Homework/ Teachers constructive rant

[kelemanga]

Ok,
After my maths class was tricked into doing a long piece of homework I felt like writing a rant out to express myself. For some reason My maths teacher tells us we have a tiny bit of homework to do. 5 Questions long. Then I open my textbook tonight to find it has 5 questions layed out like this.
1a)
1b)
1c)
1d)
2a)
2b)
2c)
2d)
3a)
3b)
3c)
3d)
4a)
4b)
4c)
4d)
4e)
4f)
5a)
5b)

Who here has an opinion on this? I believe that homework should be optional. I don't learn bullshit out of it and nobody does so let the fucking bright kids take their glory. I'd rather end up as a pianist.

[Ben Rosen]

some of my homework is optional. if you do it you're at much more of an advantage on tests and quizzes and whatnot.

[t00lverine]

If you already know the material, test out of the class. If not, shut up and prove it. Problem solved.

[Gregory]

You know what pissed me off in school, the one thing that never fails to get me mad about 12 years of public school and five years of college (I transfered and changed majors)?

My sixth-grade science teacher made us write out our workbook answers in complete sentences rewording the question.

I still swear vengeance over that shit. It made the homework easily three times longer.

[kelemanga]

some of my homework is optional. if you do it you're at much more of an advantage on tests and quizzes and whatnot.
I revise practically all the time. I just don't like this forced homework. Especially ones that are piled up. I have 5 pieces in for tomorrow. Not doing 1. Done 2. Doing 2 at lunchbreak tomorrow. I still think that's more than enough to ask for in a half done job.

[ihategravity]

Do you have a study hall?
Being a teacher, if schools would get rid of study halls, I would stop giving homework (other than projects/reading).

[TIP]

I've missed the Kele.

T

[Ben]

Boo-hoo

[The Human Target]

Don't do it.

Fucking school.

[kelemanga]

I've missed the Kele.

T

Hi TIP,
How's my drunken corn nut lovin' bendis bashin friend?

[Ben]

I revise practically all the time. I just don't like this forced homework. Especially ones that are piled up. I have 5 pieces in for tomorrow. Not doing 1. Done 2. Doing 2 at lunchbreak tomorrow. I still think that's more than enough to ask for in a half done job.
One day you'll wish you had as little to do as you do now.

[kelemanga]

Don't do it.

Fucking school.

The first REASONABLE comment

[TIP]

Hi TIP,
How's my drunken corn nut lovin' bendis bashin friend?

I dunno...although I did learn how to say "taint" in French this weekend.

T

[Evan the Shaggy]

You know what pissed me off in school, the one thing that never fails to get me mad about 12 years of public school and five years of college (I transfered and changed majors)?

My sixth-grade science teacher made us write out our workbook answers in complete sentences rewording the question.

I still swear vengeance over that shit. It made the homework easily three times longer.

I have a story like that but it took place a year ago in my final year of college.

I was taking a class that was completely beating the shit out of me. Financial Management was the worse class I had ever taken and I've never come closer to failing a course.

Basically, my teacher was a dick. As if the source material wasn't hard enough to learn (Gotta love the whole "You need to take these courses that have nothing to do with your major but are part of the business curriculum so you have to take them to graduate) we had this a-hole making it a thousand times worse.

Halfway through the course, he handed out our tests and said that if you currently had a "C" average in his class, you would not pass since he progressively made tests harder and harder, going so far as to attach drop slips to a certain number of students' tests, one of which happened to be mine. By the way, it was almost impossible to understand anything he was saying through his thick accent and he offered little to no help in the course.

I had worked hard to make sure I only had to take 4 classes my final semester and I would be damned if I had to be stuck with this dick again. So I studied like mad for the next test, and there were several questions on the test that had not been anywhere in the material we had studied. I thought I had lost my mind but when we all got our tests back, everyone in the class agreed that we had never learned this material before.

In order to rectify HIS mistake, he made us write a paper in order to get credit for the problems he made. We wrote a paper that, basically, was a review of a book about being prepared for anything (Some bullshit about cheese and mice) so he was basically making us write that it was OUR fault that we weren't prepared for problems he had never taught us or weren't even in the book.

You better believe I gave him the worst review ever when we got our "talkback" slips at the end of the course. I somehow managed to pass.

[kelemanga]

I dunno...although I did learn how to say "taint" in French this weekend.

T


Good old idiotically predictable TIP. Have a cookie.

[kelemanga]

You better believe I gave him the worst review ever when we got our "talkback" slips at the end of the course. I somehow managed to pass.

We need those slips. I would mark down my art teacher. She lost my book. Told me it was me. I asked if she checked her drawer. She said yes. I had to do a detention. She found my book in her drawer. Refused to mark my work. And never apologised. A little trip to the head of year got me the satisfaction of having her being reduced to shaking in the lesson when she told a student off. All my work was marked. Life is good when you come down on a bitch.

[Oeming]

You know, Homwork is really abused. Its for lazy teachers. Homework should be to keep you SHARP between classes, just a small refresher, too many teachers are using homework as a part of class.

I pay taxes for teachers to do a job- teach my kid. WHen my kid comes home, he should be spending most of his time with his family, not doing hours of homework.

[Gregory]

You know, Homwork is really abused. Its for lazy teachers.

I'm married to a teacher and can attest that the more homework they assign, the more they have to grade. Excessive homework might be a sign of inefficiency or disorganization, but I wouldn't call it laziness.

[Ben]

You know, Homwork is really abused. Its for lazy teachers. Homework should be to keep you SHARP between classes, just a small refresher, too many teachers are using homework as a part of class.

I pay taxes for teachers to do a job- teach my kid. WHen my kid comes home, he should be spending most of his time with his family, not doing hours of homework.
I disagree completely. The only way you can learn mathematics is by DOING math. In a sexual way. But seriously, you have to practice it a LOT. Sure, it seems like busy work, but it's not.

[Patrick J]

You know, Homwork is really abused. Its for lazy teachers. Homework should be to keep you SHARP between classes, just a small refresher, too many teachers are using homework as a part of class.

I pay taxes for teachers to do a job- teach my kid. WHen my kid comes home, he should be spending most of his time with his family, not doing hours of homework.

I'm a student teacher and I see the abuse of homework firsthand and I can't tell you how much I agree with you. Near as I can tell most homework is a gigantic waste of the children's time. It doesn't keep the kids sharp at all, often time its just some kinda busy work given out so the teacher can give themselves the illusion that they're doing a good job since they're keeping thier kids busy. The only homework I believe in giving the kids is having them keep a journal or write short 2 page essays I call "reaction papers" that are always due on Friday and are just short informal reactions and opinions on the materials covered in class. I mean, that's how I'd run the classroom if it were up to me, but since I'm only a student teacher it isn't up to me, but you get the idea.

[Patrick J]

I disagree completely. The only way you can learn mathematics is by DOING math. In a sexual way. But seriously, you have to practice it a LOT. Sure, it seems like busy work, but it's not.

I think math and math homework is a different beast entirely. The kind of homework given in math is homework that is intended to keep the kids, as Oeming put it, sharp; it reinforces that which was taught in the class that day. That's completely different from just giving the kids a frickin' map every week and telling them to color it.

[t00lverine]

You know, Homwork is really abused. Its for lazy teachers. Homework should be to keep you SHARP between classes, just a small refresher, too many teachers are using homework as a part of class.

I pay taxes for teachers to do a job- teach my kid. WHen my kid comes home, he should be spending most of his time with his family, not doing hours of homework.

I got a fortune cookie the other day. It said, "practice is the best of all instructors." As both an educator and a student, I have learned the importance of drilling (practicing) as an invaluable method to vastly improve retention and recall.

[PoWerSurge]

Best teacher I had taught for 30 minutes, then gave us 20 minutes to do our homework in class. When our homework was done, we could do what we wanted. Almost everyone got passing grades.

Now, I don't believe for an instant that practice assignments are unnecessary. People learn by doing and by repetition, but the teacher has to be responsible for showing how to do it.

There are classes like History that I think should be all homework, no tests. If they did that, you could mark the importance of what your studying instead of the facts about it.

There are classes like Science that I think should be all tests, no homework. There's nothing scientific that you can't learn from your reading. Science is memorization into practice.

Other classes, like Math and Languages, need practice and tests. Practice validates that the person can do it, tests validate that they understand why they are doing it.

[Ben]

I think math and math homework is a different beast entirely. The kind of homework given in math is homework that is intended to keep the kids, as Oeming put it, sharp; it reinforces that which was taught in the class that day. That's completely different from just giving the kids a frickin' map every week and telling them to color it.
But the original post was about math.

[Patrick J]

But the original post was about math.

This is true. Although I'm not sure if Oeming's opinion referred specifically to math so much as it referred to the general abuse of homework.

[Ben]

There are classes like Science that I think should be all tests, no homework. There's nothing scientific that you can't learn from your reading. Science is memorization into practice.
No, it's not. Science has very little to do with memorization. The fact that so many people think this shows what a horrible job schools do at teaching science.

[PoWerSurge]

No, it's not. Science has very little to do with memorization. The fact that so many people think this shows what a horrible job schools do at teaching science.

I gotta disagree

I don't think there's anything in a science class that should be assigned as homework. Any science class's topic is best learned by in-class assignments, like disection for biology or analysis for chemistry. To make someone do the questions at the end of a chapter doesn't have anything to do with learning, cause all the kid does is go and look in the chapter to grab the answers.

Show them by doing in the class

Expect them to read

Test them on both, either via experimentation or by written depending on the subject.

[Ray G.]

Welcome back, Kele! Good to see you again, little dude.

Back to your original comment, that's a really sucky way of assigning homework. Five questions my ass. That's 20. They should be honest with how many actual problems you're going to have to do. I would have waited until 9 PM to do what I thought was 5 problems, and I would have been screwed. Feh.

[Oeming]

I'm married to a teacher and can attest that the more homework they assign, the more they have to grade. Excessive homework might be a sign of inefficiency or disorganization, but I wouldn't call it laziness.


Well thats true, I guess I meant I get the impression they arent getting the lessons across in class. Homework should be to keep you sharp. My 4th grader has had crazy amounts of homework, he usually isnt done until dinner time- and often past that. Part of that is his own fault in not working fast enough, but he'll, he's just been in shool for six hours.

[RøcketFrøg]

I'd rather end up as a pianist.
Hehe, he said pianist.

[Oeming]

I got a fortune cookie the other day. It said, "practice is the best of all instructors." As both an educator and a student, I have learned the importance of drilling (practicing) as an invaluable method to vastly improve retention and recall.


I agree, but the homework I see kids get goes way beyond practicing. Heres what my son has for homework on a normal day- in the 4th grade

40 Math problems

8-10 pages of social studies reading followed by questions

6-10 pages of english followed by questions

15 english workbook problems

20 spelling words

Now, any of these by themselves or with anothter are fine, but he gets this almost every day. If they want to spread out how much he's refreshing on at home, it should be of a lesser amount for each assignment. Its fucking crazy.A few refreshing problems form each class is enough.

I pick him up at school at 330, he goes to bed at 830, you do the math and figure out how much time we actually spend as a family a day.

[xyzzy]

One day you'll wish you had as little to do as you do now.

Exactly. Come back after you've done your first 100 hour work week and let's see you complain about 5 math problems.

[RøcketFrøg]

I agree, but the homework I see kids get goes way beyond practicing. Heres what my son has for homework on a normal day- in the 4th grade

40 Math problems

8-10 pages of social studies reading followed by questions

6-10 pages of english followed by questions

15 english workbook problems

20 spelling words

Now, any of these by themselves or with anothter are fine, but he gets this almost every day. If they want to spread out how much he's refreshing on at home, it should be of a lesser amount for each assignment. Its fucking crazy.A few refreshing problems form each class is enough.

I pick him up at school at 330, he goes to bed at 830, you do the math and figure out how much time we actually spend as a family a day.

We talked to my nephew's teacher about homework (he's in 3rd grade) and she said that the kids should have roughly 90 minutes a night. She said that if we noticed it taking him over that for a few days in a row to talk to her about it and maybe she would adjust things. So it couldn't hurt to talk to his teacher.

[Evan the Shaggy]

Junior year of high school was a nightmare because of homework. Mondays thru Thursday I woke up, went to morning crew practice, went to school, went to afternoon crew practice, got home, ate dinner, did homework for literally 3 hours at the least, then went to bed.

[Randomus]

I can't stand that hidden question bullshit. It was the bane of my existence in high school. If you want to assign 20 questions, just admit that there are 20 questions, don't pretend there are only 5. If you want the questions organised into specific sections, use some fucking headings.

[t00lverine]

I agree, but the homework I see kids get goes way beyond practicing. Heres what my son has for homework on a normal day- in the 4th grade

40 Math problems

8-10 pages of social studies reading followed by questions

6-10 pages of english followed by questions

15 english workbook problems

20 spelling words

Now, any of these by themselves or with anothter are fine, but he gets this almost every day. If they want to spread out how much he's refreshing on at home, it should be of a lesser amount for each assignment. Its fucking crazy.A few refreshing problems form each class is enough.

I pick him up at school at 330, he goes to bed at 830, you do the math and figure out how much time we actually spend as a family a day.

I'm liking what Rocket Frog had to say on this. If the teacher is really unmoveable on this subject, you might be able to request the assignments ahead of time so as to complete them when there is more time in the day. That would also allow for some family time during the weekdays.

EDIT: Rocket as opposed to Rockeck

[Ray G.]

Junior year of high school was a nightmare because of homework. Mondays thru Thursday I woke up, went to morning crew practice, went to school, went to afternoon crew practice, got home, ate dinner, did homework for literally 3 hours at the least, then went to bed.

I busted my ass to get good grades through High School, and was then told by my guidance counselor that I probably wouldn't get into a competitive school because of my lack of extracurriculars. :nonono2:

[Oeming]

We talked to my nephew's teacher about homework (he's in 3rd grade) and she said that the kids should have roughly 90 minutes a night. She said that if we noticed it taking him over that for a few days in a row to talk to her about it and maybe she would adjust things. So it couldn't hurt to talk to his teacher.


That sounds great, but our school's attitude is basically, "the other kids can do it" but when you talk to them, most of them find themselves in the same boat.

Our school lacks in district ratings, I think they believe they can make up for it by drilling the kids with more homework to make up for whatevers not happening in class.

[TIP]

Good old idiotically predictable TIP. Have a cookie.

Wow.

It's now come to 'Idiotically.'

However, I am pleased by the fact that it's correctly spelled.

T
:smile:

[TIP]

Oh...and Kele...if you ever need any math help...heh...my wife is a mathematician.

T
(and I'm not kidding...at least I'm not kidding about my wife's profession)