OT-More on the homework thread.. sorry for the rant.....

Started reading some of the replies to the Homework thread further down. Unfortunately there were so many replies I didn't/don't have time to read all of them. In the ones that I did read there were alot of opinions. Funny thing is alot of the opinions put forth tell me that the person writing hasn't had a kid in school in ALOT of years.

While I agree that kids need to be in school, and need to learn, the problem nowdays is they try to force so much on them so early on that they have forgotten the basics. For instance my daughter is in the 5th grade. I look at tests and other things she beings home for us to see and she does great on them as far as the work goes. Thing is I also see things like her name written without starting it with a capitol letter. When I was in school the BASICS of reading and writing were stressed hard. We learned that before we learned anything else. If we didn't use a capitol on our name it was pointed out by the teacher because it's wrong and it's important to spell your name right if you do nothing else right.

Thing is they are so obsessed with teaching them computers, etc, etc, etc that they ignore the basics. I mean 'who cares if you spell your name right' if you know what the 10 vocabulary words mean, and can click/type, or whatever to acknowledge said meaning on the computer screen.......?

Now, here's a kicker for ya'll. I passed one of the local elementary schools the other day and they had a new subject proudly displayed on the sign. You'll never guess what the subject is......take a minute to think about it....have a guess yet???? I can already tell you 99.99999999999 (infinity) of ya'll are wrong. So, honestly, how many guessed that the sign proudly displayed that they are "Now teaching Mandrin Chineese"? Basically we have kids that are still in the process of learning English (although the even the in's and out's of learning that have been allowed to fall through the cracks), but now are being taught Mandrin Chineese......In High school we had a choice between French and Spanish for a foreign language requirement, but a second langnage was NEVER even an option in elementary school.

As far as the homework goes, the amount never seens to be the problem around here. The biggest problem with homework nowdays is that the way we learned to do things in school got thrown so far out the window it isn't funny. Personally I'd love to be able to help my daughter with some of her stuff, but when neither me, or the wife, has any idea how to do the problem the "NEW" way, especially the math, so there's no way we can help her. To be able to do anything would mean we all had to go back to elementary shcool to relearn how to do something that was taught basically the same way for ALOT of years and yielded ALOT of very smart, successful people. WHY MESS WITH AND CHANGE WHAT WORKS....??????

Funny thing I am the kind that I have spoken to the teachers about the crap they are spewing nowdays and many of them don't like it any better than we, the parents, do. The real problem is that it seems no one I speak too seems to have any desire to speak their mind and tell "those in charge" how completely STUPID their managment of our kids are. The times I have written the school board, talked to the teachers, etc, etc all I get is the answer/answers that, basically, "That's the way things are now....the 'governemt' tells us what to teach now....so,oh well...there's nothing anyone can do about it." I guess the sheer lack of desire for anyone to do anything makes me more upset than the fact it was let get to this point in the first place.

In the end I, for one, would love to be able to send my daughter to a private school as one of the replies to the previous post suggested unhappy parents do. Unfortunately not all of us can afford several thousand dollars a year to send our child to a school that's 40 miles away. Not to mention the other few thousand required to insure she gets there and home each day. To that end, how are we to afford the thousands to send her to private school when one, of the other of us would have to quit our job to insure she had a ride to school, a ride home, and someone to watch her when she wasn't in school? In the end it's easy to say "Don't send your child to public school if you don't like it" but when it comes down to the bones of the situation it's not as easy to actually do as it is to suggest to someone else........

Ultimately it's all left up to guys like me to fuss and raise enough he!! that someone takes notice....but again, those that take notice don't really care........so where does that leae us but with alot of OVER educated kids that know technology, but are so severaly UNDER educated when it comes to the basics that we have a society full of what my Great Grandma used to call, 'Educated idiots".......Seems like she knew what she was talking about even back then because it's the "Educated Idiots" that are running things now and doing their best to create more just like them.....................

I wish my kids were offered mandarin.it is ther language of business in China. Knowledge of it opens many high paying jobs. I'm trying to buy some chinese equipment and my knowing it would eliminate translation issues on the tech descriptions. My 21 y/o never learned to write longhand because he was computer literate when he entered the first grade. The best years of my life have been spent helping my kids with homework. times have changed and we shouldn;t hold our kids back. my 4.5 y/o has homework from preK and we "read" from banned Christian books.

I didn't read the previous post on this subject.
Wife and I graduated on the honor roll/Nat. honor society, etc. etc. from the same school in 1973. We did our best, but for different reasons, neither of us enjoyed it.
We have only ever had one income. So although we lived very frugally, that gave the wife full time to devote to the children.(There were times they would have rather gone to school)!!!!!!! They did attend public school a little(same one we went to) and a private church school some also. They are very intelligent and really just idled along until going to college early, then they took off.
The crap(to quote Paul Simon) there has just obviously gotten worse. All that to say, that we will do anything we have to, to keep our grand children out of public school.

I'm a social studies teacher and believe me when I tell you that there are many teachers out there, probably the majority, that are fed up with the government telling us what to teach and how to teach it. I want to explore the writing of the Declaration of Independence more, I want to get deep into understand the Constitution of the United States, I want to explore the in's and out's of our history to an even greater depth but the truth is that I simply cannot do that within a 2 week limit per unit. I am given a schedule of what my students need to learn and a time table for them to learn it. I give it everything I have to make them as informed as they can be and still RETAIN the information but unfortunately I can't do everything I want, I can't explore as deeply as I'd like, and it kills me.

I use homework to REINFORCE what the student learns in the classroom and I hope that through that homework maybe something will spark in the child and push them to jump on the internet, grab a book off the library shelf, or ask mom and dad about something they learned in class that interests them, reinforcing the learning evermore, engaging them, and with that bring some new knowledge with them to share with class and start a great discussion. What happens to often though is mom and dad couldn't be bothered supporting their child's education because they have to mow the lawn, or cook dinner, to they want to play the new Black Ops game while their child watches TV in the other room. I have kids for 45 minutes a day and I give it my all during those minutes to create a learning environment that is engaging, thought provoking, and challenging for students of ALL levels but CHANGE WILL NOT HAPPEN until PARENTS start taking responsibility for their child's learning/behavior which includes doing homework, being engaged in class, and showing respect not only to the teacher but to the students in the classroom.

The problem with not only education but society as I see it is laziness. The technology age has created a generation (and generations to come) of lazy people. Technology gives us the easy way out of EVERYTHING so many go looking for the easy way out during everyday life. It has created the need for scapegoats because people no longer take responsibility for themselves, their children, or their actions. Video games give an escape from reality, stresses from life disappear once "Grand Theft Auto" is on the screen, but unfortunately life isn't a video game, it needs to be dealt with. When people stop looking to blame others and start taking responsibility for their own actions or inactions, we will begin to see a change, or at least I hope.

I have much more to say but I have to leave for work.

~Anthony

My wife and I have 4 children, ages 21, 17, 16 & 12. With 16 years of experience of having kids in school I can tell you there is much more homework given today than what I had when I was in school in the 70's and early 80's. As elementary school students my kids were coming home with homework that took 1-2 hours to complete. Seems like once they hit middle school, grades 6th thru 8th, the homework lightened up a bit, but not by much. I now have two in high school who have several hours of homework each night at a minimum. Now, they are both enrolled in advanced placement physics, which takes a lot of their time each night. But they both have quite a bit of homework in their other classes also.

It's tough. My three kids who are still at home go to their mother's office after school. The two oldest work for her part time, so on the days they are not working they can get an early start on their homework. But they do not get home until anywhere from 6:00 to 6:30PM each day, and usually work on homework until bedtime, only stopping for supper. I am very fortunate that all my kids make very good grades, and for the most part do not complain about the homework. My oldest daughter, who is in college, doesn't make if home very often because of having to do homework all weekend. She is in her fourth year of college, and will graduate this year with a major in Criminal Justice and double minors in Phsycology and Arabic. One more year after this and she will have her masters degree.

I am very proud of all of my children, and if this is the result of all the homework they have/will have during their elementary and high school years, then I think it's a good thing.

How did this country ever survive and flourish for 200+ years without the policies of today wherein we HAVE to cowtow to "societial engineers"?

As a elemtary E.D. Teacher I couldn't agree more..

I can understand that the language of business in China is Mandrin, but the language spoken in the USA is English. I can just about guarantee you that the Chineese are going to inssure that their children learn Mandarin in elementary school long before they start trying to learn English. I have no problem with a child, or adult learning any language they want other than English, but my problem is when the school system is neglecting to insure that a child is fluent in their Native Tongue before trying to teach them another. Having spent a few years in the military and having visited more than my share of other countries the US is the only place I know of that devotes so much time trying to be everything for everybody. By that I mean lets all learn this and that language because we have people in this country that speak it. In the countries I visited there were many folks that spoke enough English, Spanish, French, and a myriad of other languages...if they wanted to sell you something. Beyond that if you wanted to get along in their country as anything but a tourist... you spoke their language.

On the schools though, to look at it in the context of another subject, would you try to teach your child advanced algebra, or trig before teaching them the basics that 2 plus 2 equals 4........? By trying to teach a second language before the child has the opportunity to even learn their native language does a disservice to the child. Not to mention, to me, it's a slap in the face to this country as a whole that our language isn't important enough to teach, and teach right, before time is spent trying to teach another.

Saddly, on the math side of things too, nowdays, they are still teaching that 2 plus 2 equals 4 but they are now doing it in such a way that if a child has a problem their parents can't help because they aren't teaching things in a way we were ever taught. I saw my daughters math last year, when she was in fourth grade, and as hard as I tried I couldn't figure out the reasoning behind the way they were trying to teach them some of the basic math concepts like division, subtraction, multiplication, etc. What we were taught in school made sense to me, and it has worked for me every time I needed it since I learned how to do it...and when I was learning it my parents could help because they were taught the same way. Now the parents have never seen a 'ladder equasion' (think that's what they called it), and it made absolutely no sense to me as to what it was teaching them, as it seemed to do nothing but complicate what was taught to us, differently, as a relatively simple math problem. In the end what we were al taught, the way we were taught worked for many generations before us, so why change what works, and what idiot decided it would be a good idea to change it?

I agree with the comments that education "ain't what it used to be". The government has stepped in to decide what to teach and when to teach it. Not a good thing. They claim it's in reaction to us falling behind the other industrialized nations but their solution is not addressing the root cause.

I experienced this first hand in the early 90's when my oldest daughter was about to enter high school. I was VERY active in schools AND at the School Board level, attending every meeting and voicing my opinions. When the State of Michigan started their MEAP testing, the school district decided they were going to implement an "Integrated Math" program at the HS level. I got a set of the books they were going to use, studied the curriculum and was VERY vocal in my opinion that it would not work and would produce kids who were lousy at math. The old way of teaching math (Freshman: algebra, Sophomore: geometry, Junior: trig, Senior:calculus) was out the window. The new method jumped all over the place, Math Lite I called it. Little big of algebra, little bit of geometry, etc. at each level of "integration". There was no building upon previous concepts or in-depth examination of a subject matter. It was all about trying to align to how the MEAP was going to test the kids.

Sure enough, the first group of kids who went through "Integrated Math" needed tutoring in the summer. My daughter was extremely frustrated because the teachers never had enough time to focus on a topic before jumping to a new topic. All 3 of my daughters went through it and despite all graduating at the top of their respective classes, none of them are very good at Math and had no interest in pursuing any college degree that required Math (like Engineering).

From what I understand, the district finally scrapped the program but not before the harm was done and thousands of kids were forced to go through it.

I fought other ideas over the years that had no chance of helping the kids do better in life (OBE or Outcome Based Education comes to mind).

What we need is the Districts to return to the three RRRs in early years and return to traditional curriculums in the High Schools that gave tracks to both College bound students and technical skilled students.

Get the State ( and Fed) out of telling teachers what to teach, quit worrying about whether kids have the latest computers (IMO, there should be no computer based instruction until HS). Get rid of the graphing calculators and teach the kids the basics and then teach them how to think.

I suggest you read the article in Atlantic Monthly Magazine, current issue. A father articulates the homework issue very well.
I think the schools got started with heavy homework loads and now do not know when to use common sense.

Same as when a Principal had a 6 year old arrested who proudly showed off his camping tool, fold out fork, spoon and KNIFE!!!!
With any common sense the Principal would have put it in his desk drawer and called the parent to pick up the camping tool.

But then the Principal would not have been made famous on the evening news.

(quoted from post at 10:58:39 09/23/13) I suggest you read the article in Atlantic Monthly Magazine, current issue. A father articulates the homework issue very well.
I think the schools got started with heavy homework loads and now do not know when to use common sense.

Same as when a Principal had a 6 year old arrested who proudly showed off his camping tool, fold out fork, spoon and KNIFE!!!!
With any common sense the Principal would have put it in his desk drawer and called the parent to pick up the camping tool.

But then the Principal would not have been made famous on the evening news.

Click to expand...

I agree about the lack of common sense in today's "Zero Tolerance" era. I do recall an Eagle Scout who got expelled because there was a steak knife in the bed of his pickup truck on school grounds. Turns out he had helped move his grandmother over the weekend and the knife must have fallen out of a box. Never mind the outstanding character he had exhibited all his young life and the fact the "incident" arose out of a good deed. Common sense was lacking even when the School Board was faced with those facts.

I understand your desire to take the time to more deeply examine a topic, but there is another side. There are courses that build on previously learned material, like chemistry. If a teacher teaching Chemistry I doesn't cover all the material that was expected, what is the teacher teaching Chemistry II supposed to do? Spend part of the year teaching Chemistry I and them shove Chemistry II into the rest of the year?

Same goes for foreign languages. I took Japanese I & II at Northern Kentucky University. When checking on going to Purdue for grad school I found out that what we had covered was only Japanese I at Purdue. And how would you like to be a high school student with As in 2 years of German, change schools, take 3rd year German and discover that they were a year ahead of you? There really are good reasons to expect a teacher to cover a certain amount every year.

That "idiot" was a newly minted admin type educator putting into place the subject of his PHD.

Had a college prof. tell me 30 years ago that the only way to improve education was to BANN ALL EDUCATION PHDS being awarded. Them putting into place their "new" improvements have pretty well destroyed public schools in this country.

They better learn Chinese so the will be able to communicate with our new masters.

Gene

No argument here, I have to cover material because when my students get to 8th grade the teacher does not have the time to cover my material, that's not what I'm saying. What I was eluding to was I would love to take two weeks to explore a topic then a week to develop some sort of assessment that allows the students to delve deeper into the topic and maybe even integrate some of the material they have learned to date...but, the time is just not there, OR, I have to hammer two weeks into one so I can concentrate on a meaningful assessment, and that isn't effective. There is no easy answer, what content gets 2 weeks and what content gets 3 weeks, how do we gage importance? I'm not trying to get out of teaching material in anyway, I use homework as an avenue to introduce new material before the next class, or sometimes to reinforce what they learned in class with the hopes that it frees up some classroom time to do the engaging activities that I want to do and that the students enjoy vs. the notes/lecture way of teaching like in years past. If the system wasn't so rigid maybe I could give less hw but as of now I have to give MEANINGFUL hw to accomplish what the government, state, administration, and parents want from me... ~Anthony

NC Wayne,

Our school system teaches for the CMT,Connecticut Mastery Test.This consumes a could part of the school year.Next year they will be teaching for the federal test.The teachers don't like it at all.

Vito

Lets not get carried away with the idea that every teacher is a saint and should be able to pick and choose what the students need to learn. Even back in the good old days when I went to school, we had a few scatter brained teachers that jumped around like a chicken with its head cut off. They were incapable of a consistent and well planned learning progression. Even as an 8 year old I recognized that.

I just wish our schools were laying down a better foundation for future learning. If you have a decent job and a role in society you will never stop needing to learn, so the foundation of learning how to read, analyse and assess is critical. Basic math will allow you to go on to the next steps as needed.

But please, do not let every teacher no matter how convinced of their own superior knowledge, set their own ciriculum.

When it comes to education, PhD really does stand for "Piled high and Deep."

I taught high school math and physics for nearly 20 years. I'm done. NCLB, Race to the Top, Common Core and so many other magic bullets have done nothing but run up costs, lower creativity among students and teachers and generally run education into the ground. Every reform I ever saw promised to end illiteracy, drop-outs, falling through the cracks, disinterested students, performance gaps, etc. Some of the reforms had some good ideas. Some might have actually helped if given an opportunity. But too often, the reform put in place one year was replaced by another reform in a few years. I remember one reform was put in place in September and was replaced in May. And then there have been some reforms that have been pure folly that should have never been put in place to begin with. I have seen graduation requirements be toughened up to where, if followed to the T, no student would slip through without having learned the basics and then some. Sadly, when it came time for the first class to graduate under the new requirements, so many waivers were granted, the new policies became a joke.