Homework

[sabotabby]

BoingBoing discussion on a new documentary called Race to Nowhere. The movie looks interesting—certainly something that I'd like to see. The discussion on BB is interesting. As always, the libertarians, homeschoolers*, and union-bashers are out in full-force, but so are a number of high school teachers and geeky types. (Oddly, the two posts from high school students seem to roughly concur with what the teachers are saying.)

My favourite comment so far is bigmike7 at #15, who says some sensible things, including:

[...] not everybody should be expected to conform to one way of learning. The older system most of us grew up with assumes a student is highly motivated and wants to learn. Students that either don't try or aren't bright were expected to fall by the wayside. The current system is basically the same, but overlaid with the idea that every student is intelligent and if the student is failing then it's the teacher's fault. I say it's the same in that it's still a program everyone is expected to go through.
[...]
The people in my school that are fanatical over "Schools of the Future" are the same ones that two years ago told me my students were too loud as they were working on their math problems together. Now they're preaching to me about collaboration. Schools of the Future people are extremely rigid and do not want to hear anything besides testimonials about the miracles of students' making powerpoint presentations. They are the teachers that were failing at teaching their students. Assigning no homework and no tests lets them off the hook.

I did far too much homework in elementary school, where the focus was rote memorization, and I recall being stressed out from an early age. I did a substantial amount of homework in high school as well, both because I had to but also because I was genuinely interested in what I was learning. I bitched and moaned about it, because I was a teenager, but I won't say that staying up until 2 am hand-painting Victorian floral wallpaper with watercolours taught me nothing, despite being repetitive, torturous, and technologically pointless**. Self-discipline is an undervalued skill in modern education.

My subject area is not conducive to homework, much to the joy of my students. I tell them at the beginning of class that if they are reasonably disciplined, they can get away with little to none. There is no legal way for the vast majority of them to afford the software we use in class, so the amount of homework I can assign is limited. It's essentially studying for tests (which few of them do; it's standard practice in many classrooms to allow five minutes of study time before a test) and planning work (which few of them do). A student who is focused can obtain a reasonably high mark in my class without doing homework. A student who is not focused will need to do homework–amazingly, they tend to not figure out that they can't slack off for all 75 minutes of the class, hand something crappy in at the last minute, and then expect a decent grade. A student who is actually serious will choose to do homework.

In other subject areas, I think homework is necessary. Math is a no-brainer, but there's also English. I compare the number of books we read in my high school English classes to the number of books my kids read, and the difference is staggering. Short of the university-level English classes, kids read maybe one novel a semester. We read at home and discussed in class. In a semester system (and even in a non-semester system), there's not enough time to read multiple books and analyze them.

It may very well be that today's students have too much unnecessary homework, and they definitely have too much make-work (which is different than drilling and rote-learning, by the way). But I've seen the result of the other extreme too, and it's no less useless.

Boyhowdy at #33 says the same thing:

I teach in an inner city school where there is a comprehensive culture of "nobody does homework here" that I have concluded, after three years of pushing every which way, is a truly immovable force. The result: students read less, because they do not read at home, and have to spend classtime READING BOOKS OUT LOUD; students often arrive in ninth grade functionally illiterate as a result, and the average four-year graduation rate is far under 30%. Even in my media and communications class - where homework can be "watch the evening news, and watch for x, so we can discuss it in class", or "have someone tell you a good joke, and then come tell us about it and the experience of hearing/telling it", only gets done by about a quarter of the kids.

* I am not 100% against homeschooling, but damned if homeschooling parents don't make incredibly difficult not to be.

** Even in the 90s, you could have just scanned it and used Photoshop. But that wasn't the point.

Comments

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Pooey - I'd like to read all this but I have only a little time on computer as I left my laptop lead far away so have to go to my dad's to catch up online!

at my primary school (5-10 years old) we had very few lessons - just handwriting and then maths in the last year - and no homework. My friends and I used to get extremely bored and beg for homework. We joined the astronomy and birdwatching clubs so we could learn something. Then at secondary school for the first two years I was so shy and scared that i did my homework studiously, then when I realized I could get high marks without bothering I stopped doing it. I only worked for Russian, because it was hard and I had to and I wanted to learn it, and English because I loved reading and writing anyway.

I suppose it differs from person to person greatly, but I agree about reading. Most people do need to be set reading to do for homework or will not read much at all, and reading the books in class takes up way too much time. Going on theatre trips probably helps a great deal. My little brother's school only got him to read one play by Shakespeare throughout his whole time there, whilst at my school we read two a year and went to see plays regularly.

[sabotabby]

We did a Shakespeare play every semester and frequent novel studies (and plays, and short stories, and poetry). I don't remember us reading anything out loud in class unless it was Shakespeare and/or it was intended to be performed. There was also the expectation and understanding that we would seek out our own reading material in addition to what we were reading in class.

I was one of those kids who didn't function particularly well in a standard classroom environment. I went to Montessori as a very small child, and as a result, I had very strong reading and writing skills, but a hard time with sitting in rows or putting my book down when I was told to do so. High school was an improvement over elementary school, in that many teachers were understanding of this (my favourite English teacher allowed us to work anywhere in the school when there wasn't a lesson or class discussion), but the end result is that I goofed off in class and worked better at home.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Eeergh - we had annoying English Lit classes where we had to take it in turns to read a paragraph each from the novel we were studying. I think it was because the teachers knew lots of the class wouldn't have bothered to have read it at home. I hated it because I was so so so shy i was terrified of reading out loud in class!

A Shakespeare per semester sounds like loads. Way more than people in England get - I don't think they have to read even one now in state schools.

Montessori sound good. My little brother had trouble at primary school when he was five as he just didn't get why he was expected to be quiet. He was so friendly and so excited at having so many people to talk to that he chatted away all the time and ended up getting a really hard time from teachers who called him "disruptive" when he was just trying to be sociable!

I have a friend who is a Steiner teacher in Germany, where Steiner schools are state-funded. Here they are fee-paying only. They sound nice if a bit hippie drippy. My friend had to play the guitar and make papier mache models for her training to teach English at secondary level.

Aaargh. schools. Ugh. I go between extremes of wanting everyone to be forced to be well educated and wanting no such things as schools because they are compulsory and I don't believe in forcing people to do things. I am contradictory in my head, and luckily I have no say in such matters. I do believe it important to allow home education and choice of schools. But then here the Tories have weird "free school" plans which sound elitist and not good.

[sabotabby]

I actually have a hard time reading out loud, even now. It was much, much worse in school. I don't struggle over reading silently, but I stumble over words when I try to read from a page.

It was more like a Shakespeare play per year, because we typically had English one semester and not the other. (I took extra English classes in my last two years, but this was by choice.)

I really liked Montessori. I was privileged to go, even if it was for a short time, and think that it's probably the biggest factor in me learning anything at all as a kid. But I'd like to see much of what makes Montessori successful for kids whose families can afford it applied in the public school system.

Public, compulsory education is vital. We're just doing it wrong.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I can see all the arguments for compulsory education, but the horror of being forced to get up at an ungodly hour every morning and spend all day with awful people, bossed around by stupid and unpleasant teachers (and a few nice ones, but lots of horrible ones!), with headaches all day every day, sitting through hours of boring lessons - AAAAAAAAARRRGH ! I was sick nearly every morning before school. My mother took me to the doctor because of it when I was 13 and he insisted I must be pregnant (I got really cross and shouted, "I haven't ever had sex!!!" at him!).

Despite my life since school having been full of deaths and misery, I would never, ever want to go through anything like that again. I just wanted to die every day for years. I still feel exhausted just thinking of it.

So I just can't see compulsory school as a good thing!

Even if all teachers were nice to children instead of making hurtful personal comments and making them do stupid and humiliating things, there would be the problem of other children usually being pretty unpleasant. Children are not usually very nice when they are in big groups. I think being forced to be with lots of stupid and unpleasant people was the worst thing about school. And my school only took people of "average intelligence and above," had very little bullying, and was considered extremely lax on rules for a private school.

I suppose, to be fair, a lot of it was due to me being a weirdo and extremely shy and not having any interest in pop music (it was the eighties - eeurgh)! And in having an unhappy home life so I was withdrawn and miserable.

I think smaller groups for classes and more choice in subjects would make a big difference. I love the sound of the school (Summerhill?) where the children set the rules together at the beginning of each year, and lessons are not compulsory.

I like the idea of home ed - if I had children I'd want to be able to give them that choice if they didn't like school. Last time this came up Zingarella explained to me exactly why home ed is not good and compulsory education for all a necessity, but I just can't help it - however reasonable that argument is, and it is, I just shudder with horror at the thought of anything compulsory and the memory of school!!!

I just have a problem with things being compulsory. And I feel so sorry for children, working such long days and not getting paid and having no choice in the matter!

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

We had no homework in primary school (to age 11) and then a ton probably peaking in the Upper 5th (grade 10) because that was the big year for 'O' levels and I, and many others, had as many as ten examinable subjects. It eased up a bit in the Sixth Form because we were taking fewer subjects which meant free periods in regular class time which could be used for independent study as well as just having fewer subjects. Still, it was homework pretty much every night and weekends. It just wasn't quite as brutal as Upper 5th. At all times there was a clear expectation that we were reading in addition to set texts.

[sabotabby]

I remember a similar pattern in high school, though I definitely had homework before age 11. I think if kids today are doing more homework (I seriously doubt this, if it isn't obvious), they must be working 24 hours a day.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I really doubt it would have been possible to do more, all up, than I was doing, during term time, when I was in Fifth Form.

[ironed_orchid]

That's the same as for me in Australia in the 80s, but I suspect that had I gone to a govt curriculum primary school, there would have been homework from about age 8.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

I know some nice homeschoolers, liberals, not religious fanatics. They're doing a good job with the kid. But their attitude toward the public schools can only be described as a paranoid fantasy. They assiduously collect articles describing every possible abuse that ever happens in the schools, as if that kind of stuff will be routine if their daughter set foot in the local elementary school. She'll be strip searched! Electroshocked! Witnessed-to by her teacher! Shot! Locked in the basement!

Have things changed that much? Worst things that happened to me were boredom and too many standardized tests. I think there are even more tests now.

I got picked on, but my worst pickings-on were not in school, but at extraschoolar activities that this kid does go do, so she's hardly heat-shielded from bullies.

[sabotabby]

I think things might have gotten worse. I'm not sure. My educational career was not standard and bridged the switchover between kinder, gentler theories of the 70s and 90s neoconservatism.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

What's "witnessed-to"?

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

Witnessing

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

aaargh! Isn't that illegal these days? After I left my primary school but while my brother was still there, it got taken over by evangelists. My brother's class teacher told the class that they mustn't say "devil" or blaspheme or the devil would appear, so lots of very excited children ran around shouting swear words and "devil" until he ran out of the school screaming. That was funny. His name was Mr Butt.
Not so funny was that the headmistress made the entire school stand for three hours in assembly singing songs of praise until they "had learned to sing hymns with smiles on their faces."
Also, she confiscated my brother's fake poo and threw it in a huge metal bin, and my mother told her that was stealing and against God's commandments, and made her climb into the bin in her high heels and rummage around in the rubbish until she retrieved the fake poo.
Then my mother managed to find another school for my brother.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I've said this to you, but I'll post it here too. I know this makes me an old skool reactionary, but with the current focus in the elementary school curriculum on higher-order thinking, and critical thinking this (as long as your version of critical thinking is like the teacher's manual's version), and anti-bullying that, and whatnot, I don't see how kids can possibly acquire mastery of their basic skills without some home-work.

Writing, for example, requires practice at the very early stages. It's very difficult to acquire the motor skills to write fluently and easily without sitting down and practising penstrokes. It's tedious and lacking in immediate rewards, but it's necessary. If you can't write easily and fluently, then you can't take notes, unless you give every child a computer, and teach them to type. Oh, and by the way, fluent typing also takes drill and practice. Reading fluently and capably gets easier the more you read. Some kids will indeed read everything they can, including the nutritional information on the cereal box; others need designated practice time and programs. But you can't skimp on the reading in the early learning years, or you're going to have a student who struggles with basic comprehension and is working on decoding when you want to be discussing symbolism and plot structure. They're not going to learn to spell or write capably unless they can read.

And while it's very trendy to teach applied problem solving and logical thinking in maths, it's difficult to, for example, make change quickly unless you can do basic sums in your head. Guess what? Some kids need to drill in order to acquire basic mastery of sums. And you can do certain things in order to make drill less tedious and demoralizing, and that's great; I certainly support that, but you still need to put the time in.

Not every kid needs to put the same amount of time into the same things. Some kids learn to read relatively easily, others struggle. Some kids learn math pretty quickly, others spend a lot of time drawing 5 baskets with 5 apples in each basket to get 25; do this enough times and eventually the kid remembers that 5 fives are 25.

A lot of us don't remember doing all this foundational work, because we did it when we were really, really little. I remember doing it for math, at which I sucked, but not for reading, to which I took like a duck to water.

I remember doing in-class handwriting drill: endless pages of penstroke practice (in pencil), and letter shape practice; I had to do it at home if I didn't finish in class. I am assured that there's no time in most classrooms today for this kind of drill. And you know what? Kids are not teaching themselves handwriting. Reluctant readers do not teach themselves to read. Budding mathphobes do not teach themselves to make change or halve the quantities in a recipe. I am closely associated with a seven year old who would spend all day every day playing Lego and looking at pictures in books if he were permitted to do so, and would never learn to read.

I don't think it's his teachers' faults, entirely. I do think the school system isn't quite giving him, or other kids, what they need. I definitely think a more flexible curriculum, a more kid-focused curriculum, and smaller classes would do him a lot of good.

[sabotabby]

This. Sure you don't want to be a teacher?

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Because then I would have to deal with this nonsense head-on, rather than just pontificating about it ;-P.

Also? Nobody would give me the 8-kid class that would let me be an awesome teacher. Unless I went into Spec. Ed., I guess, and that would be waaay too much like being my mom.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I could run for school board trustee in the next municipal election.

But only if our current trustee isn't running, because she's pretty great.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I'm shocked by how few parents teach their children to read or do basic sums before school age. I know that now over here children are given reading books to take home to read with their parents as homework, and the parents have to write what they have done each day, which forces parents to get involved more. I learned to read when I was three and I and a few others were allowed to sit in the other room reading Enid Blyton at school while the teacher taught everyone else to read.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I actually think that if children are not burning to read and/or figuring it out by themselves, most parents probably should not teach their children to read. Some kids learn to read really easily, but most do not. Teaching many children to read is actually quite difficult, and because most parents do not themselves remember the mechanisms and processes by which they learned to read, they can seriously botch the process. The result may be a kid who just doesn't learn to read until they go to school, but it can also be a kid who learns to associate reading with strife and struggle and parents asking them to do things that don't make any sense, and who has decided that reading is just hard. These kids tend to turn into reluctant readers, and it's a lot more difficult to get them reading comfortably than it is if they come to school simply having been read to, and raised in literacy-friendly environments.

This isn't to say that a parents of kids who are panting to read, are asking about words and sounds, and are figuring out things for themselves should not encourage and foster this. But readiness for reading comes at different ages for different children, and teaching reading is not really an easy or straightforward thing. If you know how to read, however, reading to or with your child can be much simpler, and, in the long run, equally beneficial.

Ditto math. Some kids pick up numeracy pretty easily and intuitively. Some don't. There are tricks to teaching numbers and their relationships, and not every parent has the understanding of numbers or of pedagogy to successfully teach these concepts to every child (not every teacher does, either, but they do teach a few things about how kids learn in teacher training.

So I don't necessarily thing parents should make sure kids know how to read and how to calculate before they send them to school. Given the resources they need, teachers are pretty good at this. I'd be a lot happier if parents would support the teachers and do stuff like the reading at home with their kids that you mentioned (most schools here have a book-a-day programme, too. The books are often pretty dreadful, but they're appropriate to the child's reading level, and therefore probably won't cause horrible frustration.), and playing maths games and modelling literate and numerate behaviour, so that children acquired a context in which to see their emerging skills.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. The awful thing is that schools have had to demand that parents read with their children. I think most children would be asking to learn to read and picking things up naturally if it were normal in their homes for people to read, and if they were read bedtime stories.

Perhaps it isn't so much that parents should teach their children to read, if parents can't be trusted not to make reading a horrible chore instead of fun. I suppose what I meant is that it is shocking how few parents bother reading with their children and making it enjoyable to learn to read, then! Obviously I wouldn't think it great if parents were putting their children off reading by making it stressful for them. My mother did that for me and science by trying to make me do an Open University technology course when I was eight. Huge mistake!

A book-a-day programme! I don't know if they manage as many books as that here. I imagine one a week is more likely!

I find the phonetic method frustrating. I tried to help a friend's child with his reading homework recently and could see that he was getting very upset because he had been taught that pronouncing the letters in turn would sound out the word, which unless the word is "dog" it often does not. I showed him how to recognise frequently occurring words by their shape and context, and within half an hour he was reading whole sentences by himself and smiling.

Being a primary school teacher would be great in terms of being able to help sweet small children, I think, but I would find it way too hard and stressful! Much admiration for nice teachers who do it, though.