homework is such an incredibly idiotic concept. a kid gets sent to school for 7 hours (if not more, at times) of mental work, and then they're required to do even more work after they go back home.
That's why I always refused to do it. To me it was two things. 1 An insult of my need of personal time. And 2, you had hours that day to teach me something and failed to do so, and I'm expected to learn it on my own? That's on you.
Homework is quite handy, but homework should not be the "making" part, but rather the "info" part. Teachers should rather spend time doing stuff in class in stead of presenting and explaining when students could easily read a book at home or watch a video. The paractical stuff is much more important and the guidance of a teacher is much more valuable in the practical part of the lesson.
No that wouldn't work at all. Kids would show up without having learned the concepts, except for the most studious.
Education at later levels is pretty much all homework. Teachers go over tricky to understand parts and practical explanations whilst the child does the actual studying independently.
My kids grew up with homework and it was never received as much of a chore. Mostly was completed in less than an hour. The trick is to pay attention in class and do the homework pretty much as soon as it is assigned.
Now they are at university, having the ability to study independently is paying off.
Not sure of the ages of your children, but as a 52yo who grew up in the States, I averaged 2-3 hours of homework a night in grade school. They'd tell us "oh, it's only about 15-20 minutes per class" which doesn't sound terrible, except that it was more like 20-30 minutes of work x 4-6 classes. By 7th grade I burned out and realized that the world didn't end if I started skipping homework, and my test grades remained about the same. I just had to live with the stifling anxiety over getting in trouble for not getting my homework done.
Thankfully by the time my kids came along schools started pulling back on the volumes of unnecessary homework. I also never pressured them to get every assignment done, but instead asked them if they understood what they were doing. As adults having completed further educational programs, they did just fine. I'm glad that as time goes on, kids are getting more of a chance to be kids.
I can't imagine learing math without running equations myself. Once reading and math skills are proficient students need to be doing some independent study.
Good luck trying to watch over 30 kids doing the practical part.
The biggest problem is the size of classes imo. If you have 10 pupils you don't have the same pressure to neglect children who can't match the speed of the curriculum.
Agreed. Teaching is a fun job, but not getting to do the best parts because of bad funding, more administration, bigger groups, bad salary, etc.. is sucking the fun out of it.
I remember when I was a kid and we were learning algebra and no one ever explained why on Earth we would ever need it. It would have been vastly more helpful if practical examples had been given rather than us being given a bunch of homework.
A much better homework assignment would be "These are the scenarios under which you would need algebra. See if you can find them in your everyday life." But nope, just more arbitrary questions.
It’s probably something personal, but I never questioned that. For me it was an abstract challenge, and that was rewarding enough.
I also intentionally moved into a field that heavily relies on math afterwards (computer graphics), so maybe I’m just weird like that.
IMO the original purpose of homework was to keep the children occupied while the adults prepared dinner. That isn’t really needed anymore. Plus studies have shown the benefits of homework are negligible. Stop teaching kids there is no solid work/life balance.
There is some argument for doing spaced repetition as homework for memory heavy learning like vocabulary for example.
Edit: Just read that this covers grades 4 - 8 so what I said doesn't apply.
Idk there are definitely some courses that I don't think could have been covered in just the allotted class time without additional practice in order to be prepared enough for the university level, particularly high school mathematics and AP Calc, and physics.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Polish government has introduced strict limits on the amount of homework pupils must do in a bid to modernise the education system.
Teachers will no longer give required homework to children in the first to third grades.
“I’m happy because this homework, I did not like it too much,” said 11-year-old Warsaw pupil Ola, “It didn’t really make much sense because most people in my class would copy it in the morning from someone who had done the homework.”
Sławomir Broniarz, the head of the Polish Teachers' Union, says that while he recognises the need to ease burdens on students, the new rules have been imposed without adequate consultation with educators.
Broniarz argues that removing homework could widen the educational gaps between children who have strong support at home and those from families with less support and lower expectations.
Poland's education system has undergone a number of controversial overhauls with almost every new government making changes.
The original article contains 256 words, the summary contains 157 words. Saved 39%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Y'all must have had horrible teachers in this thread.
Homework is a tool to train the concepts you learned at school and teach you some self management. It should allow you to learn the concepts by repetition and apply these concepts to similar problems to the ones already learned at school.
So extend the school day then?
A kid should be able to get taught everything they need in the confines of the school day, outside of that time they shouldn't be given any more work, it's ridiculous. No one would put up with being expected to work for free outside of office hours, so why is it acceptable for children?
You can't 'learn concepts by repetition', that is not how learning works. You can learn a concept & repeat its application to be faster at it.
And that's the problem. What if the student didn't catch the concept during the lesson? He or She needs help by a guardian or be punished for not completing the task.
Same thing with the supposed self management skills. What if the student fails at it? He or she needs help by a guardian or will be punished.
At the end of the day homework is a tool to offload tasks of the school to the guardians of the student. A schools system, that relies on homework, is a system that fails in its task of creating a level playing regardless of socioeconomic background of the student.
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