homework is such an incredibly idiotic concept. a kid gets sent to school for 7 hours (if not more, at times) of mental work, and then they’re required to do even more work after they go back home.
That’s why I always refused to do it. To me it was two things. 1 An insult of my need of personal time. And 2, you had hours that day to teach me something and failed to do so, and I’m expected to learn it on my own? That’s on you.
Homework is quite handy, but homework should not be the “making” part, but rather the “info” part. Teachers should rather spend time doing stuff in class in stead of presenting and explaining when students could easily read a book at home or watch a video. The paractical stuff is much more important and the guidance of a teacher is much more valuable in the practical part of the lesson.
No that wouldn’t work at all. Kids would show up without having learned the concepts, except for the most studious.
Education at later levels is pretty much all homework. Teachers go over tricky to understand parts and practical explanations whilst the child does the actual studying independently.
My kids grew up with homework and it was never received as much of a chore. Mostly was completed in less than an hour. The trick is to pay attention in class and do the homework pretty much as soon as it is assigned.
Now they are at university, having the ability to study independently is paying off.
I remember when I was a kid and we were learning algebra and no one ever explained why on Earth we would ever need it. It would have been vastly more helpful if practical examples had been given rather than us being given a bunch of homework.
A much better homework assignment would be “These are the scenarios under which you would need algebra. See if you can find them in your everyday life.” But nope, just more arbitrary questions.
It’s probably something personal, but I never questioned that. For me it was an abstract challenge, and that was rewarding enough.
I also intentionally moved into a field that heavily relies on math afterwards (computer graphics), so maybe I’m just weird like that.
Good luck trying to watch over 30 kids doing the practical part.
The biggest problem is the size of classes imo. If you have 10 pupils you don’t have the same pressure to neglect children who can’t match the speed of the curriculum.
Agreed. Teaching is a fun job, but not getting to do the best parts because of bad funding, more administration, bigger groups, bad salary, etc… is sucking the fun out of it.
IMO the original purpose of homework was to keep the children occupied while the adults prepared dinner. That isn’t really needed anymore. Plus studies have shown the benefits of homework are negligible. Stop teaching kids there is no solid work/life balance.
Y’all must have had horrible teachers in this thread.
Homework is a tool to train the concepts you learned at school and teach you some self management. It should allow you to learn the concepts by repetition and apply these concepts to similar problems to the ones already learned at school.
So extend the school day then?
A kid should be able to get taught everything they need in the confines of the school day, outside of that time they shouldn’t be given any more work, it’s ridiculous. No one would put up with being expected to work for free outside of office hours, so why is it acceptable for children?
You can’t ‘learn concepts by repetition’, that is not how learning works. You can learn a concept & repeat its application to be faster at it.
And that’s the problem. What if the student didn’t catch the concept during the lesson? He or She needs help by a guardian or be punished for not completing the task.
Same thing with the supposed self management skills. What if the student fails at it? He or she needs help by a guardian or will be punished.
At the end of the day homework is a tool to offload tasks of the school to the guardians of the student. A schools system, that relies on homework, is a system that fails in its task of creating a level playing regardless of socioeconomic background of the student.
