Posted on 03/28/2012 5:55:30 AM PDT by jda
Research reveals primary school homework offers no real benefit - and only limited results in junior high school.
Only senior students in Years 11 and 12 benefit from after-school work, associate professor Richard Walker said.
"What the research shows is that, in countries where they spend more time on homework, the achievement results are lower," Dr Walker, from Sydney University's Education Faculty, said.
"The amount of homework is a really critical issue for kids. If they are overloaded they are not going to be happy and not going to enjoy it. There are other things kids want to do that are very valuable things for them to be doing.
"I don't think anyone except senior high school students should be doing a couple of hours of homework.
{snip}
While the majority of 10 and 11-year-olds - 59 per cent - do less than two hours of homework per week, 22 per cent do three or four hours a week. Five per cent do seven or more hours a week.
It's not only kids who get tied down with homework - parents are also heavily involved. Dr Edwards said almost half of mums and dads - 41 per cent - helped out three or four days a week, with 15 per cent also chipping in on five or more days.
"A little bit of homework is probably OK at all ages, if part of the reason is to help kids become self-directed learners," Dr Walker said.
"But what the research shows is that only happens when upper primary and middle school students are given some assistance.
{snip}
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytelegraph.com.au ...
I see this problem all the time when reading comments by readers on Internet sites including Free Republic. One particularly annoying trend is the use of "there" in place of "their" and "they're"--even among seemingly intelligent writers.
That’s the point, JDA! The point is to make everyone wholesale reliant on government. They need mindless, unthinking masses to continue the socialist experiment.
I disagree with the entire system: government schools, institutionalized education, large classrooms, disaffected teachers. The more I hear from parents of “successful” government school students, the more I realize they’re basically homeschooling, just in the evenings. That’s what homework is, for involved families. For uninvolved ones it’s just another way to fail.
It’s self-evident that the more you work to learn, the more you will know, and it’s human nature that you can’t hold someone focused on a single thing beyond a certain point.
If we have a problem, maybe it’s that our students have too many distractions and don’t see the value of their classroom subjects, and so are unable to stay focused on their schoolwork long enough to learn the stuff.
What? You don’t think lazy little lay-abouts with zero work ethic will magically transform once they hit 11th Grade? Have you no faith in human nature?
So one misspelled or overlooked grammatical error makes an entire piece unintelligent? That is a pin headed view IMO.
So one misspelled or overlooked grammatical error makes an entire piece unintelligent? That is a pin headed view IMO.
The nice thing about being young is that you don’t have responsibilities and you can do the things you want to do.
You are not wrong, but it is not one or the other, it is some of both.
2. Homework is extremely important.
a. reading assignments with reviews need to be done at home.
b. working math problems and practicing concepts taught at home a must.
c. etc.
This article as presented above is absolutely incorrect and someone or organization needs to expose it for what it is.
“...concepts taught at home...”
correction: “...concepts taught a must..”
I never went to public/government schools and two of the schools I went to did not follow traditional classroom/scheduling models. With the exception of “lecture labs,” which were to get students comfortable with large lecture sections we would encounter in college, I rarely was in a room with more than 24 other students and I had classes with less than ten students.
I do think with quality teachers, you can impart information efficiently and have students prepare or follow up by working on their own. Someone mentioned study halls in an earlier post. I always had some time during the day to work on homework which minimized what I took home. I think the problem might be eliminated school time for independent work, not necessarily too much homework.
You're absolutely right. JimRob knows this is a hugh and series problem on FR, and it's worsened over the past several years. I don't recall seeing these grammatical issues before 5/3/2005.
J/K, FRiend.
rarestia said “Simple math using columns to add/subtract have been replaced with this fuzzy math garbage that teaches kids how to break up numbers. It’s mumbo jumbo if you as me. I tried to teach my 9 year old cousin how to do long division, and he says to me, “That’s not how we learned to do it in school!”
I said, “Show me how you learned to do it.”
I was aghast at what they were trying to get these kids to learn.”
That’s the division junk they’re teaching to my nine year old too! I asked what they were teaching it like that for and they said they had to and it was supposed to be easier. i call BS.
I also noticed a couple of times when she got homework, it wasn’t for her, it was for me! She told this to the teacher and she laughed and said yes. It was okay, I could put evil pictures of obama;)
All in all, I really like the school. I’ve walked in after school during a meeting and saw the teachers having a meeting. holding hands and saying a prayer.
The teachers can still show their love of God.
I did keep an eye on those muslim chicks in drag go into the office after the Christmas program. In and out in a jiffy so i had nothing to worry about.
Agreed. It’s more than the homework. It’s the discipline to sit down, undistracted, and get it done, on your own.
I remember when my daughter was in 6th or 7th grade. Came home with at least 2 hours of homework everyday. Ridiculous. And I admit, I had issues at times trying to help her. It is true it you don't use it you lose it.
Yep, it’s like playing the Home Version of “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”
“The nice thing about being young is that you don’t have responsibilities and you can do the things you want to do.”
Wow! Just wow. Your statement is way too broad. Some semblance of responsibility should be taught at a young age, even before that first day in school. Oh, sorry, I should have read that with the /s tag.
Unless your kid is unusually smart, they just don't absorb what they need to know during the few hours they are in the classroom.
Are the liberals trying to “level the playing field” by dragging down the kids who do well and who's families value education down to the level of those who don't? By not having homework, there is no opportunity for parents to help their kids. That seems to be what they want. They want to deliberately dumb down America (if it is possible to get any dumber).
HA! I like that :) homework = home schooling, I never thought of it that way. But it so true.
“So one misspelled or overlooked grammatical error makes an entire piece unintelligent? That is a pin headed view IMO.”
it doesnt make the entire peace unintelligent but it does make it suspect. i can overlook obvious missspellings and typos on blogs and comments (not on resumes or theeme papers).
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