Schools have moved away from homework now. I had one of my child’s teachers tell me that they don’t assign homework anymore because homework is unfair in that it only helps the kids to don’t really need the help. So, basically, she was saying that bad parents are ruining education for all the kids, not just their own. Lowest common denominator stuff.
(I understand that some parents have to work odd hours and/or multiple jobs, which makes helping with homework difficult. Perhaps this makes it even more important to instill a sense of the importance of education in those kids, of which completing homework is a part.)
I’m not saying kids should have 3 hours of homework every night. I’m saying that if it weren’t for the homework I had for some of my classes, (especially starting in Jr. High) I wouldn’t have learned it near as well. My daughter struggled in 6th grade math because that teacher didn’t assign enough work. Everything was in-class. I had a hard time trying to help my daughter because she couldn’t describe what she was working on, they didn’t have a textbook, and none of the work was coming home. My daughter is like me in that we both learn best by doing things for ourselves, not by watching the teacher do it.
Class time in the upper grades is for teaching the concepts. Homework gives the kids a chance to try it out on their own. Grading of the homework gives feedback so the kids know, BEFORE the test, if they need to ask questions.
Oh. And the virtual stuff they are doing right now, where you get 100% credit just for turning in an assignment (no matter how badly you did) is bunk. Homework with no real feedback is more useless than no homework at all.
And to think we moved here because of the “highly rated” schools.
Schools have moved away from homework now. I had one of my child’s teachers tell me that they don’t assign homework anymore because homework is unfair in that it only helps the kids to don’t really need the help. So, basically, she was saying that bad parents are ruining education for all the kids, not just their own. Lowest common denominator stuff.
(I understand that some parents have to work odd hours and/or multiple jobs, which makes helping with homework difficult. Perhaps this makes it even more important to instill a sense of the importance of education in those kids, of which completing homework is a part.)
I’m not saying kids should have 3 hours of homework every night. I’m saying that if it weren’t for the homework I had for some of my classes, (especially starting in Jr. High) I wouldn’t have learned it near as well. My daughter struggled in 6th grade math because that teacher didn’t assign enough work. Everything was in-class. I had a hard time trying to help my daughter because she couldn’t describe what she was working on, they didn’t have a textbook, and none of the work was coming home. My daughter is like me in that we both learn best by doing things for ourselves, not by watching the teacher do it.
Class time in the upper grades is for teaching the concepts. Homework gives the kids a chance to try it out on their own. Grading of the homework gives feedback so the kids know, BEFORE the test, if they need to ask questions.
Oh. And the virtual stuff they are doing right now, where you get 100% credit just for turning in an assignment (no matter how badly you did) is bunk. Homework with no real feedback is more useless than no homework at all.
And to think we moved here because of the “highly rated” schools.