Homework, Part I - The Worst Job in the World

The Ornery American ^ | Sept. 17, 2006 | Orson Scott Card

[PCBMan]

Again, good points. There was one big difference between my parents and me - they were taught how to do math in their heads. It would have been really nice if we had been taught that. Instead, we had to show every step on paper, and when you have 30-50 problems per night, it really drags out. Pocket calculators were not cheap or common when I was in elementary school, so it wasn't a step against cheating.

[Warren_Piece]

I strongly suggest you read the rest (espectially part II, posted in the comments). It's not whining, it reflects reality (as I know it). Keep in mind that my children don't complain, I do. Check out our family schedule (have a girl in 3rd grade and boy in 4th grade):

5a - I'm up
5:30 - I leave for work
6:00 - Wife and kids wake up, I start work (more on this later)
7:00 - Wife, kids leave for school. Kids do their "compulsary" reading in the car.
8:00 - Wife starts job, kids start school.
3:00 - I get off work, travel 1 mile down the road to pick up kids at school.
3:10 - Kids get in car and start homework.
3:40 - Kids and I arrive home. Kids lug 50 lbs of books upstairs to continue homework.
3:45 - I start cleaning / cooking, while helping kids with homework.
4:30 daughter usually finishes homework about this time, helps me with dinner.
5:30 - Wife usually gets home about this time, 4th grade boy takes break from homework, family eats dinner.
6:00 - Kids do dishes, help clean kitchen.
6:30 - Boy continues homework.
Between 7:00 and 7:30 - Boy finishes homework.
7:30 - 8:00 - "Free" time.
8:00 - kids shower/ prepare for bed.
8:30 - kids in bed (to get those 9 hours!)
9:00 - Me to bed (gotta get up at 5am!)

I work the crazy hours I do so because we can't afford aftercare and there's NO WAY I'm going to let them be latchkey kids.

As you can see, we aren't you're typical overscheduled family - the only outside thing is church on Wednesdays. Weekends are many times spent finishing up the silly long-term "shoe-box" type projects. We don't really have time to overschedule :)

[wbill]

If you're sick and miss a day or two, then when you get better, you have to do all the work that you missed -- both the on-the-job and the at-home tasks.

Lost me here. Sounds like the dumbing down continues. BTW, no one does my work for me when I'm out. Maybe I should be a hack "journalist", would make life easier.

[DesertSapper]

Some good points made by Card. However, I think this may be a case of beating an almost-dead horse . . .

Public schools are a waste of perfectly good kids (and my tax dollars). Private schools do much better but still tend to replicate much of the public schools' class and study structure - though with MUCH better results.

I opted for a third solution: home schooling. Though much of my boys' curriculum is taught to them by a DVD class lecture (as if they were in a traditional classroom), about half of each class is "on your own" - study, practice problems, etc.

Only on very rare occasions (maybe once a month) do my sons have ANY after-class work. We have eliminated much of the additional "fluff" and condensed their school days to around 6 hours . . . without requiring "homework".

I could only have dreamed of doing my elementary and high-school years the same way.

[-YYZ-]

I too always hated mandatory participation in science fairs, and I was a science-minded kid. On my own I learned about scientific principles with my own, albeit informal, experiments with chemistry sets and working steam models and things like that. Those kids that brought in those monstrous 3-fold, hinged, plywood-mounted projects with production values approaching those in a professional advertising presentation, well they clearly had a lot of help. I also hated those make-work projects that required doing up a poster on Bristol board, which mostly exercised your abilities in craftwork, stencils, and coloured pen and pencil work. None of which had anything to do with the subject at hand.

I got through school doing the minimum of homework I could get away with. If it wasn't being marked and part of my grade based on it, I generally ignored it - sometimes even if it was part of my grade. Yes, sometimes homework is useful, like the example of having kids work on their times tables, or reading a book for English class, but a lot of it was and is pointless.

[lastchance]

Orson Scott Card is certainly not a hack journalist.

He is a very well respected author of science fiction.

[Graymatter]

Mr170IQ, heed Jack's advice and homeschool!

Many years ago---1962 to be exact---I made a sacred promise to myself, never to subject my children to public education.

My youngest is a total gem too, and we are homeschooling happily.

The homework is hardly the worst aspect of public schooling. If your child is bright or creative or independent, they will snuff it out quickly or smother it slowly, and they will tell her a lot of lies rather than teach her how to think. She will spend more time with people that only public school would ever accept, than she does with you.

When she comes home and you ask, "What did you learn?" she'll give you brief answers, and in your complacency you will accept them, and become an accomplice to the daily erosion of her mind and spirit.

You won't really notice the damage until she's a teen, and by then it will be too late.

So please hold firmly to your aversion to public school, and be wary of all formal education by strangers whose credentials you don't know, nor their values.

By the way---while there's nothing wrong with "work," I don't call learning "work." It is a voyage of exploration and discovery, an expedition into the marvelous unknown, a holy quest. Your child needs guides for that, not just teachers; and the ones who guide best are the ones who love best.

[wbill]

Geez, I didn't realize that this was written by Orson Scott Card. He's not a hack journalist, usually I like him.

Just not this time.

[wbill]

Beat me to it...See post my post 68....

[Mygirlsmom]

Some people want to beat that out of our children, to make us more like the Asians, or the Europeans with their rote "competency". They want great worker bees. I want leaders and innovators. Freedom, baby!

Which is why I revolted when the doltish parents in my community started asking for homework in Kindergarten. KINDERGARTEN! I absolutely refused. My kids needed to PLAY and so I let them. After school they ran outside, made things out of rocks and sticks, played with their dolls - whatever they wanted to do.

I also "signed off" on many an assignment in first and second grade as well, especially the reading assignments. Their "story for the week" was to be read at least once each night for the entire week. My girls were bored and frustrated to the point of tears(and who could blame them-the reading textbooks are nothing but dry, boring, PC drivel). Instead, we read books that were fun and lively - Robert Munsch, Lorna Balian, Dav Pilkey, and I also started reading chapter books to them-books that I loved when I was young (and still do).

When I shared this information at conferences, the teacher actually scolded me! "The repetition is crucial at this age - your kids will never become readers without it!" Well the twins are 12 now, and I had to pummel them into bed last night-each had their nose in a book that they just couldn't put down.

[CORedneck]

Interesting.....

I remembered my school days. One thing in particular. When I was a sophomore, we had to take "Speech - public speaking". The teacher had this puritan ideal that you cannot enjoy yourself. The day before Spring Break started, she assign this major project that had to be completed by the Monday we got back. That really p*ssed me off. Our family was going someplace for Spring Break. I made my displeasure known to her and then mentioned that this should have been assigned much earlier. She did not take this too kindly and it was met with after school detention.

Unfortunately, it doesn't change much going into the world of work. The company I work for especially at my old job, it was expected that you put in some casual overtime (unpaid). When you go on vacation, you are expected to leave contact information and that was one of the biggest bones of contention I had with my former boss. We also had counterparts on the East Coast and they alway had this bad habit of contacting you on the day you were getting ready to leave and demand that you get some additional work done to where your departure gets delayed. One person I worked with never left until Saturday or Sunday because they drop work on her lap before she left. My old boss went as far as to say that vacation means Monday to Friday, therefore, you are expected to be available on Sat and Sun at both ends to be called in. My ideas about vacation did not mesh too well with management.

[Warren_Piece]

Just not this time.

OK, try this. Look at my #60 . Tell me if my children are even having a "childhood". How on earth could anybody find this acceptable?

[-YYZ-]

"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.."

I graduated in 1985, and that is a pretty good reflection of my high school experience, also. Some term papers, lab reports for physics, chemistry and astronomy (somewhat make-workish, but reflective of what you'll get in those subjects in university), and some homework problems for the evening, which as I generally already understood the material and the homework wasn't part of my grade, I ignored. Not so the problems from honours math class, which I took deliberately - there's no substitute for practice when it comes to doing mathematical proofs. In fact, that was my other criteria for doing homework, besides whether or not it was part of the grade - whether or not I thought I could use the practice.

[Warren_Piece]

Sorry, should read "Look at my #62"

[Teacher317]

Odd how American kids still average about 5-7 hours per day on the TV, cell phone, and/or internet, with all this no-time-left-to-be-a-kid homework going on.

(By the way, spend 30 seconds obesrving a classroom, and you'll see that they're not exactly breaking a sweat in there, either.)

[Jack Hammer]

Good advice. If I had kids - who would very naturally be more precious to me than gold or diamonds - I'd never allow them to SET FOOT in a public school. And I'd be darned wary before I allowed them into a private school - even one of those "elite prep schools." No, somehow I'd find a way to homeschool, no question.

[wbill]

How on earth could anybody find this acceptable? ...Not to be snide, but you obviously do. You're the one that's doing it.

When my son was born, my wife droppped out of work and I quit a high pressure, high travel job. The pay cut was tough, but we're managing. With my new position, I'm home in time for dinner 9 days in 10. It's been like a whole new lease on life - my blood pressure dropped 40 points, almost overnight.

I can't talk about homework yet, as wbill jr. is not school-aged. I do agree with some points on the dicussion, remembering back to school - busywork map-coloring and diorama-making are pretty useless. But, there is value in assigned reading, math, etc etc etc.

Wife and I are thinking about homeschooling. If we have homework issues, it will be our own fault, I suspect.

[wintertime]

GSlob,

Do you have enough confidence in your anointed educational philosophy that you would impose this on other people's children by threat of armed police, court, and foster care action? Would you threaten to sell your fellow citizen's home or business at sheriff's auction to fund it? ( Real bullets in those guns on the hip)

If you were running a private school, I would fully support your right to demand tons of homework from your private students, however, I do **not** support the imposition of this educational philosophy on other people's children.

By the way, my homeschooled children rarely did more than 2 hours of formal schooling each day, yet they were admitted to college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. They were completely finished all general college requirements and calculus 3 by the age of 15. The two younger earned B.S. degree in mathematics from our flagship state university by the ages of 18. One recently finished a masters degree in mathematics at the age of 20. This child stood shoulder to shoulder with those Asians who were in their mid to late twenties.

Gee! Imagine that!... All this accomplishment and never having more than 2 hours of formal studies a day.

By the way, my kids are just ordinary homeschoolers. Hey! They haven't won any national bees or been a New York Times best seller.

[ArGee]

If I had to guess, not enough time in the classroom learning what they then spend time learning at home.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not for overburdening the kids. Bugt when I talk to adults about the fact that I don't spend all evening watching TV many of them ask, "What do you do?"

I actually do things that resemble homework. I just don't have deadlines. Learning is fun.

I'll read the rest when I have time.

Shalom.

[Tired of Taxes]

ANOTHER REASON TO HOMESCHOOL PING!

Here's the premise: Too much teacher-assigned homework robs families of quality time. Is it worthwhile? Part II of the article is in post #18.

This ping list is for the "other" articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. If you want on/off this list, please freepmail me. The main Homeschool Ping List by DaveLoneRanger handles the homeschool-specific articles.