Los Angeles makes homework less important to a child's grade.

[mrsleeve]

wow and we really do wonder why the quality of a High school education is going to shit. When kids now think home work is BS and should not count Really wtf, how much more lazy and shitty does our education system need to get???

This equates to further lowering of the bar to the lowest common denominator, and dumbing it all down so no child is left behind.

Just another reason why when I have kids, they are going to a private (non religious) school, or getting home schooled.

[Fusion]

I always ditched homework to go to the golf couse, find lost balls, sell them, then caddy during the weekend.
I made money, had a first business experience (at 13), didn't have to ask the parents to buy my SNES and pay for my shopping sprees at the mall.
But yeah, I'm unsure about the names of certain types of plants, I don't know much about chemistry and I don't remember all the rivers in Colorado.

[chadthestampede]

You guys are missing the point.

[KamakaziX]

I'm really not sure what to think . . . I don't think I would do homework if it wasn't assigned, but I am not smart enough to go through school without it.

[Raxe]

I always ditched homework to go to the golf couse, find lost balls, sell them, then caddy during the weekend.
I made money, had a first business experience (at 13), didn't have to ask the parents to buy my SNES and pay for my shopping sprees at the mall.
But yeah, I'm unsure about the names of certain types of plants, I don't know much about chemistry and I don't remember all the rivers in Colorado.

See you're what's wrong with the education system!! Imagine the career you could've had at 13 if you had only done your homework and learned those plant names instead!!! That's what the real world is all about!!!!!!!!!!

I have a feeling everyone freaking out about this didn't read past the title (which conveniently left "academic" off of "grade"), or they would realize the quoted snippet actually makes sense. I understand though, it's much more exciting and dramatic to imagine the youth of tomorrow going to hell in a handbasket. If you really want to know why the quality of a high school education is going to shit, start with how it reaches the target audience. The material being rammed down their throats is basically the same stuff we, our parents and our grandparents learned in the same setting and the same fashion. If a culture changes, why shouldn't its educational philosophy?

[Dozyproductions]

See you're what's wrong with the education system!! Imagine the career you could've had at 13 if you had only done your homework and learned those plant names instead!!! That's what the real world is all about!!!!!!!!!!

The material being rammed down their throats is basically the same stuff we, our parents and our grandparents learned in the same setting and the same fashion. If a culture changes, why shouldn't its educational philosophy?

:up: It really blows me away with how little I've retained in my pre college schooling. Most of it was from the very little selection of electives in which I was actually interested in.

[Raxe]

Here's a personal example: I took IT in college after high school and most of the curriculum was delivered in text books and handout assignments. With nearly every lesson I found myself ignoring the books and learning the information online where I could not only find it faster, but could also delve further into specific things that interested me or find different explanations if I didn't understand something the first time. Simply put, the old style teaching methods were boring, slow and inefficient at teaching me and at first my marks reflected it.

I'd venture to say it's because kids are raised in a world where information moves so incredibly fast and frequently that reading an old book for an hour just does not a) appeal to them in the slightest, b) provide enough relative or understandable information and c) hold their substantially shorter attention span and multitasking capabilities.

Nowadays a 14 year old has not known life without the Internet. Why some people think an educational system developed 50 years ago should be forced upon kids until they "get it" is beyond me, but it's neither effective nor relevant in today's society and needs to be updated.

[mrsleeve]

So what you are saying is that because the information that is contained in books is old its there for irrelevant. Some things dont change and the information that is in a book from 50....100.... even 200 years ago is the same today as it was the day it was printed.

The same things that were taught to our parents and grand parents and so on, need to be taught to the youth of today. Things that dont change like History, Math, engirsh, and so on. They are important to building and continuing our society. The best way to change a society is to get the govt to take over the education system and "steer it" in the desired direction. And this home work is unfair shit is more of this same mind set. Its teaching kids that even if you dont do something it you will still get the reward as if you had. This is not conducive to a productive member of society and you will have more people expecting to get the rewards with out the work necessary to get them.

I can see a huge difference it what is being taught today from when I came though, and I am fortunate that I was 1/2 raised by my grand parents and learned many many things that were never even mentioned in the books at school on a few subjects. Not to mention their work ethic rubbed off on me as well.

[Dozyproductions]

It's not the content of whats being taught that's being discussed its more of how it's delivered.

[E30SPDFRK]

I didn't really do much homework. As someone who did well on in class assignments and tests, but got absolutely killed by (not doing) the day to day drudge work, I'd have to say that this is a good idea. Ultimately, if you can demonstrate that you've learned it in class, you should be fine. The value of the homework is to help you learn, not to make you spend a shit ton of extra hours on school.

Ultimately, IF there are effective in class tests, you don't need the homework to evaluate a kid's capability.

This was me as well, I absolutely never did homework and I failed some classes for it, but I would get A's on quizzes and tests. The classes that didn't grade homework I would get A's and ones that did I would barely scrape by with C's and D's. How does that make sence? I even took the time after school to go to the principal with my class grades and an arguement about why they feel I should fail and his responce was pretty much "that's the rules oh well".

Homework is made specifically to help you, if you don't need the help why should you be penalized for it?

[mrsleeve]

It's not the content of whats being taught that's being discussed its more of how it's delivered.

ummm right, but the job of high school is to help prepare you for the next step, whether that be off into the the real world and get a job and make something outta your self from the ground up, Or off to college. I guess I should have said what and HOW things are being taught.

Home work is just one of the very important ways to prepare you for college, where you get mass quantities of the shit. Or real life when you have many more things that need doing after you get done with work. Its also so your more accustomed to getting it, rather than going of to college and being total unprepared for it.

[chadthestampede]

You guys are not seeing the forest for the trees. The problem is that most of you that didn't do the homework/don't remember the homework/did awesome on tests are the exception to the rule. I was the same way. I rarely did homework, rarely saw how it could be important, and always did well on tests. These aren't the students we should be worried about.

I didn't start to see the problem until I started teaching. The problem is that a lot of students don't see the importance of homework (and therefore also don't do it) but also do not do well on tests. You see the difference here. I rarely gave out homework in my class as a principle; I didn't see the point. As the year went on, however, it became necessary. Constantly dealing with behavioral and motivational problems, sleeping in class, and just general apathy forces you to extend what you do in class to the students home.

Not only this, but a lot of students don't have parents that care enough to even send them to school. It's hard to understand how much of a problem this is until you witness it first hand. I had probably 30% of my class absent on any given day, and at the beginning and end of the week sometimes close to 60%. Therefore, you spend your time perpetually reviewing, the students aren't intrigued and the pace of the class slows to a crawl.

The problem here is that if you do not get through what you need to teach, whether or not it is relevant to the real world (I had to teach To Kill a Mockingbird and was constantly forced to deal with its relevancy) the fact is that they will be tested on it, it is state curriculum, and if they do not pass the test they will not graduate. On a side note, I love the book, but it is not fun to share it with students that do not care about it. Furthermore, in response to forthcoming arguments that the curriculum is irrelevant and should be updated, let me remind you that as a teacher I have no control over this. I teach what they tell me to teach or I lose my job. It is my job to present it in the most effective way possible, and believe me I tried many different ways. A teacher can only do so much. Granted, there are a huge amount of awful teachers out there, some that were in rooms adjacent to mine, but there is nothing I can do to change that either. This is to say nothing of what I think of standardized testing; that is a different rant.

Coming back to homework. It is a matter of self-motivation and drive, as well as responsibility. I never wanted to do homework in high school. Presently, I do many things a day that I do not want to do. However, I have to do these things because I have a job, I have (part of) a family, and I have financial responsibilities. If I decide not to do some of them there are consequences. I really think, to a much lesser extent, that is part of the point of homework: to develop motivation towards completing a goal, as well as personal responsibility.

So homework, as a whole, is not all that important. However, when students barely have any responsibilities as it is, and still do not fulfill them, lowering the bar to where it is already met does not benefit them at all. However much they may think it does.

There is a reason the US is so far behind countries like Japan as far as our students go, including the quality of our teacher education system (and by proxy the teachers themselves), budget concerns, apathy on the part of the students and parents, and just general ignorance on the state and process of education, none of which I have the time, patience, or complete knowledge of. All I know is it's going to get worse before it gets any better, and that our standards are already frighteningly low.

Fun fact: The 12th grade Honors class in one of the schools in which I taught was doing the same material that a regular 11th grade class was doing when I was in high school. 7 years ago. In an average public school not 25 miles away.

If any of this doesn't make sense or sounds stupid I'll try to clarify later, but I hope I at least partially got the point across. I was distracted mid rant and it's a weird morning.

[mrsleeve]

^

Yes all that, our education system is not shit for a lack of money being thrown at it, but more so the govt micromanagement/agenda of what an how shit is taught, not to mention that there is no real drive to become better, the complacency we all have in our lives is kinda sad and will be the down fall of the country.

[e30e]

Needing homework also goes into teaching styles, everything I taught was hands on which does not go well with a students going home and having to sit down and write a paper or figure out an equation.

Home work is great for creating responsibility, but that is not the teachers job; hence why I don't teach. I refuse to do the parents job. Homework's point in any modern teaching and learning techniques is to supplement and reenforce the day's lesson; which should take no longer than 15 minutes due to the current generations style of learning. You can't make student's care, but affective teaching can. Its all about class room management when getting kids to care, learn, and succeed. Homework is not going to make those things happen.

[chadthestampede]

Needing homework also goes into teaching styles, everything I taught was hands on which does not go well with a students going home and having to sit down and write a paper or figure out an equation.

Home work is great for creating responsibility, but that is not the teachers job; hence why I don't teach. I refuse to do the parents job. Homework's point in any modern teaching and learning techniques is to supplement and reenforce the day's lesson; which should take no longer than 15 minutes due to the current generations style of learning. You can't make student's care, but affective teaching can. Its all about class room management when getting kids to care, learn, and succeed. Homework is not going to make those things happen.

I take it you were in a program that taught trade skills or the like?

The curriculum is so far behind, though. I was in a class where, out of 5 ~15 student classes, there were ~20 students with >40 days missed on the year. Not to mention the other students that had less days absent. The parents do nothing to send their kids to school, and the principal literally told the teacher that if they wanted the kids to come they 'should be more entertaining.' How can a teacher compete with weed and video games? The lack of self-motivation is a concern, despite the teacher. I had some pretty bad teachers in my day but was able to persevere because I had a goal and the motivation to reach it. It's when that goal isn't there, and when neither the school or parents hold the kids to any sort of standard, that it becomes a problem.

You can't do much when the students don't have a fundamental interest in what their learning. What you're talking about ineffective teachers teaching what students should be fundamentally interested in. If there is no desire to learn at all (or attendance for that matter), all the hands-on teaching in the world won't help.