Orson Scott Card - PING [please freepmail me if you want or don't want to be pinged to Orson Scott Card political articles]
Posted on 10/05/2006 2:02:08 AM PDT by Mr170IQ
I graduated HS in 2003.. What I remember is pretty similar to college. Assigned readings most days, problem sets due now and then (and known well in advance), papers and exams at the end..
The few "fun" projects I remember were in physics; an assignment to find a way with 6 pieces of paper and 1 meter of masking tape to drop an egg 100 feet onto asphalt without it breaking. The person who used less than they needed (they were ranked by mass) got a higher grade. If you look like you tried but your egg broke, I think you got a 75 (its hardly an exact science, heh). Similarly, building a bridges and towers out of toothpicks and competing for whose could withstand the most downward force.
Neither of those assignments probably prepared me for much, but they actually were fun.
I also remember having to build a model of a human brain for AP psych, which was pretty pointless, but I kinda cheated anyway (my friend and I made a simple Flash applet that impressed the teacher like all get out).
I failed an art project in 2nd grade. The old bat nun teacher wanted us to draw pictures of apples. I drew Red Delicious type apples like my mom always bought. They were narrow at the bottom and wide on top. The old bat told me that apples had to be round, tore up my picture and told me to do it again. Of course, I made another red delicious. Tore up, told to do it again.
I was proud to see a big empty space on the wall where my apple drawing was supposed to be hanging for the science and art fair. The old bat would not even put up my drawing
Schools are no longer interested in helping children to learn. They can't afford to be.
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Government schools were NEVER interested in "helping children to learn". Never!
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I have twin daughters in the 5th grade, aned they have had always haddifferent teachers, on purpose. They are in separate classes. Daughter A has never really had more than 20 minutes of homework in a night. Daughter B has always had teachers who assigned very lengthy homework packages, every night, including over the weekends, starting in FIRST GRADE!.
Both of my very competetive twins are heavily engaged in sports. They choose to, so I support it.
There have been many nights Daughter B has been up well past 10 PM trying to complete assignements, especially after an away soccer game or the like.
The extra homework Daughter B has had to do over the last 5 years certainly did not improve any standardized test scores for her over her twin sister, but has produced a 110 year old kid who is certainly less enthusiastic about school than her sister.
The premise that homework doesn't help is idiotic. One gets better at anything through practice.....changing sparkplugs, shooting guns, factoring equations. Practice it and you get better.
On the other hand, "make work" doesn't help anyone. If an English class is trying to encourage reading, then assigning all kinds of writing about the reading is NOT practicing reading. It's obvious why it would kill the desire to read. (Unfortunately, this is what passes for AP English in our system....load on a bunch of work. All of which suggests that english teachers in our system are among the least imaginative people on the payroll.)
The "training" system, rather than the "homework" system has a successful history. One continues to perform a task UNTIL they are trained at it. Then they pass on to the next task.
It makes sense.
Good column. I believe very strongly that most homework is busy work. If a teacher is always assigning hours of homework I think it shows he or she is not making the best use of classroom time. Children do deserve a life of their own. Adults would rightly rebel if there " jobs" intruded so heavily on their private time.
If a teacher sees by a student's class work that the student is having trouble with a subject. The teacher might give some home work so the student has more time to grasp the subject. However, unless the teacher goes over the work with the student the assignment is just more busy work.
It also saddens me that children who enter school eager to learn and happy , yes happy about this new experience often very quickly learn to hate school. The author's example of the girl who loved reading until it became a chore is all too common. Especially with boy students.
My husband and I used to joke. " Well Mr. Einstein your theory seems rather interesting but I'm afraid we can not give it any credit because you failed to put your work on 3 sided poster board"
AP English is supposed to be equivalent to college freshman english.. Not having the students write about what they read would make that claim pretty ridiculous.
Those kids aren't doing word searches and printing the periodic table on t-shirts, either.
I will say that I have seen (and endured) homework for homework's sake. But even that teaches discipline, a skill every adult will need. If kids really don't get any time to play, then their parents should take that up with the schools. Otherwise it isn't nearly the issue that the person writing the column says it is in the first few paragraphs.
Also, I have read articles how kids today do homework with the Internet, IM, and their iPods going all at the same time. I hardly think they are being denied time to recreate. They should be playing outside, but I don't think the reason they aren't is because of the homework. It's because their parents aren't teaching them how to live without electronics.
Shalom.
Right on! BIG BUMP!!
Any more than 1 hour per day of homework is TYRANNY, to be generous.
Fortunately, the school does not assign large amounts of work during vacation times, holidays or weekends. I must say though, for a school to do so would help prepare children for what the average American worker now deals with: fewer holidays, work on weekends, and vacations untaken.
Yep new math was the bane of my mother's existence too.
My children well past school age now, had the opposite problem. My husband is very, very good with math. The catch he would spend a good 60-90 minutes explaining how one math problem should be worked out. Meanwhile the kids had about 40 other problems to do. They finally decided that a lower grade in math was a fair trade for not having to sit through dad's " math lectures".
A lot of people do not realize that the modern school model was designed to provide workers for assembly line industries. As long as we continue using a very outmoded model schools will for the most part continue to fail our children.
>>Kids had "Jasmine's" schedule when I was in government prison ( oops! "school") in the 1960s.<<
But the difference is that the teachers taught something during the day.
I pulled my older daughter when she started getting detentions for not finishing her work in school yet continued with "free time" whether the work was finished or not.
We finish our work in three hours. My eight year old is in the middle of fifth grade and my six year old is finishing third.
Teachers assign lots of homework for one reason--so they don't have to actually teach.
The following day is spent by the teacher and students self-grading the papers.
My oldest daughter had all honors classes in high school and when she went to college she had trouble with some composition classes. Come to find out later that in her English honors class the students did absolutely nothing in class and it was more like study hall. The kids sat around and talked and the teacher read a book. She struggled for a bit but finally got it together and got her bachelors in Nursing. Whew!
To me, many teachers are teaching because they can't get real jobs and they like having summers off.
Well, that's the whole point. The educational model is screwed up from top to bottom, but fixing it would displace a lot of entrenched interests and be harder to achieve than reforming the tax code. The only short-term answer is a workaround like homeschooling.
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