Homework rant

[zoemurr]

I don't get it either. If its too much, have her drop down some levels. Teachers can't win either way.

why I have to defend myself.. I said a repeatedly that she was fine, she chose this path and I was upset that we weren't having any family time tonight. Not sure how that means that she needs to drop down?

Sorry I'm a bad parent because I want to spend some time with my kid tonight.

Why does a "vent" always turn into an attack?

 

[MamaLema]

I agree. My kids no longer want to go on vacation for Spring Break or winter break because they feel they won't be able to finish their assignment given over the break.

Once we went on vacation and poor DS had to do assignments while on Spring vacation and he said never again.

I'm not talking about taking kids out of school for vacation. I'm talking about getting homework over what are supposed to be breaks for them.

 

[dogluva]

why I have to defend myself.. I said a repeatedly that she was fine, she chose this path and I was upset that we weren't having any family time tonight. Not sure how that means that she needs to drop down?

Sorry I'm a bad parent because I want to spend some time with my kid tonight.

Why does a "vent" always turn into an attack?

Sorry if you feel "attacked". She can't have it both ways if she is in AP classes.

 

[Art 1]

Why are kids expected to go to school for 7 hours day and then often have 3-4 hours of homework? I feel so bad for my DD. First day back after vacation and she has a huge SS packet, and tons of math homework due tomorrow. I know she just wants to relax. Fortunately we didn't have anything else going on today after school. She has club meetings every day but Mondays.

It just seems so unfair. Most adults aren't expected to start work at 7am, come home at 3, have an hour break and then work from home until bedtime. This has to be unhealthy.

She's is in all advanced classes, so some of this pressure she did put on herself. She's in 9th grade and I assume it's only going to get worse. She is not poking around or wasting time either. She did homework for an hour or two almost every day over vacation as well. How do families w/high schoolers go away those weeks?

Selfishly I would like to spend some time with her today but I know it's not going to happen. She can't stay up late because chorus starts at 6:50 am. tomorrow.

Thanks.. just venting. She's not the one complaining, I am.

Yes, it will get worse. But it didn't hurt my two. It made college a breeze for them. Easier in fact than HS.

 

[Pooh Girl 71]

You just got back from vacation. Why on Earth does she need to relax...after only one day back at school no less?

I just don't get parents complaining about homework loads. Maybe because nobody complained about the hours of homework I came home with. I just assumed that's how it was and I dealt with it.

Does anyone know what kind of homework is typical in countries with superior education systems (South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Norway etc)?

Completely agree with this. Our country is going to be overtaken by an Asian country because they work.

 

[Skywalker]

why I have to defend myself.. I said a repeatedly that she was fine, she chose this path and I was upset that we weren't having any family time tonight. Not sure how that means that she needs to drop down?

Sorry I'm a bad parent because I want to spend some time with my kid tonight.

Why does a "vent" always turn into an attack?

Wow you are being hyper-defensive here! No one attacked you at all

 

[Mel522]

I took honors and advance classes when I was in school. I worked on my homework during school. I worked on it during breaks between classes, lunch, and the busy work time during other classes. I was usually able to cut my homework to 1-2 hours a night. Kids would be much better off if the schools utilized time better and did work there where those educated and helpful teachers are.

<snip>

It just seems so unfair. Most adults aren't expected to start work at 7am, come home at 3, have an hour break and then work from home until bedtime. This has to be unhealthy.

<snippity snip>

I have to disagree with this. When adults get home they have to prepare meals, clean up, yard work, house work, help kids with homework, pay bills, etc. I don't know a single adult who comes home from work and spends the rest of the night relaxing. While they aren't doing job work, they are working.

 

[tvguy]

Yes, it will get worse. But it didn't hurt my two. It made college a breeze for them. Easier in fact than HS.

EXACTLY!!!!!

I just read OP post aloud to my 2 kids who are in college, and that was their first comment.

I don't have an solution, but kids in the U.S. spend less time in the classroom than most other nations, and are falling behind globally. Something has to change. And we don't even do Saturday school here.

 

[Aliceacc]

I took honors and advance classes when I was in school. I worked on my homework during school. I worked on it during breaks between classes,In my school, there are 4 minutes between classes... and 2600 people to move. No time for work. lunch,Our kids aren't allowed to do homework during lunch. For starters, there simply isn't room in the cafeteria for over 600 kids PLUS backpacks... it would be an incredible fire hazard. Additionally, they're kids; they NEED to eat. and the busy work time during other classes. There IS no busy work in my classes. If I catch you doing someone else's homework in my class, we're going to have a problem.It doesn't matter whether the kids are in advanced classes or not. I was usually able to cut my homework to 1-2 hours a night. Kids would be much better off if the schools utilized time better and did work there where those educated and helpful teachers are.



I have to disagree with this. When adults get home they have to prepare meals, clean up, yard work, house work, help kids with homework, pay bills, etc. I don't know a single adult who comes home from work and spends the rest of the night relaxing. While they aren't doing job work, they are working.

True. Tonight I had to spend an hour and a half helping my kids with their homework. Part of that was standardized test prep. Those of you who are currently parenting school age kids know exactly what I mean.
The difference, of course, is that my 10 year old daughter is NOT an adult, and neither is the 14 year old daughter of the OP. She's a minor. Do most peole here honestly believe she wouldn't stand to benefit from some time outside on her bicycle, or sitting in a corner somewhere reading a novel???

I don't think anyone is arguing against homework, certainly not me!!! But I think that it should be work that's productive, and that teachers should keep in mind that there is a life beyond their class.

 

[Jennasis]

getting your info?

The findings are detailed in a new book, "National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future of Schooling" (Stanford University Press).

"American students appear to do as much homework as their peers overseas -- if not more -- but still only score around the international average," LeTendre said. "Undue focus on homework as a national quick-fix, rather than a focus on issues of instructional quality and equity of access to opportunity to learn, may lead a country into wasted expenditures of time and energy."

In the early 1980s, U.S. teachers began assigning more homework, the researchers say. The shift was in response to mediocre performance in comparison to Japanese students. At the same time, the trend was going the other way in Japanese schools. The new study found U.S. math teachers assigned more than two hours of homework a week in 1994-95, while in Japan the figure was about one hour per week."

Her bedtime in 9-9:30 if she can manage it. I was also taking time out for dinner.. silly me.

Yes, she is only working. I also said this is not every night. It's hard right after vacation because getting back on schedule of going to bed early and getting up at 5:30 again is rough.

I am not stressing.. and as I said she is fine, and has put much of this pressure on herself. I just hate nights like this when we have no family time. My DH is not expected to work during vacation, or for many hours after he gets home from work. (Although he often does.)

She has a 94 GPA so I have no doubt she is in all the right classes. She just has a lot of work tonight... as I said it goes in waves. I wish they would teach them to budget their time by giving them a few evenings to do larger assignments.

Where am I getting what info?? The info that you just got back from vacation (a vacation you said you didn't actually go anywhere on)? Or the info about other countries being superior education-wise? I ASKED what the homework situation was in other countries with superior education systems. I made no claims about what they might be.

If I read your OP correctly, she JUST returned to school after a break (Spring Break?)....a vacation you didn't go anywhere for, but you felt that she probably would have liked to just relax. FROM WHAT? Also, you say you are disappointed because you can't spend time with her because of all that homework...Was she not just on vacation...were you not around for this vacation to spend quality time with? What am I missing?

I'm sure a lot of the homework is busy work and probably fairly meaningless in the grand scheme of actual education. However, it is what it is and most of us (not all) had to deal with the same thing. Boatloads of homework isn't anything new. We all survived.

 

[Mel522]

True. Tonight I had to spend an hour and a half helping my kids with their homework. Part of that was standardized test prep. Those of you who are currently parenting school age kids know exactly what I mean.
The difference, of course, is that my 10 year old daughter is NOT an adult, and neither is the 14 year old daughter of the OP. She's a minor. Do most peole here honestly believe she wouldn't stand to benefit from some time outside on her bicycle, or sitting in a corner somewhere reading a novel???

I don't think anyone is arguing against homework, certainly not me!!! But I think that it should be work that's productive, and that teachers should keep in mind that there is a life beyond their class.

I was commenting on what I did, not what everyone should do. I also was pointing out that even with all of that I still had 1-2 hours of homework.

For the second part, I was commenting on where the OP said

Most adults aren't expected to start work at 7am, come home at 3, have an hour break and then work from home until bedtime.

I never said kids should do homework all night, just that adults are expected to work from 7 to 3 (usually later) and sometimes work until bedtime. That's all

 

[aprilgail2]

Why are kids expected to go to school for 7 hours day and then often have 3-4 hours of homework? I feel so bad for my DD. .

Its the same for my 8th grade daughter! Today she got home from school at 245- and has been at the homework since, its 930 now and she still has and hour or so more, she ate dinner at her desk while working on her homework. State tests are coming so they are giving them these giant packets of practice state tests. She is in honors and pre-ap classes and the workload is insane. At first I thought it was just her but I talked to other parents and its the same for their kids that are in those classes. One weekend it was 16 hours of homework- we couldn't do anything as a family since homework has taken oer our lives!

I agree. My kids no longer want to go on vacation for Spring Break or winter break because they feel they won't be able to finish their assignment given over the break.

Once we went on vacation and poor DS had to do assignments while on Spring vacation and he said never again.

I'm not talking about taking kids out of school for vacation. I'm talking about getting homework over what are supposed to be breaks for them.

We could NEVER go away on winter or spring break or even Christmas break- they load them with enough work and projects that even if we went someplace she would spend most of the time inside doing homework!

When is your child's bedtime? If she gets home at 3, has an hour break, and then works on homework for 4 hours, that's still only 8pm.

I would be happy at this point with 4 hours, its when it goes to 7+ that it is to much. There are some days when she is so stressed out from the thought of how much more she has to go that she cries. There can no longer be a bedtime, she was up till 1am one morning doing homework, kids are falling asleep in class from being up so late doing homework. My daughter just wrote this 2 page letter to Gov. Cuomo regarding the amount of homework and state test LOL- she mailed it, I wonder if she will get a reply!

The only good thing is that the kids in high school all say if you get past these 2 8th grade classes she is taking that are hard then high school is a breeze! Its the outlining of every chapter in the social studies book that takes most of the time!

 

[cybrkitn]

You just got back from vacation. Why on Earth does she need to relax...after only one day back at school no less?

I just don't get parents complaining about homework loads. Maybe because nobody complained about the hours of homework I came home with. I just assumed that's how it was and I dealt with it.

Does anyone know what kind of homework is typical in countries with superior education systems (South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Norway etc)?

Yes. DS10 has a classmate who has family in China (grandparents). She actually went to school for a year in China while she was visiting her grandfather who was ill at the time. They are in school from around 7 am until 5 pm and up till 2 am or longer doing their homework. They do not get a chance to be kids b/c of the strictness of their education. Her mother was explaining to me what China's education is like.


I'm in my 40's and do not remember ever getting as much homework when I was in school as kids are now. I don't remember spending 2-3 hours doing my homework (except when I was having problems with math).

DS10 has been coming home around 3:10 in the afternoon and spends at least 1.5 hours doing his homework. Most of the time he takes 2-3+ hours on his homework (but he has also been recently diagnosed with ADD and is on medication). One thing that he has that DH and I never had is the AR program (accelerated reading). He has to read every day for at least 20 minutes and then take a test on it once he finishes the book.

What annoys me the most is that his teacher is very project happy. Last month his class had 3 projects all due very close to one another (2 social studies and one Spanish project). DS has had projects to do over what should be his school vacation. We haven't been able to go anywhere b/c of these projects. Now he has a speech project that needs to be 3-5 minutes long with the draft due next week and a research project that only the subject/topic part is due this week. Seriously? School vacations are supposed to be just that - VACATION. It's a chance for them to unwind and take a break from school so they come back refreshed (just like adults do when taking a vacation from work). If the teachers are going to schedule projects or homework over the vacation, then they might as well not have the vacations.

Oh, and DS also gets a homework packet to do over the summer. Reading is required and must be done. The homework packet is pretty much to give them a heads-up as to what they will be learning and to see where they stand on those subjects. I can understand that to a degree. However, DH and I NEVER had summer homework given to us. So it annoys me that DS has to do it over the summer instead of having the whole summer to himself and being able to participate in activities like Boy Scout camp.

 

[disney is my life]

What really gets me is the fact that in my dd's school the teacher talks for the whole class period and then 5 minutes before the bell they assign the homework. That's 70 minutes of class time that could have been use to finish homework had it been assigned at the beginning of class however they wait till the last second to assign it

Sent from my iPod touch using DISBoards

 

[kaytieeldr]

What really gets me is the fact that in my dd's school the teacher talks for the whole class period and then 5 minutes before the bell they assign the homework. That's 70 minutes of class time that could have been use to finish homework had it been assigned at the beginning of class however they wait till the last second to assign it

Sent from my iPod touch using DISBoards

But then it's not homework, it's classroom work. And before students know enough to complete the homework, they need to be taught the material - the teacher-talking time.

 

[Aliceacc]

What really gets me is the fact that in my dd's school the teacher talks for the whole class period and then 5 minutes before the bell they assign the homework. That's 70 minutes of class time that could have been use to finish homework had it been assigned at the beginning of class however they wait till the last second to assign it

Sent from my iPod touch using DISBoards

My kids can't do the homework unless and until I teach the material.

 

[StitchesGr8Fan]

The thing with homework is that no matter what you do, some students win, some students lose.

There are students that need a lot of homework at night to reinforce what they learned during the day. It takes them longer to "get it". Students who pick up quickly lose out.

There are also students that need lots of homework to teach them time management and organization skills to prepare them for college and after, because they aren't naturally inclined to manage their time or be organized. Students who are good at keeping themselves organized and managing their time lose out.

There are students who learn quickly and only need a few minutes of homework a night to reinforce the day's lesson. Students who take longer lose out.

There are students who know how to organize themselves and budget their time are fine with very little homework at night and will be fine when they have to manage themselves in college. But the students who don't have those skills and don't get the chance to learn them will struggle for a while in college.

So no matter what you do, someone doesn't get what they need. And there are too many students and too few teachers to customize a learning and homework plan for every type of student.

I do believe that some teachers assign busy work. Like they get an award for being the toughest teacher who assigned the most work. But they pay for it because they have to grade all that junk!

The claim that the US is falling behind other countries who are in school all day and doing homework all night has some merit. But there are other countries who have different education philosophies that are much more lax than the US that also rate higher than the US in education. And you see quite a few people from the uber-strict countries coming the to US as adults for more opportunities and better qualities of life.

 

[luvmy3]

What really gets me is the fact that in my dd's school the teacher talks for the whole class period and then 5 minutes before the bell they assign the homework. That's 70 minutes of class time that could have been use to finish homework had it been assigned at the beginning of class however they wait till the last second to assign it

Sent from my iPod touch using DISBoards

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of homework? I expect teachers to use their class time to teach, I don't expect them to use it as a study hall.

 

[Gumbo4x4]

The claim that the US is falling behind other countries who are in school all day and doing homework all night has some merit. But there are other countries who have different education philosophies that are much more lax than the US that also rate higher than the US in education. And you see quite a few people from the uber-strict countries coming the to US as adults for more opportunities and better qualities of life.

I wish I still had the link, but I saw a very interesting article somewhat debunking the whole falling behind thing. Essentially, it broke the US into demographics, and then compared those demographics to the origin countries of each demographic.

Basically while the Asians were beating US students as a whole, Asian descendants within the US system were actually beating the Chinese and Japanese. The US average was pulled down quite a bit by the inner city schools and those that had a high percentage of immigrants from 3rd World nations (Mexico in particular). But even those poor performers were beating those still living in those 3rd World countries. Was an interesting read.

 

[Allison]

What really gets me is the fact that in my dd's school the teacher talks for the whole class period and then 5 minutes before the bell they assign the homework. That's 70 minutes of class time that could have been use to finish homework had it been assigned at the beginning of class however they wait till the last second to assign it

Sent from my iPod touch using DISBoards

So the teacher teaches?
So they should spend their class time doing homework? When would the teacher actually teach?