
Parents in poorer countries devote more time to their kids' homework - known
https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2018/04/daily-chart-11
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lumberjack
The reason for this is pretty simple: you get free public education in these
poor countries, but only if you pass the entrance examinations.

For a lot of families this is the only way for their kids to get out of
poverty. Moreover because of the way the school system is structured, your kid
could easily fall behind at age 7 and never recover. The reason for this is
because of stratified classes, where they group kids into classes, by their
performance on yearly examinations.

So there is simply much more incentive for families in poor countries to put
more effort into homework, which BTW, is nothing like the homework that
American kids get.

It is nonsensical to try to compare what parents in India and parents in
Finland are doing.

~~~
bunderbunder
> For a lot of families this is the only way for their kids to get out of
> poverty.

By contrast, in countries that have been industrialized for over a century,
the preceding several generations found that they could relatively easily find
low- to moderate-skill factory jobs that secured a reasonably prosperous
lifestyle.

There are also industrialized countries with stratified school systems, and I
see that some of them fall toward the bottom of the graph.

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westiseast
Very surprised the article doesn’t mention a few things:

1\. Some places _just have more homework than others_. Chinese kids have
mountains of homework aged 7, vastly more than British kids. Chinese parents
spend much more time either managing or literally doing their kids homework
for them.

2\. Efficiency/productivity - What are kids doing in school if their parents
are still spending hours and hours after school helping them with homework?
How is this a productive use of parents precious work/leisure time?

~~~
lighthazard
An argument can be made that doing homework with your child is the leisure.

~~~
CannisterFlux
Ha, I think that argument is made by people who don't have kids (with
homework). It's not leisure for me at all. While I worry about being branded a
terrible father for this comment, I will admit that I am a terrible teacher. I
have no patience for it.

My kids mess around, constantly want breaks ("Well I've written a line! time
for a 10 minute break!"), waste hours doing shit that should take them
minutes... When they start "accidentally" dropping their pencils on the floor
because they'd rather be faffing around picking it up than working, I often
just lose my temper. Man, I'm getting slightly pissed off just thinking about
it now! xD

There are brief moments of joy/relief where you can see they've grasped a
concept or improved and you can be proud of 'em. But most of the time it is a
frustrating experience, slow going, and a slog to get them to do anything. The
worst of learning, with the worst of kids messing around, with a massive
feeling of wasting everone's time.

~~~
bunderbunder
It's really too bad the inverted classroom model hasn't become any more
popular.

In a nutshell, the idea is to take the traditional breakdown of what is done
in class and what is done at home, and swap it: Kids do their readings and
watch recorded lectures at home. And then they work on problem sets and
projects in class, typically in groups.

It's a really clever idea. Compared to the traditional model, it has so many
interesting advantages: It levels the playing field between kids whose parents
have time and inclination to help them with homework and those who don't. It
makes the teacher much more available for questions and any necessary 1:1
assistance. Having kids work together (even on math problem sets!) helps them
to learn better, and has the side benefit of giving them more opportunity to
develop social skills.

I've heard it criticized for expecting students to have better access to
technology at home than they necessarily do. In the case studies I've read
about, though, the schools supplied equipment to students who needed it, and
the most dramatic relative improvements were seen among the kids from less
wealthy families.

~~~
haZard_OS
It's a beautiful idea, it really is...except that I doubt it will ever work in
my lifetime. I can't even convince my students at the University to complete
assigned readings in preparation for classroom discussions. I can't imagine
trying to invert a HS or middle school class (and I've taught those, too).

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mjburgess
It's important to add here that homework has never been shown to improve
grades or educational outcomes generally, and it's a very well-studied topic.

~~~
yoz-y
It has absolutely helped me to drill in my multiplication tables and learn to
write at least somewhat legible letters.

If there is one thing I regret about my college years it is not doing math
assignments.

~~~
mjburgess
By "homework" i mean specifically comparing cohorts of students in high-school
that do and do not do the homework they're set, and connecting that with long-
term grade trajectories.

I dont have the sources to hand, but i recall an economist talking about large
studies in this area.

~~~
nicoburns
I think some of this might be that high school tends to be quite easy for the
brightest students. I did close to none of my homework all the way through
high school because I didn't have to (paying attention in class was sufficient
for me to graduate with mostly A's and get into the university of my choice).

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meric
National income is correlated with percent of population in workforce. Poorer
countries are correlated with lower levels of total employment. Assuming all
else being equal then parents with less time involved in employment will have
more time for other activities, including spending time with children. Is this
right?

~~~
commonsense123
please don't think about it in terms of first world problems of time
management. it is more like, they are poor and they want kids to get a solid
education and get good jobs and lead a happier, fulfilling life compared to
them. fyi: username is a function of yours'.

~~~
mjburgess
please don't think about it in terms of "the virtues of unfortunate". Everyone
wants "kids to get a solid education and get good jobs and lead a happier,
fulfilling life".

please, rather, try to think about it in terms of what best-explains the
difference.

this data seems highly inversely correlated with productivity, in countries
with lower productivity, people spend more time with their child. _Time
available_ seems to be the best explanatory factor.

~~~
timthorn
> Everyone wants "kids to get a solid education..."

No, this is not universal. There are parents who had a bad experience of
education and think that is universal, and those who fear that their children
will move away if they become educated. It's one of the challenges of teaching
in particular areas.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Do you mean "a bad experience of education" or do you mean "a bad experience
of school"?

If its the former could you expand on that, like they learnt to read and it
messed their life up?

I understand the selfish desire to keep children near, no need to go in to
that.

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potatote
Hmm...a bit different experience by me growing up and graduated from high
school in a poor Southeast Asian country.

There, a lot of parents (esp. from lower and mid-middle class) invest a good
chunk of money/resources on their kids' education. BUT, unlike this article
claims, they aren't that heavily involved in kids' homework. The parents in my
country seem to believe that once they pay money to send kids to after-school
classes, the progress in students' learning is up to the teachers in those
after-school programs.

Most of them don't have time or mental energy left to tend to their kids'
homework because they are too busy working (both parents working is typical in
poor countries too) and/or running errands (thanks to inefficient bureaucratic
system and insufficient infrastructure such as frequent power outages, life's
chores take enormously more time than they would in developed world...)

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k__
First thought: Well, they got nothing better to do.

Second thought: my mother was unemployed at least 70% of my childhood and
didn't devote any time at all to my homework

~~~
spdionis
Third thought: I'm glad my parents didn't devote too much time to my homework.

I was the no-effort-good-grades type. Maybe if I dedicated myself more I
would've left my country and got a prestigious degree. Who cares. I'm glad I
was taught independence and responsibility by my parents instead of them
trying to control me.

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maire
Ideally, parents shouldn't spend any time on their children's homework. I can
understand answering occasional questions and giving encouragement but nothing
more. Children learn by figuring out homework on their own. Otherwise, why
have homework?

~~~
snarf21
I would guess that you've never been a teacher. The problem is that any
teacher has a classroom with students with abilities and aptitudes that range
between some Low and some High. The teacher must always teach to the middle
kid in that spectrum. Going slower/lower bores the kids in the top half and
going faster/higher completely loses the kids in the bottom half. Half of the
kids may just "get it" and not need help but the bottom half will need help
that the school system can't provide. Note: I don't condone the parent just
doing the homework for their kid.

The problem here is that the parents best able to help their children are more
likely to have kids in the top half (who don't need help) and the ones least
able to help have the kids who need help the most. This can be solved with a
restructuring of our school system but very few schools are willing to try.
Instead we stick with the ridiculous _age == learning level_ method.

~~~
maire
I am not a teacher but I did volunteer in my children's classroom when they
were young. I do understand what you mean by the range in comprehension.

I am not counting the other things a parent does to enhance a child's learning
experience as homework time - so we all might be saying the same thing.

I will give a small example which might illustrate having an enhanced learning
experience. One of my volunteer assignments was to teach children math using
coins. My son and daughter were naturally motivated to understand how much
money they had because I had them save money buy things at a very young age. I
was shocked that some classmates did not understand denominations and others
could not do the math. My husband made coin dice for the classroom kids. They
rolled the dice and added the values to figure out how much money they had on
the coins. This was a big hit with the kids.

What I didn't want to do was do homework for my kids or give answers.
Discovery is how children learn. My kids ended up proud of what they could do
on their own. When they failed - we discussed taking ownership of failure.

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humptydumpty001
This should have been done in terms of percentage of time taken by child to do
homework and how much of that parents get involved in.

There is huge difference in amount of homework given in countries like India
and that in Australia.

We cannot compare that in exact hours.

Just my 2cents.

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vezycash
This article conflicts with my experience. All I think this article proves is
that data is malleable to a researcher's goals.

Also, the results from the highly competitive India and China might be skewing
the results.

Finally, survey is the worst method for this research. Because parent would
lie instead of admitting negligence about their kid(s) education.

~~~
haihaibye
Maybe the 2 biggest countries on earth should count more than your personal
experience?

~~~
vezycash
Results from two countries should be generalized to every country in the
world?

If you travelled a little bit like I have, you'll discover a few things.

E.g. The poor are usually uneducated. Meaning they can't help with homework.

Even in poor black American communities, house work is often more important
than school work.

More important, the poor tend to work longer and harder on mental jobs.

They most impoverished behave like reptiles (no insult intended) give birth to
many children and abandon them to varying degrees. (Fulani people actually,
literally abandon their kids and may never see em again)

Read about how American Indian handled children.

~~~
potatote
> E.g. The poor are usually uneducated. Meaning they can't help with homework.

> Even in poor black American communities, house work is often more important
> than school work.

You pretty much nailed what I wanted to described earlier. My mother works
from home and although she has a bachelor's degree, since the education system
(esp. in her times) was poor, she is not even at the level of a high school
grad in terms of knowledge regarding math, humanities and science. This is not
to mention that she (nor my more educated, late father, who was a doctor)
wouldn't be able to help her/his children with their homework due to lack of
knowledge/education or time.

One thing I remember though is that after finishing homework, my mom would
expect us to help out with house chores like sweeping the floor, collecting
clothes from clotheslines, buying small grocery items, etc.

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watwut
Possible explanation - parents in rich countries have enough power to pressure
on schools to assign homework that requires less parental involvement. If you
are "suspect parent", you are less likely to argue that there is too much
homework because that might badly influence how teachers perceive your kid. If
you are rich parent with good social standing, you are free to say so and
while teachers might complain at home about "spoiled rich kids", you are
likely get your way.

Also, I am more involved where I think school is not sufficient to fix the
issue. Where I trust the teacher and school, I am involved much less.

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BeetleB
This article is rather poor. So many things not considered:

1\. Perhaps people in some countries get a lot more homework than others. This
does not look like a normalized plot.

2\. Perhaps some countries see helping their kids with homework as a positive,
whereas others do not.

3\. What is the pressure to do well? We already have another HN submission on
the pressures students have in India to do well. Maybe people in developed
countries don't help them as much because they know their kids are not at risk
of not being able to get into college.

Spend an hour and you can probably double the list above.

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tnuc
The full report has some interesting details.

[https://www.varkeyfoundation.org/sites/default/files/People/...](https://www.varkeyfoundation.org/sites/default/files/People/VF%20Parents%20Survey%2018%20-%20Single%20Pages%20for%20FlipBook.pdf)

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isa
This is also assuming that parents know how to help children with their
schoolwork. What is the rate where children in school are past their parents'
education level?

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rdlecler1
Some thoughts: people in poorer countries may spend their time differently. No
internet or TV distractions, no long commutes.

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endangered
Kids won't learn if their parents are the ones doing the homework.

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liberte82
Joke's on them when the US decides educational facts are fake news and we pull
a full 180.

