tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658526372996117205.post7830851100027622003..comments2023-09-29T05:32:04.308-07:00Comments on StrangePegs: How the System Failed My Son: Part Four -- A Moment of HopeAndrew Leonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13964775673414653644noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658526372996117205.post-58444437927693503512016-06-18T09:09:38.817-07:002016-06-18T09:09:38.817-07:00I don't remember much homework when I was a ki...I don't remember much homework when I was a kid back in the late 50's and the 60's. I always had time to do stuff at home and outside. I always did well in school even though I pretty well schlepped through any homework I did have. <br /><br /> My kids' homework kind of annoyed me because I was a single dad with a job with long hours. They were mostly on their own with school and they did pretty well for the most part. And they seem to be doing fine as adults.<br /><br />I think homework should be minimal and an individual's pursuit of what and how much they want to learn should mostly be up to them. Maybe a course in motivation and organization might not be bad for kids to learn.<br /><br />Arlee Bird<br /><a href="http://tossingitout.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">Tossing It Out</a><br />Arlee Birdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11663942782929929334noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658526372996117205.post-37961943266864660632016-06-13T15:25:40.130-07:002016-06-13T15:25:40.130-07:00Oh, boy, do I understand. My kids are 36 and 29 no...Oh, boy, do I understand. My kids are 36 and 29 now, but I spent years bitching and complaining about waste-of-time homework. It didn't do any good. It never went away. When the younger one went to a prep school for high school, she had some homework, but it was worth doing. She learned from it. All that time spent on homework in public school meant that my kids couldn't read and couldn't play. How were they supposed to be kids? I wish I had known about the prep school sooner. I would have talked to my son about going to school there. He might have had a more meaningful high school experience, though at least he loved marching band, concert band, and jazz band. The prep school was up to almost 30k a year by the time the second child hit her senior year. Almost all of it was paid by scholarships, but we had to make the commitment to get her back and forth to the place and to pay for her text books and other items. It was worth it. I'm sorry for your son's difficult experiences. I considered having my daughter skip fourth grade, but she was already kind of young for her class (got moved to first grade from kindergarten in October) and the kids who were in fifth grade that year were well known for their exceptionally bad behavior. <br /><br />Love,<br />JanieJanie Junebughttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10573607241326291404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658526372996117205.post-3729207531358840042016-06-13T15:17:07.171-07:002016-06-13T15:17:07.171-07:00Jeanne: That would be because rote memorization do...Jeanne: That would be because rote memorization doesn't teach anything.Andrew Leonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13964775673414653644noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658526372996117205.post-73734506820901530232016-06-13T15:16:03.863-07:002016-06-13T15:16:03.863-07:00Tony: Sure, I understand that it's normal to b...Tony: Sure, I understand that it's normal to be bored at school, but there is a HUGE difference between the kind of boredom that it exists because you simply want to be doing something else and the kind of boredom that exists because you're being required to do something pointless. Let me re-frame it:<br /><br />For many kids (maybe most), it's not actual boredom that's at play. It's the schoolwork requires more effort than they want to put into it, so they would rather be doing something fun. That's not actually boredom; it's escapism. [I'm not talking high school, here. That's different.] Boredom, though, is when you're being required to do something tedious and, often, pointless. So in 1st grade while all the other kids were -learning- to add and subtract, my son was doing multiplication and division (because we'd had a conversation which lead me to show him the concept (then he started doing it on his own)). In 1st grade, while all the other kids were learning "See Spot run," my son was reading Harry Potter.<br /><br />That's not the "normal" boredom of school. And there's no way to tell a kid in a way that they're really able to understand, "You just have to do this thing because you just have to do it." It's like a punishment to the kid. At least adults can understand that they do the crummy jobs they do because they want the paycheck. Kids don't get a paycheck for going to school.Andrew Leonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13964775673414653644noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658526372996117205.post-30446053590513966912016-06-13T15:05:02.616-07:002016-06-13T15:05:02.616-07:00ABftS: I talked about that somewhere, Maybe it'...ABftS: I talked about that somewhere, Maybe it's in the post I linked or in one of these posts that are coming up; I can't remember. But, then, very little of school anymore does any preparation for anything other than more school.Andrew Leonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13964775673414653644noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658526372996117205.post-74225881660568227192016-06-13T15:02:02.150-07:002016-06-13T15:02:02.150-07:00Briane: The worst thing for me with helping with m...Briane: The worst thing for me with helping with math homework was when they had some new "trick" they were doing in math and which they were required to do. So one of them would ask me for help with a particular type of problem, I would show her (because this happened with my daughter a lot) her how to do it, and she would tell me I'd done it wrong. What I done was demonstrate the straightforward way to do the problem, but they had some method they had to use that, really, just complicated the problem and hadn't existed when I was in school. It always made me feel like these things had been made up so that someone could sell a new math text to schools.Andrew Leonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13964775673414653644noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658526372996117205.post-62256504642124207542016-06-13T13:10:52.304-07:002016-06-13T13:10:52.304-07:00I hear that in Norway, they have almost no testing...I hear that in Norway, they have almost no testing or homework in schools, and they routinely come out on top in terms of education. It's almost like rote memorization doesn't actually teach anything!<br /><br />Seriously, I don't remember a single homework assignment that wasn't just to prepare me for a test. And I don't remember a single test that was actually useful in the real world. No wonder your son was bored.J E Oneilhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09780097298061829471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658526372996117205.post-62126271868558828322016-06-13T12:38:17.563-07:002016-06-13T12:38:17.563-07:00My son has only had homework a handful of times, w...My son has only had homework a handful of times, which is nice. I'm worried that he'll get slammed with homework next year for his first year in middle school, and shut down. This stuff comes too easily for him as it is, so he tends to be lazy about the work out of boredom. I guess we'll see soon. My daughter had a homework sheet each day, but it was maybe 15 minutes of homework, and for her, practicing the math they were sending home was beneficial, though often involving tears. Other than that, they push reading, which my kids already do, so no biggie.Shannon Lawrencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00934641808195675935noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658526372996117205.post-27415208519167393292016-06-13T11:34:05.804-07:002016-06-13T11:34:05.804-07:00You also have to understand, it's perfectly no...You also have to understand, it's perfectly normal to be bored at school. Listen, and I guess this is the part where I once again realize that I'm apparently decades younger than some you other bloggers in this little community, twenty years ago, homework was already very much a thing. This is nothing new. I had it in grade school, I had it in middle school, I had it in high school, and I had it in college. I always hated it. And yeah, I was more often then not bored in school. I think I last really enjoyed it in kindergarten, with a few sporadic flashes in later years. But the thing is, the most engaging teachers I ever had also failed miserably in actually teaching me the subjects that so impassioned them. Enthusiasm makes for a fun classroom, but amounts to little in terms of actually learning something. Teaching is not a science. It can't be perfected. All you can really expect is that the teacher presents the material. The rest is in the length of the class, the length of the day, the student's own enthusiasm...We tend to overlook that the student has a role to play, too. You just skipped a grade in this post, and this still wasn't good enough. It's not the schooling at this point. It's that your son was never going to fit well with this routine, no matter how it was presented. And so we return to my first statement...Tony Laplumehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07854455859399339169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658526372996117205.post-77557298426319523262016-06-13T08:36:46.426-07:002016-06-13T08:36:46.426-07:00I think I mentioned this before, but one of the th...I think I mentioned this before, but one of the things that I don't understand about all of this excessive homework, aside from the obvious of unnecessary stress for kids and taking away time for them to be them, is the fact that this does nothing to help prepare them for the real world. Most people go to work 8-5ish, and then they come home and they're done for the day. They've earned their rest. Rare exceptions pop up with people having to sometimes take some work home with them, but it's not like you go to work 8 hours a day, and then come home and work for 4 more hours (unpaid) while your family relaxes or has fun, every single day. That's not acceptable for an adult, so why is that acceptable for a little kid?A Beer for the Showerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17029139745335325356noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658526372996117205.post-89609107848067944762016-06-13T05:05:07.423-07:002016-06-13T05:05:07.423-07:00Kids in America do far worse than kids in other co...Kids in America do far worse than kids in other countries, yet they have far more of those special tests and homework than we ever did at their age. That should be telling them something...Alex J. Cavanaughhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09770065693345181702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658526372996117205.post-7419152799875714272016-06-13T04:53:06.989-07:002016-06-13T04:53:06.989-07:00Your point about Americans doubling down on failur...Your point about Americans doubling down on failure is well-taken.<br /><br />I think I might've gotten my disdain for homework from you originally. I know that for years I've thought "Why are the schools delegating some of the teaching to parents?" I'm pretty smart, but beginning about 5th grade I had to go look up various scientific and mathematical concepts to help explain them to the kids.<br /><br />And as I've said before: bad teachers are a part of the problem. We teach teachers the basics of how to educate, but not how to engage students in learning. I always think, when I see teachers portrayed on TV, how little the good teachers from my past are like the 'good' teachers on TV. My teachers didn't dress up in costumes or engage in wacky stunts or do silly stuff. They simply loved what they taught, loved teaching it, and tried to convey that level of interest to students.<br /><br />To this day, I love Charles Dickens not just because he's a good writer, but because my 9th grade English teacher loved him and passed that on.Brianehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01616494058636881575noreply@blogger.com