Is there a law that says teachers must be sadistic when assgning homework?

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

So far, It hasn't been uncommon for one or two of the weeknights to have over 4 hours of homework. So teachers, do y'all do this on purpose? It seems like your shooting yourself in the foot, because you guys get to read it all too

[China_cat]

1. They only have their own subject to look at, though.

Your child probably has 4 or 5 subjects, all of whom expect him/her to pay the most attention to their partictular area.

[ikojo]

2. I wonder if students in Europe or Japan have

homework assignments...

Of course in Japan they study constantly to assure admittance to a good university.

[tjwmason]

4. We do in the U.K.

I think that it's essential - it starts a pupil on the course of learning to study alone without being spoon-fed information.

[Benfea]

17. Yeah, but once they get to college....

...all they do is party. The job you get is based on what college you got into, nobody cares what grades you got while you were in college.

[ikojo]

18. And is it any different in the US?

If you get into a good college, say Yale or Harvard, aren't you pretty much guaranteed easy street based upon connections?

[suzbaby]

3. When I was a TA,

any assignment I gave would take me at least 3 times as long to grade as I imagine it took for my students to complete the assignment. I'd spend hours EVERY night just trying get through grading. It took forever. But I did it to actually force my students to learn something.

I'm not saying this is true of you, but if I told them to read a chapter in the book...they wouldn't, if I counted on them to do any learning themselves....I would be disappointed. I HAD to give them assignments just to ensure they would actually learn some of the material. It forced them to be involved by some measure.
I learned quickly that most students are content to do nothing, unless you force them to do otherwise.

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

7. I think my Hon Math teacher has the right idea. Freshman year is really

the only one where HW assignments are turned in and graded. About 80% of the assignments for other classes won't be turned in or looked at. The students are given resources to check answers on their homework. She expects that if we want to be in this class, then we'll do the work because we want to learn and be able to do well on tests.

Granted, this works out because it's an honors class, so 85% of the kids (Myself included) are paranoid about getting everything done and done correctly.

[hotforteacher]

5. I'm sadistic, but it has nothing to do with my teaching.

:evilgrin:

Yes, we know that you have other classes. Yes, we know that you probably have other things to do. Yes, we have lives.

The real question is: how much are you learning, and what are you willing to do to achieve evil genius status?

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

8. The thing is, you don't HAVE to do homework to learn

my math teacher says that in her class, Sophmore and up aren't really given any assignments. They're just expected to do whatever work they personally need to be able to do well and learn the concepts

[elocs]

6. Check out and search about "The Homework Myth"

Here is a link to a Time article: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1376208,00.html

" The onslaught comes despite the fact that an exhaustive review by the nation's top homework scholar, Duke University's Harris Cooper, concluded that homework does not measurably improve academic achievement for kids in grade school. That's right: all the sweat and tears do not make Johnny a better reader or mathematician.

• Too much homework brings diminishing returns. Cooper's analysis of dozens of studies found that kids who do some homework in middle and high school score somewhat better on standardized tests, but doing more than 60 to 90 min. a night in middle school and more than 2 hr. in high school is associated with, gulp, lower scores.

• Teachers in many of the nations that outperform the U.S. on student achievement tests--such as Japan, Denmark and the Czech Republic--tend to assign less homework than American teachers, but instructors in low-scoring countries like Greece, Thailand and Iran tend to pile it on."

[hotforteacher]

12. I guess that it has more to do with

the QUALITY of the homework, and less to do with QUANTITY. Of course piling on bullshit busywork isn't going to do anything for you. And half of the problem (IMHO) is that many kids have lost the instrinsic want to learn stuff...one of my closest friends is now homeschooling their kids for that very reason--the quality was crap. Utter crap.

The facilitator/instructor needs to be able to capture your imagination and garner trust...and wade through endless amounts of silly behaviors. I give approximately 45 minutes of homework per week, three fifteen minute assignments, not including reading for which I try to make plenty of classroom time. Rote assignments without buy-in and value are useless.

I certainly hope your instructors are keeping up on their literature, and you on yours. The folks at my high school are trying to obliterate the notion that best learning comes from models taken from in Industrial Age. I never did like Pavlovian methods, personally.

P.S. We are doing the Salem Witch Trial currently, and if you have any stellar project ideas, I would be more than grateful for some new ideas.

:)

[otherlander]

9. I got out of having to do a journalism assignment

because I'm doing an article for the school paper. But I've still got a ton of math and english. In fact, I probably should be doing it now...

I will soon...

I really will....

Eventually.

I'm planning to.

I might.

Sort of.

LEAVE ME ALONE!

[WritingIsMyReligion]

10. Yes. My teachers are sadistic about homework, as well.

We get the POINT, people!

:grr:

[immoderate]

11. It's not always the teacher's fault.

I agree with the Time Magazine article referenced in a post above.

When I was a classroom teacher, my supervisors insisted I give a lot of homework. Part of that was due to the fact that the parents wanted their kids to get a lot of homework.

It's much simpler to deal with than good teaching and measuring real progress.

As a teacher, I encouraged my students to find hobbies. Motivation is the key to learning, and something that students have a personal interest in motivates them to read and do research. At one start of the term parent-teacher meeting, I talked about this. One parent chimed in with, "That sounds like a good place for you to start." I shot back with, "As soon as the support checks start coming in."

I mostly taught math, and I did bring it up in class, but there wasn't much time for it as I had state exams to prep my kids for. I usually an assignment about how math is used in their hobbies. The laziest kids would challenge me.

"My hobby is fishing. That doesn't use math."
"Really? What kind of line do you use? How heavy are your sinkers?"
"How about skateboarding? That doesn't use math."
"Oh? What's a seven-twenty?"

I also had them do journals when I could fit it in. My biggest beef was the de-emphasis of art and shop classes. Building projects was where they got to apply what they had learned. That is the best motivation and reinforcement. Standardized exams is not a good substitute for real education.

--IMM

[hotforteacher]

13. Standardized exams.

Kill me now. Our school didn't make A.Y.P. because of one strand this year. Where in the hell is Goblinmonger when you need him?

I, personally, believe that you can teach a child test-taking skills and that those skills can be useful somewhere down the road, but for fuck's sake, they are not the end-all be-all in education and certainly not indicative of true intelligence.

This all being said, if I hear one more parent or administrator use the analogy of students/parents=customer, or whatever horseapple capitalistic shit that foists responsibility of learning solely on the teacher, I will puke up a grammar primer.

[BlackVelvetElvis]

14. No teacher I know thinks those things are useful.

I know middle school teachers who aren't allowed to teach grammar in language arts classes because they get in the way of learning that damn standardized test.
Applied (practical) knowledge and critical thinking skills are lacking in the students I see at a college level. How can a standardized test teach you that?

[immoderate]

16. My approach...

to teaching math was to always bring it back to problem solving. If you can solve problems, then the test is just another problem to overcome. I included some test taking skills but always tried to keep it true to the discipline. In New York, the Regents exams go back to the early twentieth century, at least. As tests go, they weren't the worst, except, if like I had, there were students who hadn't obtained the requisite skills to deal with the subject.

As an algebra teacher, I had kids in my classes who couldn't do multiplication. I would have loved to be able to work with them at the level they needed, but I had to teach a curriculum that included problems that resolved to quadratic equations. It was totally nuts the last few years I taught because every student who had reached the ninth grade was placed in a regents algebra class no matter what their math level was! The pressure was heavy from the parents of the students who were college bound. It meant early morning and afternoon sessions which I wasn't paid for, but my career depended on a good showing on those exams.

In previous years, student who lacked skills would be placed in a fundamentals class, but they discontinued that track. The regents classes had always been challenging, but having half the class that wasn't ready for that level was an unbelievable extra handicap. I haven't been in New York since '95. I wonder if they're still doing that craziness.

You are right. This is perverted education.

--IMM

[huskerlaw]

15. I have spent all day today

writing homework assignments (I'm a professor). I assure you that I've tried to make it as easy as possible for both the students and myself.

Unfortunately, we can't just pull your grade out of thin air. We do need to make sure you're learning something.