

Calgary couple fight their children's school to stop homework  - MikeCapone
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/family-and-relationships/more-homework-rebels-speak-out/article1368986/

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pyre
> _But when Amanda Cockshutt's middle child, Malcolm, was asked by his Grade 7
> English teacher to write five pages a week on his feelings about a book, the
> biochemistry professor told the school bluntly: “He is not doing that.”_

> _The teacher tried to justify the assignment, but the clincher for her, she
> says, was that other than a cheering word of praise, the teacher wasn't even
> correcting the mistakes_

> _When she was told she would have to teach her son cursive writing because
> there was no time at school, she never opened the book._

I know some people will chime in to say that kids have it 'too easy,' but it
looks like in some cases here the kids are getting 'busy work.' If the teacher
isn't even grading the work, then what is the point? If the teacher is giving
the kids more work then he/she could possibly grade, then there is a
disconnect somewhere that is to the children's detriment. If a kid is supposed
to be writing 5 pages per week, and none of it is getting corrections from the
teacher, then what is the child learning? I know that homework is supposed to
be 'practice' in a lot of cases, but without corrections there's no point.

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patio11
Entirely separate from the question of how much homework is optimal: my mind
boggles that some parents don't consider educating their children to be one of
their responsibilities.

 _"[H]omework, spelling words included, “is not a part of our family life,” [a
Halifax health-care worker] says. “I don't see why 6 1/2 hours of formal
schooling isn't enough for an eight-year-old.”_

After growing up in an Asian neighborhood and then going to good schools
(which are almost by definition very Asian neighborhoods), then moving to
Japan, I find my brain just totally vapor locking on this statement. "Thats
funny, it almost sounds like she's expecting all education to take place at
school. Ha, hah. Wait _BOOM_. She can't _BOOM_ Is that even allowed?!"

~~~
protomyth
I think it comes down to children being assigned up to 4 hours of homework
(some of which is not reviewed by the assigning teacher) on top of 6 1/2 hours
of in school time. Anyone who puts in 10 hour days as an adult feels the
stress fairly shortly, never-mind a child under the same strain for 9 months.

~~~
gloob
I'm twenty years old; I was in elementary school slightly less than a decade
ago. I'm reasonably sure I almost never had 4 hours of homework a week, much
less 4 hours a day. So the options that present themselves to me are:

    
    
      1) my teachers were all incredibly slack by modern
         standards (which strikes me as unlikely)
      2) I am far, far more intelligent than most people (which
         strikes me as highly unlikely)
    

I suppose it's possible that there are just outlier schools where such a thing
is the norm, but it's something completely alien to me.

Is anyone here capable of relieving me of my ignorance?

~~~
bmj
(Full disclosure: we homeschool our kids.)

My impression is that things have changed in the last ten years. We have
friends with young kids who have been through interview processes for
preschool. Other friends have complained about the academics in their kids'
preschool, or kindergarten (academics in kindergarten? Really? I recall
playing and napping, and maybe learning the alphabet.) Many parents are
concerned with preparing their kids for college while still in grade school,
and the in many cases, it is likely the schools caving to the pressures of
parents--they feel without homework, their kids won't be properly prepared.

That said, I don't think this is universal. We have friends who teach at
smaller private schools that follow a more classical education model, and
their students generally aren't required to do large amounts of homework.

~~~
shelfoo
I live in Calgary, we don't home-school our kids.

I have two children, 11 (grade 6) and 8 (grade 3). The homework is about an
hour each night for the 8 year old, and can vary greatly for the 11 year old,
anything from 1-2 hours (practicing what they were taught that day) to
"projects" requiring about 16 hours of work over 2 weeks. They're both very
bright children (yes, I know that all parents say that about their kids).

Do I think it's too much? Tough call. I do think it's ridiculous that my
daughter is carting around a backpack to and from school that weighs half as
much as she does. Also irritating is that the onus is on the parents to ensure
that things get done, I'd rather that my child is taught responsibility than
taught dependence but there is a lot of "sign this and return to indicate that
your child did the work" kind of stuff.

Lastly, I recall as a child having time _in school_ to do work around
projects, and more often than not I had no homework because that time was
given. From what I can tell, that kind of time no longer exists (or it does
but there is more work).

I also don't recall having homework at _all_ until I was in grade 6. It starts
now in grade 1 (every night was about 15 minutes).

~~~
shpxnvz
_Also irritating is that the onus is on the parents to ensure that things get
done, I'd rather that my child is taught responsibility than taught
dependence..._

Err, isn't it the _parents'_ responsibility to build responsibility in their
children rather than the schools'?

~~~
bmj
I'm not sure that the poster's point. When I was in grade school, the only
thing my parents had to sign was my report card each quarter. It was my
responsibility to do my homework, and my responsibility to shoulder the
consequences if I didn't.

~~~
shpxnvz
Not sure how I misunderstood. It sounded like he was irritated that it was his
job to ensure his children completed their assignments by being forced to
check and sign something, and would rather that they be taught, in school, to
handle that responsibility themselves.

My point, probably poorly expressed, was that it's not realistic to expect the
school to instill that sense of responsibility in the child, and that the
"check and sign this" policy is really just a gentle encouragement to parents
to take an active role in their education.

~~~
shelfoo
I understand what you're saying, and perhaps I came off as not wanting
anything to do with my childrens education, which is definitely not what I
meant.

I guess what I was getting at with the irritated part is that without my
signature on the homework, it's deemed 'incorrect/incomplete'. This is
teaching my children that they must rely on me for their own success. It's not
that the school is not teaching responsibility (agreed that's my job), but
that it's teaching dependence.

I also suspect that in many cases the work itself isn't looked at, a signature
from me is looked for and that's it. If that's the case, it's a situation
where the school is giving homework for the sake of giving homework, which I
don't think is correct.

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yardie
After reading the article I'm still torn on where to stand. School systems are
under siege from parents and bureaucrats and the teachers are caught in the
middle. What is the optimal amount of homework? Who benefits from rote work?
If your a professor or college educated, chances are your children are in a
better position, intellectually, than someone that never graduated highschool.
Rote work probably won't for your kids, but might be necessary to someone
else's kid. Most schools don't make a delineation between the have/have nots.
So giving someone more work, and others less would create a different scandal.

I applaud Dr. Cockshutt's involvement with her kids work but there are a lot
more parents that are only concerned about the reports that come at the end of
the semester. Paying no attention to what's going on, currently. These are the
majority of parents. But really, it's about the teachers covering their ass.
That way when some parent pleads ignorance about their kid failing teacher can
point to every paper that was signed by said parent.

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dpcan
Too many parents want to prepare their children for "work" and not
"university". I see it at my own kids' elementary school. My least favorite
phrase is that they are "training my kids for jobs that haven't even been
invented yet". Really? That sounds pretty complicated.

The thing is, the mentality has to change. I want my kids to have homework. I
want them to be required to read more. I want them trained to go to College,
not the work force. When they go to College, that's when they can decide what
field to go after. If we do this, the kids that don't want to go to College
are no worse off.

OK, now that being said, I wish my own public high school had been far more
demanding on ME to read. I didn't take the initiative myself, and when I went
to College and had to read 100 pages of an anthology in 2 days, I was pretty
much screwed. I just hope my kids challenge themselves in school because I
don't believe the teachers are going to do it, and I'm not sure if they'll
want to listen to me much as teenagers :)

~~~
yesimahuman
I'm not a parent so I can't say this from personal experience, but if you come
home from work, do you want to still have a night full of more work, and
better yet, do you want to deal with/feel the pain of your child having to?
That's what college is for, not fucking elementary school. There is a limit to
what's effective.

Also, studying all the time as a kid (or having a night full of homework every
night) leaves you with less time to develop socially and hang out with
friends. I don't want my kids to just hole themselves in their room all night
doing homework.

~~~
dpcan
I have 4 kids, homework or no homework, the work just begins when I get home
from work (thankfully, I work for myself).

Elementary school should assign more homework. The kids actually enjoy it.
Math games, story problems, reading fun stories. If they don't have homework,
they actually CHOOSE to do something fun out of their workbooks. At that age,
learning is fun.

Maybe it shouldn't be required or graded, but assigned and provided.

Later on, when they are more independent, I want their school work and
homework to prepare them for college. Yes, this will require more of them
academically.

There's always time for friends. Kids wouldn't have it any other way.

Maybe it's just the parent in me. I want my kids better prepared for college
than I was, and I want them to have more and better opportunities than I had.
I think hard schooling opens these doors.

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msnap
I'm an English teacher and I think kids don't actually _need_ homework, so
much as teachers need more time in the classroom that they're just not going
to get. Homework is the spillover practice tasks that we don't have time to
have students do in class, because we have to get through a certain amount of
material in a class of 30+ students, who all have different learning speeds.
If I was working with just one student, he would never have to do homework.
But because we can't put our full energies into just one student, but must
instead parse it out among so many, homework time is supposed to compensate by
giving students time to think and process the material further.

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three14
I was pretty unreliable about homework, but the school I went to didn't
necessarily take it out of my grades. At the time, I felt that the homework
was unnecessary to learn the material being taught, so it was a waste of time.

Now, with kids of my own, I'm wondering if the reason I have so much trouble
doing work that I find uninteresting, even when I intellectually believe that
I'd be happier having done it, is that I never practiced doing boring work
while everyone else was. So even if homework is useless as a teaching tool,
maybe the act of doing boring work teaches a useful life skill.

~~~
caffeine
_maybe the act of doing boring work teaches a useful life skill_

Yes - it teaches passive compliance. But this life skill is more useful to
those assigning the drudgery than to those doing it.

~~~
three14
I already have passive compliance down pat. I wait on lines at the Social
Security Administration with the best of them.

I do have trouble sitting down to comment my code, though. And I think certain
skills are better learned as a child.

