

Ask HN: What was homework like for you? - japhyr

I teach high school math and science. Next week we&#x27;re going to rewrite our homework policy, and I&#x27;m curious to hear HN&#x27;s perspective on homework.<p>Good homework policies can strengthen people&#x27;s understanding and skills, and even lead to lasting friendships as people form study groups. Bad homework policies can contribute to family conflicts that last for years, and build resentment toward school and learning.<p>What was your homework experience like? What was your best homework-related experience, and your worst? If you were implementing a new homework policy, what would you write into it?
======
JoeAltmaier
I told my children to do exactly enough homework to understand the subject,
then stop. No busy work; no endless worksheets. If they weren't sure they
understood, just ask.

You see, we had a busy family, with sports and Scouts and hobbies and trips.
We didn't abdicate our life planning to their school teacher(s). We planned,
and learned and performed and worked. If homework fit into that, fine. If not,
fine.

Teacher, take your 8 hours and use them efficiently. Lecture less and do
problems more. Have study time at school. Because you get those 8 hours and no
more.

How did it turn out? One former soldier, back at University studying
Mechanical Engineering. One MSCS grad at a startup in Silicon Valley. One
musician (played cello for city orchestra in High School; soloed on NPR, you
may have heard him) turned CS in college.

~~~
japhyr
This sounds great; I wish more parents would advocate for their children in
the face of poorly-designed homework policies.

How much conflict did you have with your children's teachers over the years?
How much conflict did your kids have with their teachers as a result of this?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
My wife took the brunt of the conflict. She took the position of presenting
our plan to the teachers, not asking for permission. Teachers cautioned her,
cajoled and complained. They even gave bad grades. But we had our act
together, told the teachers Thanks for your input but we're doing it our way,
supported the kids and let them know our family was different. Kids accepted
that, because kids don't know anything else but how our family does it.

My favorite was when my wife took our 5th grader out of a class each week for
a lesson with our local cello master (his only student below college level).
He was well beyond grade level already, so the class was no loss to him. By
that time the teacher was resigned, accepted it without a murmur.

Rereading that comment, I disagree with 'poorly designed homework policy'. Any
homework is a complete misapprehension of school's place in a family's life.

~~~
japhyr
_They even gave bad grades._

Did this have any lasting impact? I get really frustrated when grades are used
more as punishment for behavior, even academic behaviors, than they are used
to represent actual learning.

 _Any homework is a complete misapprehension of school 's place in a family's
life._

I believe a good policy is grounded in teaching the role that learning outside
of class time plays in your life. Some students get this from their parents;
many don't. I believe a cornerstone of a good hw policy is allowing students a
significant amount of choice in what they do outside of school; a student's
overall learning should align with their stated academic and life goals.

I completely agree a school should not attempt to mandate what happens at
home.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
My kids got their self-image from their parent's support. Grades were just a
number, seen once each term, that reflected what their teacher thought. Almost
unrelated to their actual learning.

~~~
mod
You sound like an awesome dad. This is the correct perspective on grades.

I wasn't allowed to get Bs. There were repercussions. I think my dad just took
the lazy route, and it's easier to take the teachers' word that your kids are
learning than to make sure yourself.

When I talk to with-it high-schoolers I make a point to question grades.
Nobody cares, so long as you pass. Grades are incredibly easy to manipulate,
anyhow, as evidenced by the jaw-dropping number of absolutely clueless high-
school graduates there are.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
To be clear, I don't mean to denigrate teachers. Teachers have tasks of
teaching, evaluating and communicating that are not all done in equal measure.
The grade can reflect noise in any of those activities. Its better to check
yourself, than trust a one-dimensional grade.

Nor to denigrate parents. There's enough to do raising children, monitoring
their schoolwork is not the top priority for everyone. I've had the luxury of
a good paying job in a first world economy.

------
lettergram
I have an article you may want to read,

[http://austingwalters.com/please-excuse-my-
grammar/](http://austingwalters.com/please-excuse-my-grammar/)

I almost never did "homework" prior to college, the one exception being that I
read everything that was assigned in my school (in every class). I barely
graduated and almost dropped out in the junior year of high school. I only
passed with the help of several teachers and my knowledge that, "well, the
public education system is awful."

That being said, I have a slightly different perspective than many.

I don't think homework is a good idea, daily quizzes (during every class), is
the best way to learn. 5 minutes at the start of every class to show people
what to focus on (make this worth an extra credit point or something). Then
the last 5 - 10 minutes make give quiz that covers the material.

This ensures that the 8 hours a day people are in school, are the only time
they are working on "studying." Let's be honest, no kid really wants to do
homework or bashing their head into their homework after
football/band/dance/etc practice.

I should note, that I had worked my way through several programming books, a
calculus/physics books, and had read a hundred or so books in my junior year
(50 or so were technical/business). This is the same year I nearly dropped
out, because I never did anything in school.

~~~
essofluffy
You sound like me, but I'm still in high school currently in my sophmore year.
What advice would you give to your high school self?

~~~
idoh
I'm not the OP but I did similar things and had similarly bad grades. Now I am
doing well for myself, so the stories about how I got kicked off the track
team for academic ineligibility or had a college pull an admissions offer due
to bad grades senior year are funny and amusing anecdotes.

Anyway, looking back here is what I wished I did: try to build relationships
with the teachers. Use every chance during school to talk with them and get to
know them. If they have a personal connection then they have a lot of freedom
to help you out. Feel free to zig while other people zag. It's OK to let
everyone else compete for the top grades, just stay hungry and do an awesome
job and get really excited by your own thing.

Also, homework really sucks. But in all honesty and seriousness, I really wish
I had done my math homework. Math is such an important skill, and there really
is no other way to learn it than to just suck it up and do the problem sets.

------
cafard
My parents were surprised to learn that I imagined homework to be optional.
This would have been third grade or so, and the teacher did not at all
consider it optional. I was pretty slack about homework even after that, not
at all to my benefit, until I was in my 30s, back in school part time to learn
computer stuff. A crappy grade on a test changed my attitude, and I became a
homework fanatic, to my benefit. So my own best homework experiences came when
I was grown, and motivated to make very sure that I understood the material.

The most interesting contrast that I have seen was between a couple of Latin
teachers who taught my son in middle school and high school. One believed in
piling it on, and gave long sheets of words to look up and define. The other
gave a fair bit of homework, too, but I could look at her assignments and see
what she was trying to convey to the students that week or month or term.

If I were writing a new homework policy, I would ask that the teachers justify
every assignment by specifying what it is intended to convey or reinforce. I
would be open to allowing students to test out of homework by scoring high on
weekly quizzes.

------
smt88
I should preface this by saying that there's a huge amount of education
research published every year, and it generally falls on deaf ears. (Some of
my friends do this research, and it's obviously very dispiriting for them.) I
hope that the anecdotes you collect here will simply be a supplement to a
review of that research. There are many professors and non-profits that would
love to help you.

I also want to say that I'm strongly against traditional homework structure.
I'm a huge proponent of a flipped classroom[1]. It decreases the
opportunity/incentive to cheat, makes learning more social, and uses the
teacher's time in a much more effective way.

Some background:

I come from a family of math geniuses (literally). I'm not one myself, but I
was still very above-average at my highly-ranked high school.

Because I "just got" math and science without any trouble, I almost never did
my homework. I loathed (and still loathe) tedious, repetitive work.

The result is that I'm much worse at math and science as an adult. I've
forgotten most of calculus and physics. Like all learning, it sticks better
with repetition.

My brother also skipped his homework. He's so good at math that he can figure
pretty much anything out -- there's no element of memorization, like there is
for some people. But it does take him longer because his experience at any
given math problem is limited or, in some cases, zero.

If he were a computer, you could say that his CPU is so powerful, he doesn't
have to rely much on RAM. Most humans (like myself), however, have lots of
available memory but much less CPU. Keeping some things in memory makes us a
lot faster.

All this is to say that your students, especially your smart ones, will rebel
against doing their homework. For that reason, I'd strongly recommend a
reliance on word problems.

First of all, word problems are much more like real-life problems. Second,
they keep things at least somewhat interesting. Even if the resulting
calculations are the same every time, there's some element of puzzle/mystery
(as well as variety) with a word problem.

I actually studied physics and calculus at the same time, and it made calculus
much more interesting when I was always able to connect it to real-world
physical problems. I imagined my own context around the dry numbers on the
worksheets.

So if you do have traditional, take-home homework, try to minimize the
monotony, even if the repetitiveness is there by necessity.

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom)

~~~
japhyr
_I hope that the anecdotes you collect here will simply be a supplement to a
review of that research._

Definitely. We're a small alternative school, of about 30 students. We're
planning to revise our policy with students. We're going to collect student
stories about homework first, then look at some research, then look at a few
exemplary policies, and then draft our own. We'll include some measures of
whether the policy is meaningful or not as well; a policy that isn't followed
well is meaningless.

I feel strongly that people's stories put the research in context. Knowing
personal stories around homework makes the research much more meaningful and
relevant to students.

 _All this is to say that your students, especially your smart ones, will
rebel against doing their homework._

Yes! They already do, because many of them have been burned by years of bad
homework policies. We're trying to undo the effect of those bad policies, and
build a positive mindset around doing meaningful work that students are
interested in outside of class time.

~~~
smt88
If you work very closely with the parents and get them on board, you'll stand
a much better chance of getting the homework done (even if the student doesn't
enjoy it).

I've known friends' parents who believed all their kids' homework was being
done or that it was busy work, so they never monitored it or forced their kid
to do it.

------
cylinder
We consider homework as adults in the workplace to be a particularly strong
type of stress and a sign of failed work/life balance. Why do we assume
homework is then acceptable for _children_ who've just spent 8 hours sitting
down learning?

------
Pyrodogg
My primary school education was at a small rural church school. We had 3
classrooms for grades 1-8. I believe it was mostly broken into 1-2, 3-5, 6-8.

The teacher for one of the rooms would have to break up the day to teach
separate sub-sets of the room their own lessons. This wound up leaving ample
time to work solo and in small groups on assignments. I rarely had to make
schoolwork into homework.

While it was certainly a lot of work for the teacher to juggle, it also
prevented them from trying to consume too much of the students time with
active instruction. This is contrasted to the typical high school scenario
where students are bounced between multiple rooms throughout the day where
each teacher sees that they only have 40-60 minutes to cram their lesson
through.

I don't think I can emphasize enough how important it was to be to be able to
work on my 8th grade algebra homework on a couch cushion in the back of the
room while other kids were doing their science lesson.

Obviously the shared room model is directly akin to modern open office layouts
which are chaotic and can be confusing even for well leveled people.

I think my point is that kids should have plenty of unstructured time to do
the vast majority (if not all) of their work at school.

------
brudgers
Here's what the Center for Public Education has to say about homework:

[http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-
Menu/Instructio...](http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-
Menu/Instruction/What-research-says-about-the-value-of-homework-At-a-
glance/What-research-says-about-the-value-of-homework-Research-review.html)

What basis in the literature is there for the claims about homework policies?

------
sjs382
It's a much different world than it was even 10 years ago, when I was in
school.

I help raise my 14 year old nice and most of her non-math homework tends to be
typing questions directly into Google, and writing the first thing that makes
sense.

Sometimes we check her work, find that obvious, and discuss the answer.
Sometimes we don't.

The Googling of answers has caused many problems with vocabulary words, where
the words have slightly (or even vastly) different applications to different
domains.

If she gets something wrong, she quickly moves onto the next subject without
much reflection, because homework is usually graded on completeness (rather
than accuracy). From what she says, they rarely review homework in class, so
they never revisit subject areas that are problematic.

My #1 criticism with homework is that it's a tool that is used for
reenforcement, but that sometimes the wrong methods/ideas/facts are
reenforced.

~~~
sjs382
There was a teacher in middle school that I remember fondly that had a great
homework policy.

His homework was never super time-consuming, but there was enough of it to
become a significant portion of the grade. The really interesting part though:
homework was corrected and returned with a grade, and the student had a chance
to fix the wrong answers and turn in their corrections for a new grade.

------
captn3m0
I detested homework at school, mostly because it involved writing selective
passages from textbooks as answers. I was among the smartest kids in school,
and yet almost never did my homework in time.

Best experiences were those I had in college when I was tasked to be creative
and present on topics. This involved a lot of research, something which I
enjoy.

My worst experience was when my school teacher shamed me, and made me do my
homework in school while sitting on the floor. I was crying the whole time.

As a side note, one very cool lifehack from one of my friends (while in
school): He used to skip saturdays (which were half-days anyway). He'd instead
stay at home and do stuff he loved to do (mostly circuits and reading). I
really found that an excellent way to inculcate self-learning. He wasn't
skipping essential stuff at school, and I found this really neat.

------
dhagz
I almost never did homework. Well, do homework, since I'm still in school. I'd
do some science stuff, and some writing stuff, but other than that I didn't
really do it. Especially in high school, my ability to bullshit and get by
through listening to the teacher's lectures was enough to have me pass all my
classes and end up in the top 15% of my graduating class.

I'd recommend using homework as a supplement, don't rely on it for teaching
the kids how to do stuff. Present it as something that will help them, but
isn't required. Maybe a bonus grade on top of your regular grades if you want.
I know if more of my teachers made homework optional and only beneficial, I
would have done all my homework.

~~~
eugeneross
If you got by not doing any or most of your homework, then it wasn't worth
that much points wise I would assume, right? Unlike you, I happen to be
obligated to go through numerous iterations of problems and sets just so I can
satisfy the 25% homework portion of the total course grade.

~~~
mod
I had classes where it would be even more than 25%, in high-school.

I had an anatomy class that was essentially busywork the entire year. He would
do a test-review on Friday which would correlate 1-to-1 with the actual test.
No missing, and no extra material in the review--no guesswork as to what might
be on the test. Taking notes on the review was given a grade, even (showing
him lengthy notes got you a 100%)--that's how important the busywork was.

"Piss on the learning, take these unnecessary notes!"

------
josephschmoe
My college classes gave me 1/5th the assignments my high school classes did.
It was usually less than 10% of the grade. For some classes, it was completely
optional.

My high school experience was the exact opposite. I had so much homework I had
to do it in other classes. It was horrible. Homework is not very effective as
a learning aid and is -extremely- time-consuming.

It also discriminates against working, poor and extra-curricular students, who
have less time outside of the classroom, especially if harder classes have
more homework. Virtually everyone in my AP classes had rich or at least upper
middle class parents. The same could be said for my college because of that.

------
lazyant
Not answering the question but I think homework should be, at least in part
about creating good study habits so that you prepare high-schoolers for
university.

They shouldn't last too long as to not overwhelm them as also avoid involving
parents.

------
rajacombinator
Everything taught in high school, except writing, is trivial, so the homework
doesn't really matter.

For non-trivial material, I found homework - ie. doing brutally painful
difficult work by myself - was the only way I learned anything. Structuring
that material in better ways is what separates great teachers from the rest.

As a math and science teacher, your focus should be on teaching non-trivial
material, not the social ramifications.

------
Excavator
Never done any homework but I'd say keep it focused and usable. Rather than
"homework" make it a project that is expected to use the knowledge garnered
since the previous project. Then use the "best" project as a recap during
lesson.

Most of my lesson time were spent sleeping as I live in the "slowest student
sets the pace" country of Sweden.

------
cweagans
Most of my classes were something like this:

\- No mandatory homework (not graded) \- Quizzes at the end of each week \-
Optional homework is designed to reinforce the concepts that were going to be
on the quiz at the end of the week.

If you understand the material, don't bother with the homework. If you don't,
do the homework and feel free to ask questions about it in class.

~~~
japhyr
This sounds like a pretty good policy. Was this high school or college?

~~~
cweagans
High school. I was running a web development business at the time, so the
teachers that didn't have this policy very rarely saw any homework from me.

My US Government class was awful. I passed all the tests with a > 90% grade,
but homework was such a big portion of the grade that I had to do some of it
(mostly crossword puzzles and word finds and things like that - very time
consuming and of minimal value). I passed the class with a 60.001%.

------
eutectate
If you want to make the work less boring and help it stick a lot better, then
you could use spaced repetition. For example, instead of testing just the
previous week's work, you might pick 1 third of the questions from the
previous week, 1 third from the week before, and 1 third randomly.

------
nosuchthing
In class reviews on homework assignments immediately after it's due.

Questions that are difficult to google and difficult to copy from another
classmate yet prove understanding of the subject.

Consider assigning shorter homework assignments more often, rather than time
consuming homework assignments less often.

------
widowlark
homework in junior high and high school was agonizing for me. So much
busywork, so little attention to actual students needs. I clearly loved to
learn and was extremely engaged in learning, yet so many teachers wrote my
curiosity off as a distraction. Only one teacher ever paid me any attention,
and through his support I was able to graduate with a year of college credits
under my belt, and ultimately got an Economics degree because of him.

He encouraged me to learn what I wanted to learn and the rest would fall in
line - after all the core subjects are needed for everything, so if you are
passionate about something the core understandings will follow your passion.

------
bazillion
Homework single-handedly contributed to turning me off to any pursuit of
college, because I grew to greatly resent any kind of busy work. It wasn't for
lack of knowledge or understanding, as this was evidenced by my flawless test
scores (and I eventually tested out of a college degree). But, I see homework
as helping to contribute towards socializing children into getting used to
doing repetitive tasks that don't really have a greater point (much like a lot
of people's jobs).

I've thought a lot on this over the years, and the ways I'd personally fix
this are:

1\. If you're going to have homework in your class, have a policy such that if
a student gets 85% or higher on a test, they don't need to do any homework
until the next test.

2\. Possibly have a system where homework doesn't actually count towards your
grade, but only can help your grade. This would help those who don't handle
the pressure of test taking well, and allow them to boost their grades up
through the homework.

3\. Have assignments that are longer form and more constructive, such as
writing papers over a period of a couple weeks, where the student can turn it
in at intervals to get feedback until they feel comfortable that the
assignment is in its final form. For a class like math, have the student write
a lesson teaching the actual thing that they're supposed to learn, and see if
another student in the class is able to read it and understand the subject
better.

4\. The hardest one -- applying new concepts to real world applications that
are in peoples' interest areas. I would have definitely perked up if someone
had drawn comparisons of concepts to how they would apply to game programming,
for instance (pretty much all basic math used in things like matrix
transformations/linear interpolations, raycasting, inertia) which took me a
whole lot of Khan Academy to start to understand much much after the fact.
What makes this the most difficult is that the teacher has to be incredibly
creative to pull this off, regardless of subject they're teaching. Can you
imagine an english assignment being writing dialogue branches for an RPG?

My final GPA in high school was 1.85, which basically forced me into the
military, forever changing my future. My end goal has now become to start a
program in high schools where students are funded to start their own business,
say for 10,000, and their absences of lack of completion of assignments are
deducted from their funding. At the end, they'd basically get to keep whatever
was left including what profit their business made. Still fleshing this one
out, but I think giving students basic knowledge of how businesses operate
through practical knowledge could drastically change their trajectories.

------
mod
I did homework on the bus in the morning before class, or in other classes,
but never at home. I hated spending 8-9 hours at school, plus bus time, and
then 1-2 hours at home doing even more work, it seemed ridiculous.

I sometimes enjoyed the material, in particular reading, almost regardless of
subject. I hated busywork, like "answer these questions about the
reading"\--which is the equivalent of a test. Just ask me on the test! Not to
mention people can copy that, and those who don't read WILL copy it. Those who
do read have no need to (assuming reading comprehension). It's not a measure
of anything.

The memorization of facts came easily to me and I didn't mind them because it
often turned my expected-1-hour assignment into a ten minute assignment. For
instance, in a vocabulary book I could read each word, and between being well-
read and having a good memory, it was very easy to fill in all the blanks.

My worst experiences were on some larger projects. One required that I typed &
printed a report, before computers were ubiquitous. I had no access, was
afraid to ask my dad to take me to a library, and had no friends with
computers. I got docked a letter grade for my lack of access, which my teacher
attributed more to laziness. I don't entirely blame him--most kids aren't
scared to ask their parents for things. Similarly, science projects were no
fun because they generally require either some investment or some creative
thinking, often on the part of parents. My dad was pissed to buy the folding
cardboard display, I could not ask for say, lumber and tools. One time I was
supposed to build a "one-string canned bean guitar"\---lumber, can, fishing
line, etc. Mine was absolutely awful and I was mortified to bring it into
class--and as expected I caught a lot of teasing for it. Anyway, not really
the fault of the school, but bad experiences nonetheless.

If I were implementing a homework policy I think I would make it optional. It
can be part of your grade or not--you can choose to have only tests / projects
/ labs / etc in your grade. If not optional, then not part of the grade.

In a typical college model there is no homework, and in my high school days,
homework was just equivalent to padding grades...weighted the tests less, but
everyone expected to get 100% or thereabouts on their homework, if they put in
the effort to actually do it.

I think your responses here will be skewed towards those who enjoy learning
for learning's sake, and that's something to account for. Everyone hates
homework & busywork, but for this crowd it probably wasn't necessary. I'd
argue that for some students it is, but I'd also personally argue that we
should refocus those students into something more practical, like vocational
programs.

~~~
japhyr
_In a typical college model there is no homework_

What did you study? I studied physics, and most of my classes were heavily
dependent on homework. It wasn't always part of the grade, but it was
something that was assigned and reviewed every class. Homework was done well
in my program, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was always meaningful and
interesting, it was never busywork, and it was always fairly tied to grades if
it was included in the class grade.

~~~
mod
Sorry, I meant graded homework. Much homework & self-study was expected, but
it wasn't graded outside of your knowledge on the test.

The kind of work you mention is the right kind of homework, particularly at
the college level.

------
grownseed
In early primary school (5-7 years old in France), we'd have around 30 hours
of classes a week. We'd start homework in class, with the teacher there to
help us understand the subjects at hand. We'd then go back home and finish
that, which would take between 30 minutes and an hour every day of the week.

The number of hours of work at school and at home then gradually increased
over the years, giving rise to more and more standardized, less personalized
and "busy" teaching methods and assignments.

By the end of high-school (15-18 years old), I had an average of 42 hours of
classes a week, plus about half of that in homework (so 60+ hours a week). It
was brutal, which wasn't helped by the fact that I had chosen one of the
hardest specializations (scientific), that my dad was a teacher, that my
parents were generally pretty strict when it came to school stuff, that I had
music classes, that I had insomnia, or that I was working in kitchens every so
often. Expectations of academic success were very high, personal or social
success, on the other hand, were out of the equation.

It was stressful and in my opinion, largely unnecessary. By the time I
graduated high school (Baccalaureate, 9 subjects), I nearly instantly forgot
pretty much everything I had learnt. Not that it wasn't useful, just that I
was profoundly sick of it. I'm also much better at "learning in the trenches",
but I suppose that's a personal preference.

If anything, this "training" made University (in Scotland) a breathe, while I
saw other British students struggle with the amount of work in first year, I
felt like I had joined a year-round summer camp (it got harder the following
years but nothing at the high-school level).

This makes it somewhat hard for me to define what a good homework policy
actually is. I liked my primary school of way doing things, it felt personal
and somewhat enjoyable, but this simply doesn't work for some people. My high-
school way of doing things was anything but enjoyable, but it had this
military feel to it that does work for some (and has long lasting
consequences, both good and bad).

My ideal homework policies would involve at least:

\- cross-disciplinary projects

\- non-standardized homework (all of my best teachers, without exception,
wrote their own exercises and did not rely on books)

\- some level of freedom/creativity, i.e. give the students a subject but give
some leeway as to how students can approach the subject

\- no forced group projects (not once have I seen this work properly), however
encourage students to talk to each other (and not systematically assume it is
the same as cheating)

\- very generally speaking, make the students feel like they're doing this for
themselves, not for the teacher, not for their parents, and especially not to
meet a quota or check boxes in a bullet point list handed out to thousands of
teachers by an unrelated bureaucrat

