
My Son Won't Do His Homework (2007) - namuol
http://www.talentism.com/business_talent/2007/06/my_son_wont_do_.html
======
tptacek
My son finds homework painfully aversive, as I did before him. But I cut him
much less slack than I was given as a kid.

School is often arbitrary, pointless, and tedious. It's part of a large system
that needs to serve many different interests, several of them legitimate.
That's modern life. We're not so much beset by wolves and bears; instead, we
have to deal with systems and social/cultural obligations. And while I don't
so much care if the boy emerges from high school remembering all the Latin
declensions or the details of the Treaty of Ghent, he's at least going to be
familiar with what it takes to play the system.

For whatever it's worth: when I pay attention to his homework, I rarely find
it pointless. And in the classes most imperiled by pointlessness, there
homework usually takes the form of essays. And there is nothing in the world
more valuable than being able to express ideas in writing. So he writes the
essays, and I make him do drafts and drafts and drafts.

~~~
jcampbell1
> he's at least going to be familiar with what it takes to play the system.

That comment makes your perspective the complete opposite of the author's. The
author kid moves his chess pieces randomly and the author writes a blog post
about how the rules are not fair. You likely teach that sometimes you have to
follow the rules to play the game.

This blog post reads like like a fool arguing that the rules of chess are
stupid.

~~~
ef4
If the world actually followed school-like rules, your analogy would be
useful. But it doesn't.

The recipe for "winning" the game of school is:

\- follow directions very carefully \- be good at memorizing things \- never
challenge authority

The market value of being able to carefully follow directions is nearly zero,
and falling fast. That was a useful skill back when there were lots of good-
paying factory jobs. Now it just makes you an excellent candidate for being
replaced by software.

The market value of being able to memorize easily searchable facts is nearly
zero, and falling even faster. Any test that can be "cheated" by using
Wikipedia is testing a totally useless skill. (Useful tests are still hard
when you have access to all the internet.)

As for obedience to authority, I'll stick with Thoreau: "Disobedience is the
true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."

The evidence around us is overwhelming. Look at all the unemployed college
graduates: those are the people who learned how to play the game, when they
could have been learning something useful instead.

~~~
tptacek
First, that's not actually the only recipe for "winning" the game of school;
it's just the one that occurs most vividly to people who dislike school. I
disliked school too, and did poorly at it, approaching it as a system only
solvable by the approach you outlined.

Now that I'm a couple decades removed from attending school, it's obvious ---
_painfully_ obvious, like so much that I often see opportunities that my son
won't give a chance that make me want to shake him --- that if you pay
attention to the directions and give even a little thought to how you might
push on the apparent constraints the school provides, school is _eminently_
playable.

Second, the point of learning how to play the school system isn't to be good
at school. It's to be good at handling systems in general. Different systems,
different constraints, but there are meta-lessons to be learned in dealing
with any of them.

Disobedience is valuable when it's valuable.

~~~
jongraehl
And if your son is able to understand your reasons (which seem compelling), it
needn't be traumatic or rebellion-provoking that he's made play well.

~~~
tptacek
He is biologically prevented from understanding some of these reasons as his
prefrontal cortext is still not fully developed. At least, that's how I
understand it.

------
brg
After hiring committee one day, we digressed into a discussion of the value of
a high GPA from university. One of my colleagues made the point that the value
of an individual with a high GPA from a four year degree is that you know the
person will get done what needs to get done.

To have a high GPA, a student needs to finish term papers on subjects they
have no interest in, they need to study for exams in language for which they
have no intention of using again, he will read books by authors he disagrees
with and toil into the night on problem sets that have little perceivable
utility.

But in the end they will get it done, and if they maintained a high GPA they
have shown that he will get it done year over year and always with high
quality.

So a high GPA often means that they are not lazy and self centered. It often
means a candidate will not sit idle because a task is beneath her, and she
will not pigeonhole on a perfecting an ancillary module when there are better
things to do.

A student who does not do what is required, who would fritter away on self
entertainment via music or finger painting is not someone who can be relied
on.

~~~
wtallis
Do you really want to hire somebody whose most notable talent is their ability
to bullshit their superiors and tell them what they want to hear?

~~~
jussij
The unfortunate reality is in a lot of (big) organisation people who can
bullshit progress the furthest.

I've worked with plenty of managers that would rather not know the truth if it
meant having to deal with a problem.

To them denial is bliss.

------
DanBC
> “My teacher didn’t like the project, because I put it on the wrong size
> paper.”

> It is boring and condescending and even my son, at the age of twelve, can
> figure out that the rules are arbitrary, that they are enforced in a
> haphazard fashion

Unfortunately, and it should not be like this, life is full of situations
where rules are arbitrary, and applied in a haphazard fashion, often by people
who are idiots.

Your son is right. But it is important for him to learn how to deal with these
people, otherwise he is himself up for a life of frustration and pain and
disappointment.

When attempting homework there are 3 things he needs to do.

i) Work out what dull arbitrary rules are being enforced, and obey these.

ii) Do the homework.

iii) If possible find interest in the homework. Expand it to other subjects,
understand why it's useful, where it comes from, who uses it in their day to
day life, or what it's been replaced by.

You can try the Phil Beadle books - his style might be too annoying for you.
([http://www.amazon.com/Phil-
Beadle/e/B0034NOMOU/ref=ntt_athr_...](http://www.amazon.com/Phil-
Beadle/e/B0034NOMOU/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1))

School does really suck for some people. There are lots of things that
education based startups could address. It'll be tricky to get any change in
education because it is so heavily political.

------
Yaa101
School is only interested into that the kid submits to authority and will be
scared of authority the rest of his life, because the people that make up
school all are what they want the kid to be, they are more afraid even of the
kid than authority.

The parent describes a fantastic kid and should trust the kid and make sure to
soften the impact of that school and prepare the kid for better times after
school.

In my country in Europe there are schools that care about natural curiosity
and will not try to kill it, I don't know about the situation in the US where
this takes place.

------
olympus
There's a story from Gene Woolsey that I had to read my senior year in college
(I was an Ops Research major, and Gene Woolsey is a pretty big deal in that
field). The story went something like this:

A group of students had just finished a big research project and were told to
present a one page executive summary that outlined their work, results, and
conclusions. They couldn't quite get it to fit on one page, so their executive
summary was two pages, but the second page was only 1/8th full. No big deal,
right? They showed up to meet with the head of the company that was sponsoring
their research, and handed him the paper. He rips off the second page and
throws it in the trash (losing a good portion of their conclusions). The head
of the company reads the first page, then stops and says, "This summary is
incomplete. Where are your conclusions?" The team was dumbfounded, and lost a
few points on their grade because they didn't follow the rules.

The moral of the story is: FOLLOW THE G __D __* RULES. If you want to use a
different kind of paper, ask your teacher first. If you need an extension on
the due date, ask your teacher first. If the guidance says to write a one page
summary, do not write a two page summary. It's fine to be creative, but don't
change the rules on your own because you don't have the authority to change
the rules. In most things it is easier to ask permission than it is to ask
forgiveness.

It's not unusual to not want to do homework, but a lot of people in this
modern generation think that it's okay to get bad grades and just blame it on
the fact that they are not "book smart." Just about every movie marketed
towards young people is a variation of the theme where a kid is secretly a
prodigy but the "system" didn't realize it somehow. That is not how it works
in real life. For every kid who skips all his homework and gets bad grades but
is secretly Will Hunting there are a thousand kids or more who are getting bad
grades and are going to end up flipping burgers as a career. It's time to
start spanking your kids so they'll get better grades and won't suck at life.

Btw, here's a link to the book if you want to read some stories from an actual
genius: <http://www.lionhrtpub.com/books/wp1.html>

~~~
pyre

      | If you want to use a different kind of paper, ask
      | your teacher first
    

To be fair, it's a math class. The size of paper used is the stupidest thing
to grade someone on. It would be like the physics world throwing out
Einstein's conclusions because he used blue ink instead of black.

I understand the value of 'gaming the system,' but the size the paper used for
a math assignment is probably something that didn't get a lot of emphasis when
the teacher was assigning it. That said, do you really want to sit back and
'game the system' rather than trying to improve it? Such arbitrary decision-
making on the part of the teacher really detracts from their effectiveness.
Not only that, it just sounds like something that is teacher-specific. I doubt
that the school as a whole is trying to reach for some overriding goal that is
served by punishing children for using the wrong sized paper on homework
assignments.

~~~
btilly
To be fair, the teacher has a stack of assignments which is probably put in
and transported around in a pile. Something on the wrong paper size will be a
major PITA. (I prefer this theory over the teacher feeding them into a scanner
so that someone in India can do the grading, but that theory would also make
paper size important.)

Life is full of incredibly arbitrary criteria that actually make sense in
terms of someone else's workflow. You don't know that workflow, you're just
given rules to follow. It is best to follow those rules, no matter how stupid
they are.

~~~
pyre
I could see the teacher giving a warning that the next time it should be the
correct size, rather than a zero-tolerance paper size policy, especially when
the child put forth so much effort on the homework. Teachers are supposed to
encourage learning and interest in the material.

I realize that sometimes we just have to follow arbitrary rules, but the
attitude of, "keeping one's head down," is not how change happens.

~~~
btilly
Do you know that said warning had not been already given and this wasn't "next
time"?

Do you know that the teacher had not clearly stated to the class what the
penalties would be for the wrong paper size?

In either case I can see the teacher acting as described. And wouldn't fault
the teacher for doing so. If, indeed, the teacher was enforcing an arbitrary
rule which had not been clearly communicated, then I would fault the teacher.
But I suspect this was not the case. The rule was present and the kid was
supposed to know it, but forgot.

------
vonskippy
Paying bills is stupid. Cleaning house is boring. Going to work EVERY day is
stupid. Following rules is stupid. Doing what you're told is stupid. etc etc
etc.

Bwahahaha - your kid is screwed. The world is full of arbitrary and down right
stupid rules (assuming he ever gets a job, he'll love the tax codes that apply
to him, but not to rich people or corporations).

You need to straighten out his young punk ass - and do it now.

Before you say "but what about his mad art/music skillz", I'm afraid I'd need
an outside expert to qualify those before I believe they exist. I put my 8
year old daughter's artwork on my office wall and tell her it's beautiful -
lucky (for her and me) shes a whiz at science and will get a real job later in
life.

No one succeeds in life that can't even manage to get a measly high school
degree from a "see spot run" public school.

You are the parent - NOT the twelve year old - what part of that escapes you?

Maybe it's time for private school, where the whole "leave no moron behind"
concept doesn't exist. Obviously you and the kids present school system have
already failed. Maybe it's not too late for the kid.

~~~
moron4hire
art is not a real job?

~~~
epochwolf
For a lot of artists, unfortunately it's not. They need to have a job to
support their art habit/hobby.

~~~
moron4hire
Perhaps that is because they focused too much on so-called "real" work and
never developed their art enough to make a living. Perhaps they need so much
money because they went to a university to learn what is free at any library.

~~~
epochwolf
Or no one is willing to pay enough for their skills.

~~~
moron4hire
There's the problem. You're focused on selling skills, rather than works.
Selling your labor is going to ensure you stay a wage slave.

~~~
ordinary
Yet your user name contains the words 'for hire'. ;)

------
brudgers
A few years ago, I read _The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families,
Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning_ by Kralovec and Buell. The authors
build a well-presented case against homework for children younger than high-
school age based upon their claims that there is little evidence that homework
for younger children has any long or short term benefit.

The authors observe that homework is disruptive to family dynamics because it
is an ongoing source of conflict between parents and their children. They also
observe that the primary reason schools assign homework to younger children is
because parents demand it. Both of these observations are consistent with my
experience both within my own family and my observations of the families of my
child's peers.

On the other hand, I have no way of verifying or denying the author's claims
about homework studies failing to demonstrate long term benefits from
homework.

Overall, I am glad I read it because it gave me some perspective on the issue.
My son still is responsible for doing his homework, and we as parents clearly
communicate this to him. Anyway, if you're parenting, I'd say it's perhaps
worth checking out.

As an aside, I strongly recommend Juliet Schor's _Born to Buy: The
Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture_ about the way corporations
have come to market to children - and it's probably only gotten worse with
them having online lives.

End of Homework: [http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Homework-Disrupts-
Overburdens/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Homework-Disrupts-
Overburdens/dp/0807042196/ref=sr_sp-
atf_image_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1370231905&sr=8-3&keywords=book+end+homework)

Born to Buy: [http://www.amazon.com/Born-Buy-Commercialized-Consumer-
Cultu...](http://www.amazon.com/Born-Buy-Commercialized-Consumer-
Culture/dp/0684870568/ref=sr_sp-
atf_title_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370232915&sr=8-1&keywords=born+to+buy)

------
Spooky23
Unfortunately, you need to deal with chickenshit sometimes. I was a history
nut in high school -- I received perfect scores on all of the Regents exams
(state tests in NY), and got 5's on two history AP exams, one of which I
didn't take the class for. It was my passion.

But I did receive a "C" in Global studies class my junior year -- because my
binder didn't have the tabs organized correctly. (Wrong colors, wrong order)
My classmates even complained, because I could have taught the class!

End of the day, it didn't affect my life much, gives me a funny story to tell,
and prepared me for the bureaucratic hazing that was to come from the State
University of New York. As long as your son understands that less than perfect
grades will keep him out of Stanford, Harvard, etc, relax.

------
gz5
Schools are still centered on producing industrial revolution outcome -
factory workers. See Seth Godin and others for much more on this topic.

------
parsec
This article is horrible.

Of course parents think their kids drawings are cute, and their music is
wonderous. But unless he is truly virtuoso, or actually has a photographic
memory as suggested, he should probably learn some maths as well, and you as a
parent should work as hard as you can to get him excited about things that
will get him a job instead of rubbing off your callous despisery of "academics
and investment bankers" on him. (Seriously... "homogenized and brainwashed",
"almost completely without originality of thought or perspective", "good
little cog in a habitual big wheel"... what makes you hate academics so
deeply?) The entire world is in recession right now, you really think
cartoonery is going to get him hired faster than a strong math and science
background?

But let's pretend that parabolas actually are worthless and boring (God forbid
I ever learn your opinion of Gaussians, Betas, Erfs, Einastos, Hernquists,
Exponentials, etc.). Sounds like the real issue is the educational system, not
the content. Don't for an instant try to say that Music and Maths are not
intimately related. Look for gifted or accelerated programs, try to get him
enrolled in a Millenium / Magnet school, just try to get him excited.

Seriously though, you should hold your tongue when talking about academics.
You really think Bohr was homogenized? Was Tesla brainwashed? Was Von Braun a
cogwheel? I guarantee people find my "art" just as amusing as your kids little
shark doodle.

------
Diamons
Really can't help much but here's my story. I've gone through the majority of
high school and college (I'm a junior next semester) without doing much of my
homework. I'll do the occasional essay that's worth 20% of your grade or
whatever and I won't miss exams, but I won't read (or even buy) the assigned
books and responses. I do this because I have much more interesting stuff I
like to work on instead of wasting time on homework, but I got along fine. I
maintain a steady 3.4 GPA without doing any readings/more than half my
homeworks/missing a lot of days of school simply because I feel like it. I
value certain things above school.

I say this because I truly believe your son will be fine. People like him are
creative and genius way beyond comprehension. They simply refuse to do things
the way they are supposed to be done, and that's the sign of someone who's
going to be successful one day or another, just not when the definition of
success is doing what everyone else is doing how everyone else is doing it.

------
MetaCosm
First of all... June 2007 article.

Secondly, school is a system, government is a system, large corporations are
systems, learning to survive and advance within systems is valuable. Outright
revolt as an individual is generally purposeless, use that creativity to find
way to minimize effort while maximizing gain.

I learned this trick far too late in my school career!

------
protomyth
I have no understanding of why schools are allowed to assign homework in the
first place. The kid is at school 7 hours and then most schools try to assign
a couple of hours of homework on top of that. I seem to remember a work / life
balance thread about working over 40 hours a week is bad. So, why is it ok for
our children?

------
snowwrestler
If I can impart one thing I've learned in my life to my child, it will be
this: no one cares how smart or talented you are. They care about what you do.
What you accomplish.

Some of the things you accomplish are great things that only you could do--
your life's work. Accomplishing these will among the greatest experiences of
your life.

But a lot of the things you accomplish will seem pointless and boring. Doesn't
matter--you still need to do them. In school it's homework; in real life it's
time sheets, contracts, taxes, auto registration, insurance, memos, etc.
Accomplishing these will suck... _but you still need to do them_. In fact
failing to do so is a good way to keep yourself from having the opportunity to
accomplish great things.

------
jcampbell1
“My teacher didn’t like the project, because I put it on the wrong size
paper.”

Either you are bullshitting, or you better learn what size paper to do your
homework on. Winning is easier than being right, and winning is much more fun.

I don't have a teenage kid, but there I think there are two thing that are
important.

1) Acquiring new knowledge should be self-rewarding. 2) Winning is fun.

This parent seems to have a kid that hasn't experienced the joy of the #2. He
seems to actively prevent his kid from winning because he thinks winning is
wrong. This is a common theme where parents constrain their children to do no
better than themselves.

Children of immigrants tend to be incredibly successful because their parents
have no such inhibitions.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
> Winning is easier than being right, and winning is much more fun.

Hence why we have a society full of puppets with new cars in the garage.

What an awful way to think, I'm disgusted by your reasoning. For whatever
meaning of "winning" you have, life only matters if you do what you believe
in, otherwise it's not worth living.

~~~
jcampbell1
I am sorry. I wrote that from the wrong perspective. I was raised in a tiny
town in the southern US, where being "right" has something to do with
"praising jesus". Thanks to my parents, I was encouraged to "win" and now I
live in NYC, and have a great job, a wife I love and respect, and an awesome
daughter.

My point is not about right vs. winning, it is more about giving your children
the tools to do well in any environment.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
Well, that I agree with.

------
jspiros
This story reminds me of my experience growing up and going to public school
in Ohio (in the United States). When I did classwork, I did it very well. When
I took tests, I was always in the top of my class (which led to me being in
the highest-level classes offered at my schools). And when it came to class
participation, the teachers always had praise for me. I spent most of my time
outside of school learning new things from books, the internet, and everyone
around me.

But I almost never did my homework.

This was almost the sole source of strife between my mother and I, and between
both of us and school administrators. Going from 8th to 9th grade required a
special exception, and recommendations from almost every one of my teachers,
as my GPA was below the point normally required to progress to the next grade.
I am lucky in that the teachers I had were sympathetic enough to stand up for
me, and confident in my abilities using other methods of evaluation.

We (my mother and I) considered other schools, other formats of school, but in
the end we settled on something modeled after Unschooling. When I was
13-going-on-14, halfway through my 9th grade year (freshman year of high
school in the United States), my mother took me out of school using the legal
provision for homeschooling. As she was a single working mother, I spent the
rest of the years that my peers were in high school learning things on my own
and seeking out my own learning opportunities. (A year or so later, I learned
C, Objective-C, and the Cocoa frameworks and started a Mac applications
business a year or so later with friends I met on the internet.)

Granted, I had the following things going for me: a supportive mother,
generally being "well-behaved", living in a small town where it was safe to
leave me to my own devices, living in a college town which gave me access to
more learning resources, and an in-built self-motivated learning style. I also
think it helped that I went through the public school system for many years
before I left, as it meant I had friends and a social life that stuck with me
even after leaving the school itself. So, I'm sure it's not for everyone, but
for some, and maybe OP's son, it's worth considering.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling>

------
guylhem
The core problem in the blog post is the (perceived) arbitrary judgement of
the value of the work.

Let's suppose the parent evaluation is right, which is not self evident given
how the emotional attachments impairs judgement.

The article says the work was poorly graded because the paper was not of the
"right size".

We can suppose that the grader either a) didn't have the time to properly
grade b) had to follow strict and pointless rules even if they were evidently
stupid c) had a poor judgement.

The c case is the biggest problem - when an evaluation fonction returns wrong
results. b and a could be special cases of c (not having a schedule or
following stupid rules could be having a poor judgement)

Now let's think for a minute than N% of the graders are giving results that
are no better than random assessment of the pupils.

Given how, in a schoolchildren life, a number of educators will be met, N% of
the results will be meaningless (apply statistics, SD, etc.)

Now think of those randomly declared having "good grades" become graders
(teachers) themselves.

I wonder how the equilibrium works out in a society - at which value of N will
society turn education from acquiring knowledge to jumping through hoods and
having a certificate in witchcraft (replace witchcraft by anything you think
is wrong and pointless)

[Even worse- think, if for example the school district is poor and recruts
graders of a lesser quality, that this raises to (N+X)%]

------
mgkimsal
I've been there, as a kid, and I get his frustration (well, both the parent's
and kid's). As much as homework sucks, and following the rules sucks, it's
something everyone has to do at some point. Learning how to do it, and
acknowledge it for what it is, is important.

I can remember all of about 15 days between 1st and 11th grades where I
actually did _homework_ , as in, did school work at home. The rest of the
time, I did whatever exercises/sheets/etc that needed to be handed in on the
bus or during class before we went home. The 15 days - I remember having to go
to the library to read up on some topics to write papers, and I remember
having a few essays which took a bit of time to write longhand (and eventually
word processed on a computer later).

It wasn't until 12th grade that the assignments got hard enough that I ever
struggled. By then it was somewhat too late - I didn't have any really strong
innate ability to _study_ something for more than a few minutes. Now today,
that might not even matter at some level, with all answers a google away, but
I think it still takes time to really study and learn a subject/problem/etc.

The ability to focus yourself on something - anything - and get through the
hard stuff you don't care about before getting to the stuff you might enjoy -
that's a discipline I didn't have, and it took me many more years to get it
back, even for things I _wanted_ to get more involved in. Developing this
habit/skill at a younger age _will_ pay dividends, but it's hard for kids to
appreciate that. The OP's kid may be mature enough in some ways to at least
consider this angle - logically - when homework comes up. Do the stupid
exercises on the size paper they want with the stupid number 2 pencil.

Learn to adapt to whatever requirements are put before you _quickly_ and _with
little fuss_ \- focusing on the intellectual aspects first. As someone else
mentioned, those are eventually mandatory in just about all walks of life, so
learning to roll with that will help.

It's possibly similar to healthy eating and exercise. Especially for kids -
they can 'eat anything' and not get fat, stay thin, etc. Eventually, that goes
away, and learning to eat healthy and exercise is something you have to adapt
to to remain in good health. If you have a better grounding in healthy eating
and physical fitness from a young age, it's not a big deal.

------
alex_doom
Even though this is from 5 years ago I hear this argument from many people
with kids. I think it's a bit of a cop out, and feels like they want
recognition that their child is special and deserves attention.

No one ever looks at this from a teachers perspective. They are caught in the
middle of trying to help children with wide variety of learning styles and the
political machine of a school district learning mandate. They can only do so
much to help. If a parent feels their child doesn't fit the mold and thinks
the system is rigged, they should help their child understand how the school
system work and how that relates to the rest of the working world. Where
nearly everything else is based on metrics.

If they feel their child understand the material but the tests and homework
are causing problems, find the path that accomplishes the goals of a passing
grades. You'd be surprised if you just ask, that a teacher will tell you what
they are going to be grading on. Is it just test or is it an overall judgement
of how the child is doing?

As a kid I figured out that the key to "doing well" was to impress by showing
off in areas where you really do excel. Is the child more creative? Then
answer the homework or tests with creative answers and get the answer they are
looking for but done in a fashion that may be different than what was
expected. Do they have to do a book report? Make that look better than every
other kid in class.

In short I pretty much skated through middle school and high school by doing
the bare minimum to achieve an C but impressed in other creative areas that
demonstrated effort and ability to comprehend the material.

Anyway that's my rant.

------
jacalata
So, if we take the author at his word, then either the teacher had an
unwritten rule for the size of the paper, or the student and the author both
somehow managed to not read or to forget this rule. If it's a, then rules
lawyer the hell out of the idiot teacher. If it's b, then looks like both of
them are bad at details and instructions, which is a skill that certainly
deserves some attention. So why was that the end of the story?

~~~
aspensmonster
Probably because it doesn't matter if it was one of the instructions or not,
because it's entirely irrelevant to anything other than an arbitrary "follow
instructions" assignment. Coincidentally that sort of assignment is precisely
what the author complains about.

~~~
jacalata
And reading and writing are irrelevant to whether the kid could do the
equations, but if he doesn't have either skill then he needs help, not just
for dad to say the teacher is mean. I consider understanding arbitrary rules
to be similarly as basic a skill.

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SurfScore
I completely agree on most things in school being useless, especially
homework. However, I don't know of a single career path one can take where
they never have to do boring, monotonous, or simply annoying things to
succeed. CEOs have to handle investors and bullshit politics, professional
athletes have to practice and work out, and even rich retired people had to do
plenty of stupid pointless things to get to that point. Shit, even the Queen
of England has to make appearances I'm sure she'd rather skip.

Don't frame the homework as something he has to do to learn what he already
knows, frame it as a stepping stone. If he doesn't do his homework, he will
fail out of school. If he fails out of school, his chances of doing what he
loves severely diminish (and having to work at Taco Bell is a lot worse than
homework). Doing to homework now is the gateway to never having to do homework
again.

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kenster07
The primary goal of the education system should be to prepare students to
reach their full potential in the real world. It is not achieving this goal
optimally. The best and brightest are often stuck being taught the same
material, at the same rate as the median student. We had to spend a year
learning Algebra I, for some ungodly reason. How many of us could have learned
it in literally one month? How many of us could have finished our entire high
school's math curriculum in a year? Why should the A we could have gotten in
one month be equated to the A of a person who needed a full school year to
learn it?

Food for thought.

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lpvn
My theory is that some people have a threshold of 'pointlessness aversion'
inadequate to the western school system. The son of the author is like that:
he finds his homework useless so he won't do it. Perhaps we should admit that
our society is too harsh with certain groups of people who happen to lack some
abilities, I know it's been this way throughout the whole human history but
since we reached an advanced level of material development we should at least
reconsider this social dynamic.

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kjhughes
Sugata Mitra believes that our education model, including the emphasis on
rule-following, isn't broken but works to address the Victorian needs of the
"bureaucratic administrative machine" of the British empire.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html)

His Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE) provides an alternative
approach.

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gpf
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_model>

From personal experience with a similar situation. It's a major leap of faith,
but you'd be surprised what a kid can do in an environment that permits them
to.

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gibbitz
not leaving high school for a GED and college my sophomore year was the
biggest mistake I ever made. I'm never getting those two years back. I'm also
not getting the 10 years of college back either. I taught myself what I do for
a living and very little of my education led to where I am today. Intellectual
curiosity is what created the text books we spoon feed our kids and is the
most important trait that can be fostered in them. It will put food on their
tables and advance the human race beyond where it is today. I just try to keep
this in perspective while raising my two daughters.

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datz
guy I hate to say it - but is is either school or other talents. you can't
half ass both and get away with it. it is either C student and entrepreneur-
facilitating, marketable outside talents or A student and no-little outside
talents. B student and mediocre outside talents will lead to mediocracy and
failure. so decide which you want to encourage. i would go for outside talents
but you better make damn sure your son has the right tutor, influences, and
environment to hone his natural inclinations outside the traditional academic
system.

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niknak24
I don't have kids, and am self taught in my choice of profession. If he
doesn't want to do certain things then he won't, I'm sure he will be
successful without specific qualifications.

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chubbard
So the author doesn't believe in homework or at least admits he thinks its
pointless, and so does his son. My my my I wonder where a smart little boy
learned that from?

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kuenx
I stopped doing my homework when I was twelve, too. Or maybe eleven. I started
again when I went to technical colleague. Worked out well.

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jostmey
We learn math & science because it gives us electricity, airliners, and
computers. Enough said.

~~~
gruseom
If that were the reason, they would never have existed in the first place.

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joyeuse6701
mm, This may be minutae to some, but I think it's important: Learning math is
not tedium. By that I mean gaining the problem solving skills and the mindset
required for mathematics is invaluable. Jeopardy facts however I can't defend.

------
simulate
It would be interesting to learn how his son is doing today, six years later.

------
moron4hire
How do you win a rigged game? Stop playing the game and make everyone else
play your game.

According to my parents, I was exactly like your son in the mid 80s. They
homeschooled me to make sure I wasn't held back from my potential.

It wasn't without its challenges, but nothing is. I'm doing pretty well now. I
had a brief foray into "doing what I was told" in college, and figured out it
was not going to get me to graduate with the grades I wanted, so I found an
adviser who understood me, who would trust I could take care of myself and
just sign off on my self-directed path through my degree. I had a longer foray
after college (it seems I learn certain lessons slowly) and eventually grew so
sick of getting up early every morning and driving an hour to work in shitty
traffic that I just quit.

I quit everything for almost a year. For a year, I worked the hardest I've
ever worked on whatever I wanted. And it got me nowhere.

Except...

Except it taught me that the world can't destroy me. It taught me that I'm
capable of so much and it is only myself to blame for submitting to bosses or
procrastination for not getting it done (and really, doing what your boss
tells you to do is a form of procrastination). Everyone told me I was going to
be ruined, that I'd not find work again because I'd been off so long "in this
economy!" Dire consequences were in store for me, to not grovel at the feet of
the recruiters, to not beg for my old job back. Bunch of lily-livered cowards.
No such thing happened, and the idea is patently absurd. No, the only thing
that can destroy me is myself.

I see all these people saying "You gotta pay your dues" and "sometimes you
just have to suck it up and do what you're told".

And it is such complete and utter fucking bullshit. You don't have to do a
single god damn thing you don't want to in this world. The world won't destroy
you. You gotta buy this car to drive to work, drive to work to pay for this
car. Yeah, screw that. What the hell do you need a degree for when the only
people who are getting anywhere in this world are doing it by starting
companies and getting out of the rat race? What the hell do you need a
recruiter for when the only jobs they have to give you are going to make you a
miserable son of a bitch?

What the hell do you need anything for? All you really need is a pencil and
some paper, and the only reason you need that is because it's the only way to
communicate with enough people. Write. Write. Write. Draw. Compose. Program.
Mathematicate. A robot can dig a ditch for you, so why are you digging
ditches? Do the one thing that humans can do that computers cannot: create.
Don't let anyone tell you what to create. Create whatever you want. People
fail not because they fail to create the right things, they fail because they
fail to create _anything_.

And to all you people in here, talking about "you have to play the game,"
"that's the system," "deal with it": you're certainly free to ruin your own
life, but leave the poor, damn kids alone.

~~~
ef4
> And to all you people in here, talking about "you have to > play the game,"
> "that's the system," "deal with it": you're > certainly free to ruin your
> own life, but leave the poor, > damn kids alone.

It's a defense mechanism. Some people _need_ to believe that being a good
little cog was their only option. Because the alternative is to admit that
they find real freedom terrifying.

------
swayvil
Sounds like the kid values his time.

