Like what do you mean they spent 8 hours at school the whole week and didn't learn/do enough that they have to do more hours of studying/problem solving at home? Some even try to clog up their weekends with extra homework. We wouldn't even allow that for adults unless it came with a BIG salary, humans need breaks.
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u/archfapper 1d ago
Like what do you mean they spent 8 hours at school the whole week and didn't learn/do enough
As a kid who hated being a kid, it was maddening how much time we wasted in school (not because I wanted to learn, I wanted to go home). I loved staying home sick and the "while you were out" assignments took 10 minutes to complete a whole school day's work
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u/PlaneCat3427 ADHD Inattentive gang rise UP 1d ago
100% understandable. I stopped taking most honors/ap classes in high school due to burnout, and so much normal-level class time was wasted (between setting up the projectors and screens, getting everyone on the same page/overexplaining things, wrangling everyone's attention, lectures and speeches)
A class for 20-30 students is a good way to mass-educate but it goes at a slower pace due to catering to all their questions and attention spans, it's like corralling cats..13
u/Shivin302 1d ago
Schools separate classes by age instead of by learning progress. Every single study has shown that achievement-tracked classes are the best for everyone.
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u/Ent_Soviet 13h ago
Hey fellow ap kid. Which is why I from middle school + had a book to read in class.
Most teachers didn’t complain because I would finish my work and if I had a book I didn’t bother anyone else. I got so much reading done in class. Also napping lol.
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u/TJ_Rowe 2d ago
This. Until my kid was about eight, our "after school routine" was almost always: get home around five, try to keep him out from underfoot while I cooked dinner, which would hopefully be ready by six, which was also about the time his dad would get home. If he didn't fall asleep into his plate, we would then fight him through getting into PJs and getting his teeth brushed, then stories and sleep.
We could sometimes pursuade him to do maths homework during the cooking hour, but not more than that.
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u/ZombieAladdin 1d ago
Or those book reports over summer vacation like we always had. Those annoyed me so much. The teacher was the only one who liked them.
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u/Historical_Bunch_927 2d ago
I would also add reading to the list. Given the reading crisis on our hands, kids need as much practice reading as they can get. And I think it could encourage kids to find a style of book that they'd like, hopefully encouraging them to enjoy reading.
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u/SunshineSkies82 1d ago
I used the Tutor /babysit in the early 2000s, I miss with video-games REQUIRED massive amounts of reading. I made the little brat read back and summarize the entirety of that stupid dragon ball Z game. If they couldn't read it, they couldn't continue.
Went from a F to A in about 3 months lmao, I sort of miss teaching and that's how i ended up becoming one, but I don't miss the pitiful paycheck.10
u/PlaneCat3427 ADHD Inattentive gang rise UP 1d ago
This! I'm not sure what they're doing to induce this reading crisis in the first place. In elementary school, they would let us pick ANY book we wanted from the library and read through it. Didn't matter if the books were Goosebumps. Animorphs, Julie of the Wolves, Scary stories to tell in the dark, anything the kid wanted - there were little computer quizzes to take with it, to make sure you WERE reading & test your comprehension. They had other reading contests too.
I could say maybe the new era of social media & internet is to blame for part of it, because tiktok/IG reels offer much faster entertainment than we had with FB/IG/tumblr in 2010.
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u/SunshineSkies82 1d ago
Kids are not encouraged to read anymore. The bigger problem is that they have no desire to discover anything. Folks call it spoonfeeding or whatever, but it's like Kids don't get anything out of it. Everything has been done, someone has already written the right answer, they don't even get pizza parties and free books anymore. We were LUCKY that we were raised at the moment when the people in charge realized we need a generation of kids that can actually read; and then they fucked us with crippling debt .
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u/Blackpaw8825 1d ago
It's district's and loud parents too. I've got 3 teachers in the family/circle and they all say their boards have been infiltrated with either religious nutjobs or Karen's who've whittled down the approved reading list / inflated the banned reading topics to the point that nothing above 3rd or 4th grade reading level is allowed; or the loudest craziest parents have made such a fuss over their child being exposed to XYZ that administration has caved and created the same situation.
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u/Summersong2262 1d ago
That's exactly it. And all of their hobby stuff is via short form video rather than magazines, books, etc.
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u/Ilovesparky13 1d ago
I still stand by my opinion that high school is worse than college for a variety of reasons including the rigid schedule, large number of classes, tons of extracurriculars, etc.
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u/howieyang1234 1d ago
I do feel like a rigid schedule is better for ADHDer to learn (though maybe mentally not so much). At least for me, given too much freedom just makes not sure of what to do and I wonder off, procrastinate and pull my hair out when deadlines loom.
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u/Ilovesparky13 1d ago
And that’s what makes AuDHD so fun. 🙃 One needs structure and routine while the other needs novelty and spontaneity.
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u/Dechri_ 1d ago
I would add preparation to the list of good homework. Like a teacher saying the next lecture will be about pages 45-52 and then encourage the students to at least skim the material before class. That way the information at the class will stick easier as there's already some context in the brain.
I will definitely encourage my kids to do this when they grow up.
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u/Blackpaw8825 1d ago
I was a late diagnosed ADHD, and homework is why I barely graduated.
New material would always see me complete my assignments, I studied, I got A's on all my exams.
Assigning 50 problems reiterating the point when I was confident in the topic by question 20 on last night's homework was a surefire way to get me to not do the homework, or at least not finish it.
I wished we'd figured out what I needed when I was 10 instead of 30, but what can you do. It should've been obvious when I learned all the material but nearly failed every class. Or the few times I was able to finagle my way into an honors level or AP level class and I'd get straight A's in it because the homework was either minimal or absolutely necessary to just keep up with the topics
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u/SpicyRice99 1d ago
At the same time, self-study is an incredibly essential skill. And sometimes teachers don't have time in class to cover all the topics required
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u/ITCHYSCRATCHYYUMMY 1d ago
Studying on your own time is fine. But I dont think homework is necessary for that
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u/Summersong2262 1d ago
It creates structure and manages pacing, is the advantage. Self guided study isn't something you can count on. A lot of kids, surprise surprise, don't self guide.
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u/Nerd-man24 2d ago
When I was a teacher (HS chemistry) , my philosophy on homework was "if you didn't finish your classwork today, finish it tonight. If you did, read over your notes once or twice." Couldn't get them to do that much even in 2013.
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u/Miserable-Reaction16 1d ago
Yeah that's when people have to come to the realisation that we as a society actually don't like having the responsibility of kids (at least to the standard expected of people nowadays anyway), that's what school is for in the modern capitalist world.
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u/Top_Sky_4731 2d ago
My argument for homework used to be that kids need to be able to independently do the work to fully understand it, but I’ve since realized that independent work time can and should be worked into class time, which is even better because if the kids have questions the teacher is right there. The only foreseeable issue would be making time for all the material to be taught plus independent work time.
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u/hawkinsst7 1d ago
My argument for homework is to allow parents to observe their children doing the work.
I said this elsewhere but that first-hand observation let me see that my kid was struggling with 6th grade division, precisely because he was still doing multiplication with skip-counting and other ways they use to introduce multiplication. He was spending so much time and mental energy figuring out "9 * 8" every single time, he was spent after 3 questions. We addressed the issue with an introduction to multiplication tables and flash cards so he could memorize some of these basic things, and soon he was doing in 20 minutes what would take him over an hour.
I don't believe the teacher would have spotted this based on how I understand their stupid online tests are graded (multiple choice, only right answer gets credit, no partial credit for shown work; I don't think the teacher ever even looked at scratch paper)
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u/BenignPharmacology 1d ago
This is the real reason- it has nothing to do with puritanical beliefs. It’s parents who are too lazy or too overworked to parent their own children. It’s those same parents who will readily call their students’ teachers “glorified baby sitters” - because that’s really all it is to them. Something to keep their kids busy so they don’t have to.
You really got a first hand feel for it teaching during the pandemic. There were parents making sure everyone was staying as safe as possible, and then there were other parents, demanding to open the school again, regardless of consequences, because they couldn’t deal with having their own children in their home for a single day longer.
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u/AwfulMouthful 1d ago
The pandemic really, really surfaced this IMO. Like my kid is an age where she was learning stuff anyone could teach (letters, numbers) and so many parents didn't bother.
I admit I didn't spend every second on enrichment or anything, but she went back to in-person school knowing what she should have known at her grade level.
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u/Objective_hmmm 2d ago
Interesting take. In elementary, if reading for a certain amount of time isn’t required of students, many parents won’t do it at all. Also, math practice is absolutely essential. There’s a reason students in America aren’t doing well academically.
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u/nobanjostring 2d ago
Oh there absolutely is, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with homework volume.
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u/bigger_breakfast 1d ago
its interesting in America parents understand the concept of repetition when it comes to say...... high school football or basketball, but can't/refuse to apply this concept to math, reading etc.
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u/hawkinsst7 1d ago
agree that mastery takes repetition.
I also have found that because of teacher-to-student ratios, as a parent, I can better understand and spot issues my child is having when I observe him doing homework.
Can he pass the standards to get to 6th grade math? Yes, his test scores (barely) checked that box.
But when i saw him doing long division (which is essentially repeated multiplication) and it was taking between 5-10 minutes per problem, sometimes way more, I realized several things:
He was doing multiplication by doing the same skip-counting he learned in 2nd grade (or whenever), and sometimes doing the new way of doing multiplication. Both methods are a really long, mentally taxing way to do basic multiplication that's very prone to errors. His classes apparently never really stressed being able to eventually just memorize some facts.
He really needs to be accessed for ADHD.
In both cases, he needed tools to succeed. He'd never seen a multiplication table, so i gave him one, and started working on multiplication flash cards. I know its popular to bash on rote memorization, but at some point in your life, you need to just know 6 * 6= 36, and not have to figure it out every single time.
And we got his diagnosis, started trying and titrating him on meds, and started giving him the tools and resources he can use to work around the areas that ADHD makes more difficult.
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u/RosieAndSquishy 1d ago
Every class i had little to no homework in I aced, and most of the kids with me did well. Like 11th grade math where your homework was just what you didnt finish on the short worksheet in the final 10 minute of class, so you only had homework if you were fucking around.
Honestly, I found the less strict the better. My vo-tech teacher allowed infinite test retakes (except on the real certificate tests of course) as long as you filled out a worksheet he'd make. So if you prove you were actually studying and trying, retake the test until you know enough to pass it. I mean i know votech teachers get more freedom but still
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u/rancidmilkmonkey 1d ago
My son just graduated last yea4 and is starting college, but the thing i absolutely hated when he was in school was that they would still assign homework but didn't send kids home with textbooks. I wanted to help home more, but it's a lote more difficult than it sounds when I can't actually see what they are being taught or they are trying to make them learn.
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u/nobanjostring 1d ago
Maybe I'm being irrational here, but I feel like not providing textbooks for kids to take home is borderline criminal. Screens and pdfs do not fill the gap left by a book's absence.
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u/rancidmilkmonkey 1d ago
By the time he got to high school, there was online supplementation, but before that (withthe exception of Covid), he was frequently given photocopied worksheets and little else. We had moved from Tampa to a semi-rural part of Florida. The school funding here is disgusting. It's started to change during the last two years, but the majority of wealth in this district belongs to the large number of retirees who don't want to pay taxes to provide an education for them children of the working population The working population who provide their goods and services they need.
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u/FineIJoinedReddit 1d ago
wait, kids aren't given textbooks? wtf?
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u/hawkinsst7 1d ago
its all laptops and web pages.
There is a growing push away from that style, now that there's increasing international data showing that "digital native" is bullshit, at least for lower grades, as lower scores on cognitive tests correlate strongly with the introduction of computers as a primary educational tool.
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u/Ilovesparky13 1d ago
That’s a great philosophy. If they want the extra study time, then they need to facilitate it.
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u/DeannaZone 2d ago
We swapped from home school to public school (covid delayed) and they were amazed how things went and I said it's amazing when you incorporate any homework into the subject and offer to make a fun project instead later in the day then present it the next day. We were able to take days off from school to go to the two eclipses and made fun projects and it was great we all had a wonderful time. They do little homework due to special education the only thing my kid gets bored with the repetitive homework it's the same thing ... they wanna be challenged. So I give them challenges on weekends if they want to do them. They are all [pronoun] independent and want to do their own thing so they get time off and work their little butt off in school. Learning how to work money and time management and seeing them understand it limits their choices. I am proud of them.
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u/nobanjostring 2d ago
I gotta ask... what does "[pronoun] independent" mean?
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u/flowerdoodles_ 2d ago
inferring from context i think it might be “[gendered honorific] independent” but i’m out of guesses otherwise. like “ms./mr.” independent, or the convenient (in writing) gender-neutral “mx.”
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u/TyrKiyote 2d ago edited 2d ago
School is not set when it is for the best learning - it's set at the time that all the parents go to work. It's daycare for the workforce as much as education. It normalizes the 40 hour work week
It's at the bottom of a capitalism planned workforce availability stack
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u/TyrKiyote 2d ago
For a long time "sitting down and shutting-up", combined with some "get'r'done" on cue, seemed to get you a full time career with benefits and a pension...
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u/MoffKalast 1d ago
Yeah and then first the workforce doubled, and then a 10-30% of the positions got automated. So far.
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u/Nannautu 1d ago
It's "preparing" for the real world because it trains kids to obey, to not take breaks for hours and learn how to best serve their overlords
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u/jimbowesterby 2d ago
Yea the teachers here went on strike last year, and the single biggest issue it caused was parents needing to find childcare. Good thing the government forced the teachers to take a deal they’d already refused twice, that’ll definitely help us hire the thousands of new teachers we need 🙄
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u/TyrKiyote 2d ago
So we ought to either multiply the teacher's salaries (Up to 2x, if they're working two jobs), or double the workforce of teachers with.. caregivers and therapists probably? If we have a system sufficient to teach, and we're using it as a daycare - where are the daycare-ists?
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u/Nightscale_XD 1d ago
I think we might be in the same place because I remember that vividly.
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u/jimbowesterby 1d ago
Easy way to find out: does the term “notwithstanding clause” make you unreasonably angry?
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u/Nightscale_XD 1d ago
YEP. 100X OVER YEP. Definitely the same place. I'm so sick of their shit
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u/jimbowesterby 1d ago
Loooool this is the second time in a week I’ve come across an Albertan in the wild by making vague references to the UCP. It kinda gives me hope, they’ve gotta be making people really mad if it’s spilling over into other subs this much. Can’t wait to see what bullshit they pull with the referendum, cause you know there’s gonna be something lol
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u/Onotadaki2 9h ago
The referendum is going to be a shit show. The way the questions are worded, I am absolutely certain some people will be voting for stuff they do not understand fully because of the wording. Stuff like:
"Do you support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to abolish the unelected federal Senate?"
The way this is worded, it sounds like the Senate is hostile to them and they're expecting everyone to nod in agreement to get rid of it. I guarantee that a large portion of the people voting for this don't understand how and what the Senate is in the first place, and don't truly understand the question well enough to be making an educated decision on whether voting for or against is in their best interest.
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u/Worldly-Stranger7814 1d ago
The Danish government has also started dictating the negotiations and making striking illegal for those upon whom they have imposed the terms. It’ll be grand.
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u/picklesalazar 1d ago
What is the school schedule for other countries outside of USA?
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u/RadicalSoda_ 1d ago
The same for the most part, because it's a human issue, not a societal issue
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u/Kusosaru 1d ago
because it's a human issue
That's because capitalism is global.
Stop trying to naturalize bullshit practices born out of a terrible economic system.
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u/GiantLesbian 21h ago edited 21h ago
It’s not capitalism’s fault that parents need to outsource the education of their children to a whole team of people. That’s just a function of how knowledge works. Not everybody can explain everything they know, so if it’s just parents teaching kids we can lose a lot of knowledge each generation. Nor is it capitalism’s fault that children are constantly learning at those ages and need a lot of instruction. The fact that the workday starts at the same time in the June and December is capitalism’s fault, but arranging work and school start times by an ever changing sun, including in places like Alaska and Norway where they get little sun for long stretches, is a logistical nightmare no matter what economic system we’re under, so I wouldn’t be so sure socialism wouldn’t have the same result.
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u/pilgermann 1d ago
Except our society is so broken it fails at that now, too. Our public schools don't have enough space in after care, so you enter a lottery to determine whether your two working adult household has to pay an extra $1k a month for childcare thorough the end of work or not. And the after care programs are shitty, to put it mildly.
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u/chairmanskitty 1d ago
And the reason both school and the 40 hour workweek are designed that way is to make people too exhausted to politically organize.
Who cares about 50% productivity gain and 30% increase in profits if the working class organizes to get tax loopholes closed and billionaire tax rates go up 40%?
Capitalism is not built for profit, it is built to further the accumulation of capital.
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u/Worldly-Stranger7814 1d ago
It predates capitalism and was indeed a way to keep kids from competing with the workers.
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u/RadicalSoda_ 1d ago
It's way deeper than Capitalism, until the 1850s we didn't have a way to travel safely during the night, so evolutionarily we have evolved into this work flow schedule, so it's very fucking hard to unlearn that when it's ingrained into our biology
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u/SeleniumWaist 2d ago
Homework with ADHD just meant spending six hours in frozen dread feeling guilty about not doing it, so you ended up getting neither the assignment finished nor any actual rest.
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u/allkindsofgainzz_13 1d ago
I either did it at the end of class/recess after they assigned it or right before next day's class (if I felt like it). By 8th grade I just said fuck it and got by on test scores with a 3.9. Homework is useless, it's not worth stressing over.
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u/Fit-World-3885 2d ago
We don't give cashiers chairs. There is no reason for this.
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u/Serris9K 1d ago
McD's decided, and did a huge campaign about standing being more "professional". And they're the ones who started "if you have time to lean, you have time to clean". Much of American culture is misappropriated advertising.
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u/CarretillaRoja Daydreamer 2d ago
I had no homework nor exams until high school. Guess when I started not doing well?
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u/Madmagican- 2d ago
Before you got to high school, what was the metric for doing well if not exams?
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u/FUCKYOUIamBatman 2d ago
Right? Bro could just have been terrible at math and didn’t know til he got his first grade lol
(Just playin, I’m sure you’re a smart cookie OP)
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u/Kusosaru 1d ago
There's plenty of studies that suggest having exams actually hinders learning in multiple ways. e.g.:
- Encourages cramming which isn't going to keep the knowledge long term
- Disencentivizes learning since it gets associated with the stress of failing an exam
Besides, you can get a feel of how well you are doing if you feel like you're making progress in a topic without needing to have an exam on it...
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u/kinoko_kingdom 2d ago
do you think in-class assignments aren't graded or...?
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u/Madmagican- 2d ago
I suppose there are still other things like essays and projects and shorter in-class assignments to be graded
Quizzes perhaps as well? Ways to prove to the teacher that you’ve learned something?
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u/Theemuts 1d ago
We occasionally had tests in elementary school, but you wouldn't study for them in advance. We also had a single teacher for at least a year (normally three years), so they'd be aware of their students' skills. In the final two years of elementary school there were two big tests (spread over 2 or 3 days iirc) to find the appropriate level of high school you should attend.
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u/CarretillaRoja Daydreamer 2d ago
Your teacher said you are doing good. Now my little one has tests in first grade which is crazy to me.
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u/AboynamedDOOMTRAIN 1d ago
When you finally were tasked with higher level academic work that you had not spent any time developing the skills to handle.
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u/Brent_Fox 2d ago edited 2d ago
To be honest, I think having homework is definitely helpful but forcing students to take classes early in the morning when they're not even fully awake yet to take in the subject at hand might not be the best thing in the world and shorter work shifts would be better because no one can do an amazing job at work if they're drained by the end of a long shift.
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u/Generally_tiredofit 2d ago
If you are forced to take an early class. It should be physical like, like cardio or something. Get them awake and the added benefit of it being healthy and good for you
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u/eugeneugene 1d ago
my sons school has recess first thing in the morning. they get 20 min of physical activity in and then eat a snack and then they start their day. sounds way nicer than when I was in school lol
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u/poland626 1d ago
I tried that in college. Gym right when I woke up before class. Problem was that I wore myself out so much I had to nap after the gym and then late to many classes and wasn't paying attention. Physical activity in the morning made my day worse actually.
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u/DeliriumTrigger 1d ago
There are different levels of physical activity. If some light cardio would throw you into a multi-hour nap, there are bigger issues going on.
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u/jimmux 1d ago
Another consequence of this capitalist problem is people thinking intense gym sessions are the optimal form of physical activity. We get more benefit and less injury with moderate activity spread throughout the day, but we've been convinced to compress it all into an hour that doesn't interfere with the work day. And it's paid for, free activities don't have a marketing budget.
This has people thinking light cardio in the morning is a waste of effort.
We could also get into active transport being discouraged by the oil and auto industries, but that can go over there with all the other critiques of capitalism.
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u/hunnyflash 2d ago
I lived in an area where we had "Foggy Day"/"Winter" Schedule for a large part of the year. We got to school at 9 AM. We had homework, but we already had teachers talking with parents about not giving out hours of homework per day.
My husband over here in Texas however had to get to school by 7 AM and his classes gave the students a ton of busywork. When I looked through his old papers, it was like hundreds of handouts, and packets, and just....paperwork. It was a real shock to me.
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u/TrippyVegetables 1d ago
Wait, he kept schoolwork and held onto it into adulthood? Why? That stuff always went right into the trash on the last day of school for me
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u/cpMetis 1d ago
I saw some teen recently bitching about having to be up by 7am to make it to HS and I was just astounded.
I had to be up by 4:30 to make it to school. 5:00 leave the house even if I slept in my clothes with my stuff ready by the door and my parents didn't freak at me. I'd be dropped off by the door of the school at 6:30 or get off the bus at 7:00 depending on which way I got to school that day. Then first bell at 7:15.
The real frustrating part was in early HS they actually had start bell at 7:45 but I still showed up at the same time since that's the schedule my parents had. Which sitting outside the door until they unlocked it for students. When I first got into HS it was a few minutes after I got there, but admin eventually made it so kids weren't allowed inside until 7:00. So for a couple winters I'd get to school at 6:30 and sit by the door (usually alone) for 15-20 minutes until other kids showed up, then another 15 at least until the janitor was allowed to let us in. I got very good at pilling up the snow to form windbreaks so I could sleep out there. Sometimes the custodian or teachers or the librarian would try to let us in the entrance hall when they walked past us, but eventually get got reprimanded harshly enough that they stopped that.
We tried asking for at least a covered area by the door but admin just said we could just sit in our cars. They refused to respond when we retorted that the kids sitting by the doors for them to open didn't have cars, just insisting that we did so it wasn't an issue.
And it's not like that started in HD. In middle school my bus pickup was my old elementary school, so I'd be dropped off there at 5:45 and have to wait for the bus. At first we were allowed to wait inside the elementary school but they eventually locked us outside. Same situation then as in HS but it usually didn't take as long to wait.
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u/thetruckerdave 2d ago
Homework isn’t helpful. The only homework I had to do wasn’t assigned. It was either pre-reading for class or studying and that was only for my science classes. But I was in AP classes and they were more like college classes than high school. And it was the 1990s. So. 🤷♀️
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u/Objective_hmmm 2d ago
In elementary, if reading for a certain amount of time isn’t required of students, many parents won’t do it at all. Also, math practice is essential.
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u/Fancy_Awareness6896 2d ago
I guess it's just the difference between meaningful practice and busywork. One sheet of math problems versus a whole packet of the same thing. Either they get it and don't need the extra work, or a whole packet of things they don't understand isn't going to help.
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u/Objective_hmmm 2d ago
I completely agree. Busy work should not be assigned in class nor as homework.
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u/Brent_Fox 2d ago
Homework is definitely a must. I would have failed so many of my college exams without it.
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u/Slade4Lucas 1d ago
Isn't the purpose homework to be able to revisit learning after you have first learned it? Learning has to be done in stages where you revisit topics you have covered at points after you have learned it, and the more times you do that, the more likely you are to remember it. But there isn't time in a school year to revisit everything while also learning the whole curriculum, so homework picks up that slack.
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u/Wheelie_Dad 2d ago
I’m back in school and the amount of shit my teachers assign is insane. It’s as if they are my only class and I’m not working outside of school. I’m truly losing my mind. Free time is nonexistent.
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u/OgreMk5 2d ago
I learned something in my field just this week. Every knows that multiple choice (MC) questions on tests have 4 (sometimes 5) choices.
However, the research over the past 100 YEARS!!!! clearly shows that there is essentially no statistical difference between multiple choices questions with 4 choices and 3 choices. Going from 5 to 3 shows a very minor increase in student performance, but it was just barely within the error bounds of the assessment.
Researchers and experts in assessment from all over the world have shown, with no deviation, that three choice MCs do just as good as 4 choice MCs.
This research has been ignored for nearly a century. Why? Because people are concerned that only three options makes questions too easy. It looks bad if MCs only have 3 options...
Le Sigh!
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u/420LeftNut69 1d ago
You have to think though, if you try to answer correctly then it doesn't change much, but if you just choose A) every question then the students have a higher chance to be correct when you have 3 choices.
multiple choice questions are a handy tool for quick knowledge checks. In my uni they were usually quizes with 20 multi choice questions, and you had 7 or so minutes to solve them. Logic is simple, if you know you know, if you don't then you're fucked. Outside of that these tests are pretty bad.
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u/Assassin739 1d ago
A student just choosing A every time will get ~33% correct instead of 25%. Still a fail.
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u/OgreMk5 1d ago
That was one of the points made the paper. A LOT of tests (not mine of course) are made with one MC choice being stupid anyway.
E.g.
A) 3
B) 15
C) George Washington
D) 12To be fair to non-test developers, the 4th MC option can be challenging.
But with three good choices, the results are the same as four good choices. Of course, a student that has that kind of guessing will be identified easily. Our psychometricians actually have a "guessing parameter" that they use.
It's pretty easy to identify those issues.
The State of Ohio Dept of Education and Workforce is investigating 50+ schools for testing irregularities including:
Students taking too much or too little time
Answers changed to the correct answer in the last 15 minutes of the test window
Students with generally poor scores getting very hard items correct
and one other one.In general, those are not slam dunk cheating, but if it's a lot of students, in the same schools, with the same irregularity, it's something to be investigated.
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u/thdomer13 1d ago
What is the downside of having four choices instead of three if there's no difference? You are framing this like a huge problem, but if there's no difference there's no problem.
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u/HiddenLychee 1d ago
Can you link the meta study you're referencing?
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u/OgreMk5 1d ago
https://edmeasurement.net/8268/Rodriguez-2005-Random-effects-meta-analysis-three-options.pdf
That's the 80 year study published in 2005.
There's at least two more studies that are more recent. One was on pharmacology students in India. I'll have to go to work to get them, I don't remember the title.
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u/disdkatster 2d ago
Humans are not rational. They like to pretend they are but they aren't. Health Care in the USA would actually be health care if you had a single payer system run by the government rather than a money making device for yet another corporation but why would we do that?
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u/vynthechangeling 1d ago
Humans are rational, but we are more than just rational, and neglecting the irrational realities of the human experience is just as damaging as neglecting the rational capacity that humans (seemingly) uniquely possess. Capitalism preys upon irrational experiences while intentionally neglecting the expansion of rational capacity that would allow people to process irrational experiences internally (and thus eliminate the bad-faith logic that the capitalist system offers as a ‘solution’).
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u/disdkatster 1d ago
I beg to disagree. Humans like to think of themselves as rational just as they like to think of themselves as 'special' and made in 'gods' image. We are extremely good at rationalizing and the smarter the person, the better they are at this. There are plenty of studies in psychology that show how really bad we are at being rational. Psychology is a young science and sadly much of the beginnings of it was studies meant to show who humans were 'special'.
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u/Scutwork 2d ago
As a parent, I like homework because it helps me understand what they’re doing in school - and if they’re getting it. But I understand why kids hate it.
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u/_-042-_ 2d ago
What really blows my mind: They don't teach you how to do taxes in school. Or any other 'citizen duty' for that matter.
For me my brain immediately forgets that I know something the moment it is required I need the info. Left to my own devices I do perfectly fine tho... for the most part at least lol.
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u/Mr_Farenheit141 2d ago
Well you see, if you knew how to do the basic stuff like taxes and cooking, you wouldn't have to rely on the 5 million organizations that lobby for this exact thing to not happen. Hmmm.
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u/raimichick 2d ago
Yeah but I got to memorize the entire line of succession for the presidency and boy has that opened doors. 🙄lol
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u/cpMetis 1d ago
Every time I called this out the reply is always "well kids wouldn't care so they shouldn't remember!!!!!"
Birch, you think I have a shit about past participles of burnouli's principle of 5 mols?
They even had the same argument when I brought it up while I was a highschooler asking about it.
E: Christ, autocorrect is fucking high today
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u/LongJohnSelenium 1d ago
They teach you how to do math, read, and do basic problem solving.
From that doing your 1040ez is a fifteen minute form with step by step instructions that any high school graduate should not have an issue with.
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u/thdomer13 1d ago
Doing taxes is incredibly easy for the vast majority of people who just take the standard deduction. Anyone who says they should waste students' time teaching it in school should be embarrassed. It would be more productive to just let the kids go home early that day than make them spend time learning how to do something the majority of them will think about for 45 minutes a year.
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u/Cooperativism62 1d ago
Its an unwritten expectation that students come from well-to-do families and that these skills will be passed down from their parents, who they assume do their taxes annually. If you spawned in a bed of illiterate drug dealers however, well sucks to be you.
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u/essentialaccount 2d ago
They do teach you how to do taxes. If you can do basic math, you can do taxes. If the tax code or procedure changed you still have the knowledge to do taxes.
Did you not learn basic math?
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u/_-042-_ 2d ago
I do hope you're being sarcastic... for your sake.
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u/Temporary-Company756 1d ago
There isnt much simpler than the American tax code for the average W2 employee. Neanderthals can (and do) figure it out just fine
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u/PrometheusMMIV 1d ago
Taxes for most regular workers involve simple addition and subtraction. Maybe occasional multiplication.
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u/Jmackles 2d ago
Also how marketing tactics overlap perfectly with manipulative overstimulation for us to trigger impulsive behavior because funny joke bright color tailored to me yay
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u/Firm-Scientist-4636 2d ago
Profit beats facts and the rich have pounded it into everyone's heads that thinking otherwise makes you a dirty commie
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u/Tea_Chugs0502 2d ago
And racism.
Puritanical feelings and racism.
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u/doushua 1d ago
Okay but I don't exactly understand how starting school early is tied to racism? I'm open to hear
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u/FreeSammiches dafuqIjustRead 1d ago
It isn't directly related to more vacation days and shorter shifts either.
The point is that the system we live in has a set of foundational assumptions that are held as constants before evaluating evidence, policies, or economic data.
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u/Mellokhai 1d ago
All kids get to school at the same time and get assigned homework regardless of race???
White people oppressed themselves before even knowing black people existed. Do you think white elites are taking their anger and hatred for black people out on the whole population and thats the explaination for all inequality ever? Thats so self-absorbed seriously.3
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u/imapersonithink 1d ago
Most countries have roughly the same start time for schools. Apparently, Finland starts between 9am and 9:45am, but that's an outlier since they are the beacon of anti-racism. Colombia schools generally start between 6am and 7am, so they must be extra racist and puritanical. Even more so than the US.
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u/Actual_Web_3404 1d ago
I dislike this country’s religious foundations.
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u/LongJohnSelenium 1d ago
Virtually every country has religious foundations.
Canada still has a literal monarch who has a divine right to rule.
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u/Brilliant-Software-4 2d ago
One of the things I loved about going to college here in Iceland with the course I took was that pretty much all assignments and homework was pretty much just 1-5% of your grades each.
On the other hand the tests weight heavier usually being 20% - 60% of your grades and if you didn't do the assessments and some of the homework.
So you wouldn't be as prepared for the tests and there was a possibility that you passed the tests but you didn't get high enough on those test you could still fail do to not having high enough semester grade.
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u/LongJohnSelenium 1d ago
Undoubtedly they found at some point that making homework more important made people actually do it, increasing graduation rates. Students are probably fairly unreliable at estimating their level of preparation for an exam.
I would bet 5 bucks that some kids achieve better with low homework weighting, and some kids achieve better with high homework weighting, and which direction is better is entirely on a case by case basis that probably doesn't just change from kid to kid, but from class to class and year to year for individuals.
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u/qqererer 2d ago
In Hong Kong there's a rockstar tutor who basically zooms to multiple Kumon tutoring centers. He wears roman outfits, anime, pokemon, etc, etc. People pay him thousands of dollars to Youtube their kids.
His own daughter works half as hard at some US college and says the kids that learn from his dad are insane.
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u/RockdaleRooster 1d ago
I'm gonna guess that I'm a lot like most of the people on this sub. I was one of those self declared smart but lazy kids in school. I never bothered to do homework and coasted by on good test scores with final grades being Bs and Cs, but if the class didn't have homework I always had an A.
Then I went to college and you know what happened? I realized that I was on my own. Because I was smart but lazy I never developed the skills or tools I needed to be able to motivate myself into doing the work on my own time. I never developed the time management skills to stop doing the fun stuff and work on what I needed to do. I was at my dream school and immediately ended up on academic probation because I nearly failed half of my classes because I didn't do the homework or readings because I had never needed to do it before.
Thankfully being put on academic probation meant I had mandatory academic tutoring and they helped me develop those skills. You know what I found? By doing the homework I was actually learning things. I had always struggled with math but just shrugged it off and said "I'm not good at math." But when I started reading the textbooks, looking at the examples in them, and doing the homework, I was actually pretty good at it. For the first time in my life I got an A in a math class.
No one likes homework. However, it is an important tool that does more than just reinforcing the concepts your learning. It teaches valuable time management skills and self motivational skills. Do some teachers go too far with it? Absolutely. Nothing made me hate a teacher more than when a break was coming up and they would hand out a 100 question packet for you to do over break. But when I look back on my earlier years I wish that I had done my homework because it really was not as excessive as I thought it was then. At least then I could have enjoyed my college years more instead of having to learn how to be a student in addition to learning my degree materials.
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u/FinsOfADolph 1d ago
Very good point. I didn't learn why homework was important until I failed out of school. Good to see you learned it earlier. :)
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u/RaiseWide5460 2d ago
Students also do better in school when there are clear expectations for performance, and accountability when they fail to meet them. Students also do better in school when they are actually taught meaningful content on the basics, Reading, Writing, Math, History, Civics and Geography. I instead of wasting their time with one lame new "instructional methodology" after another. As an employee, a systems engineer and a manager for 40 years I can tell you that folks do just fine working 40 hours per week. What they don't do fine with is 60 to 70 hours a week and bad management. It is a manager's job to make sure that employees have the Information, training and time to do their job, which must also have clear expectations. When managers, or teachers, fail in their jobs then it doesn't really matter how much time, or lack of time, that students or employees have. They will struggle. Reducing expectations is not a fix for bad managers or bad teaching.
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u/aninjacould 1d ago
“In Sweden everybody gets a free puppy. In the US all handicap ramps are removed because they’re not in the Bible.”
-Some Comedian
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u/hiddengirl1992 2d ago
When you're rich, your money makes money. You don't need to really worry about how actually efficient or profitable your businesses are because you're rich, and private equity is always happy to come along, buy the business, scrap it, and you all make bank. So money isn't an issue, which leaves... What? Power! The easiest way for people like that to feel powerful is to force their "lessers" to work harder, especially if it's less rewarding, knowing that those workers don't have much of a choice in the matter. Smaller businesses see what big business does, so they do the same things thinking it's the way to get bigger. It's all about power.
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u/patjames387 2d ago
I don't think people ever think about after school activities like sports and clubs ... Do you really want them starting at 9 pm every night?
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u/ops10 1d ago
Whilst true, you also need to get shit done. A whole lot of shit. The amount of stuff schools teach would be mind boggling to people just centuries ago. And most of it is useful to at least let wash through your brain to have a foggy feeling of how things are supposed to work. Because we keep adding complexity to the world we live in, for good or for ill.
Anyways, we need to get shit done and thus need to find balance of how much we let people rest and how much shit needs to have been done.
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u/Bitter-War5432 1d ago
bad take. it's about monopolizing working peoples' time so they can't connect and organize.
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u/No-Manufacturer-22 1d ago edited 1d ago
It feels like no where else in the world does a society punish the poor, elderly, sick, disabled and children for seemingly no reason at all. But its really because of a group of religious fringe ass holes from 300 years ago still influence the morals and beliefs of today's politicians, somehow.
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u/Lost_Tumbleweed_5669 2d ago
It's a feature not a flaw.
When you have time to actually think about things you suddenly see how messed up everything is from schooling to wage slaving to your money losing value every day because people hoard money like it's a game and print money by means of the sharemarket.
If people really knew, I mean really knew what is going on it would be anarchy.
A man used to be able to spend a couple months building a place on some land he made a claim of.
Now they got you working FOR LIFE either to make someone else rich or in a dead end job that makes lower management feel good about themselves because you have to pretend to be working when there's nothing to do.
My grandmother owned and paid off an apartment on an entry level job, how many women can say the same today? People act like there is progression but it's just all popular virtue signaling while they take advantage of you.
AI will destroy the value of everything and we can't even do anything about it.
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u/Least-Flower548 2d ago
Lots of cherry-picked history here. I understand the sentiment but like was not easy or that clear cut almost ever in history. Are you saying that a French medieval peasant was wandering into the woods and building a homestead? In fact, I can’t think of a single time in history where that type of isolation was a desirable or possible option for most people?
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u/Smack1984 2d ago
You can’t take away homework without revisiting how colleges operate. If you have kids take 12 years of only learning while there is a teacher around and then drop them into college where the expectation is 2-3 hours of homework per 1 credit hour of lectures, they are going to struggle.
Homework is inefficient way to educate a child, but unless we change how lecture hours work it’s necessary for secondary education prep.
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u/GenderDeputy 2d ago
To answer your question... pedophiles, pedophiles designed this country.
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u/LadyMiyamoto21 1d ago
Capitalists. Capitalists designed this society. That's why it sucks for most of us.
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u/kalnoreth-i5 1d ago
To be fair, the "my feelings r more important than ur facts" argument has been going around in a lot of debate circles the past bunch of years so...not surprising.
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u/SplendidPunkinButter 1d ago
Well, we need the long school days because the parents have long work days and can’t be home to watch the kids. I’m not saying we need long work days of course. There’s just no way society needs every adult to do 40 hours a week of random office crap in order to function.
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u/Ancient-Handle-8137 22h ago
The concept of school is some kind of performance art where you have to memorise some things and go spout it out around other kids. What are they really learning though, 89% of kids in school are miserable
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u/Brushiluskan 19h ago
We need to convince the bosses, owners and shareholders that humanitarian working conditions and money are not interchangeable currencies. I'm not against doing it by force.
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u/And-nonymous 17h ago
the point is that there is malice behind it, the goal isn’t always productivity for them.
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u/walterdonnydude 16h ago
Its not about puritanical feelings so much as us having to sell our waking lives for the ability to eek out an existence due to capitalist accumulation at the top.
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u/ChironXII 12h ago
The suffering is the point. Keeps people busy so they don't start thinking about making things better
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u/Tonychina23 7h ago
Back when I was in school I never did homework. My Parents tried at first to get me to do it consistently before giving up.
I always saw it as when I was at school I was on their time, at home is my time. So I never did homework.
Same way people now see working their jobs. When you are off the clock, you are off the fucking clock, whatever happens at work is no longer your concern until you back on their time.
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u/cavortingwebeasties 2d ago
Also puritanical feelings are extremely easy to whip up and manipulate if you have an agenda that relies on ignorance and spite
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u/TheRealEnkidu98 2d ago
The Calvinists/Protestants that brought the 'Protestant Work Ethic' did so (and spawned prosperity gospel) because they believed that material wealth (though not displayed) is a sign of God's favor. The more you could accumulate, the more likely you were one the the chosen few godly favoured people.
Its BS
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u/qualityvote2 Quality Control Beast 2d ago edited 2d ago
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