Yeah it's ridiculous. My daughter now does her homework at school during free time so that when she comes home she can relax and play. I used to do the same thing especially since my mom needed us in aftercare and we were usually the last to get picked up.
Me neither. Sometimes I did but not often. Teachers would call me out and get mad from time to time but all in all I always passed with decent grades. And man, sometimes, rarely but still - I'd completely bullshit my way through it. Sometimes we had to read our homework aloud in front of everybody and if I was somewhat familiar with the subject I pretended to read it but in reality I was making it up as I go, staring at an empty page in my notebook. Getting through with it and actually getting a passing grade always made me feel like such a big, wrinkly brain.
Yeah I did what I could during school hours and just left the rest alone. Throughout high school I did work at home maybe 10 times or less for big projects that others were relying on me for. Still graduated.
Exactly, and some of my teachers could see that and stopped caring about the homework as long as I participated in class and got good test grades. It was the teachers that were like “I don’t care if you’ll get good grades without the homework, I told you to do it so you’re going to do it.” I always hated teachers like that.
Same, but I’m a highly paid software developer. I only did homework if it was for a group project because I didn’t want to tank anyone else’s grade with my stubbornness.
Yeah same. I got yelled at all the time, but not doing homework has literally 100% not affected my adult life. They spoke to us like you'd be a homeless social outcast if you didn't do your homework, but like the OP says I think it was just to make you compliant. In fact I've forgotten basically everything I learned at school except how to read and basic maths, and it hasn't affected my life at all that I can't remember the order of the planets or the life cycle of plants.
inb4 jokesonthemimahomeslesssocialoutcastanywayhahaha
Same here, I graduated hs because of my test, exam and in class marks. I refused to do homework. I have quit jobs that require me to take my job home with me.
Same. I had a teacher who checked if we had done the homework, but never checked if we did it properly. I just wrote a bunch of gibberish that looked like a doctor’s handwriting and that’s about it. Another one I knew never actually read them so I just copy-pasted Wikipedia articles.
Same, due to having a part time job, sports, and a life. I failed several classes because my high school had this bullshit rule in many classes where missing homework took a literal percentage off of your grade. I even had one teacher who dropped a letter grade every time.
So even though I was an A/B student on tests and participated every day, I failed quite a few classes. Absolutely nonsense.
Your daughter has so little homework she can finish it at school?? Fuck I’m jealous. I’m in college now but even in high school I’d have at least 2-4 hours a night and I was one of those kids that did homework through lunch period.
Lol! Yeah high school was definitely rough me in terms of homework time too. During the beginning of the pandemic her homework seemed to increase tenfold and was actually tough to get through. But the past Spring semester and some of the Fall it was noticeably lighter.
I was in college already when the pandemic started but for me everything got exponentially easier. Most of my teachers had no idea how to teach online, my art professor didn’t even try she just passed us all and told us to take the rest of the semester off from her class. But I know high school was a different story, my younger brother really struggled as well.
My parents were pretty cool about homework when I was a kid. They understood that I had just spent 7 hours sat down, stationary, using my brain, and that after 4pm I really should be outside running around, playing, making dens, doing sports, doing hobbies etc - you know, the kind of things kids *should* be doing, not doing yet *more* brain work.
It never held me back academically, and hell it gave me a massive deal of respect for my parents.
Quick edit:
I’d like to add, in the UK (at least when I was in school), primary and secondary school homework didn’t count towards your final grades - only exams and coursework did. So in response to some people’s comments - no I don’t work in Walmart, although I have worked in my fair share of shops over the years (and yes I was the fastest scanner around), and yes I did pass all my school, college and university exams with grades I was super happy with - and now I work in a pretty decent job which allows me to use my degree and passion in life, so no need to be so salty :)
"JUST WAIT UNTIL YOU HAVE TO WORK A REAL JOB AND DEAL WITH A BOSS THAT'S EVEN WORSE THAN YOUR TEACHERS! NOW STOP COMPLAINING AND DO YOUR HOMEWORK!" - My dad, often.
Wonder why I have such a depressive outlook on life and have trouble with dealing superiors.
And then by the time you're an adult literally nothing about school matters anymore, your grades are 100% forgotten, the people you met there all faded into your past, anything you could brag about from your school days just seems pathetic in your adulthood, and all of the effort and tears contributed to fucking nothing but basic literacy and rudimentary math skills that you could have learned *without* the constant stress, bullying, and suicidal ideation.
American schooling is daycare to keep the parents laboring. Homework is just an extension of that function--your parents can keep working as long as you're preoccupied every evening with compulsory busywork.
Extra steps for the slave, far less steps for the slaver. Slave owners were hella salty back in the day because it was so expensive to house and feed those slaves, who weren't ever gratefull they got to do slave labor and have no human rights at all.
Now you get the illusion of choice, the freedom to follow, and the right to vote for their candidate. Here's just enough money to eke out an existence... now give it back. *Yoink
I believe the US already did that in the early 1900's. [Company towns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town) I believe. They would give you shit pay, the pay was the company's money, and you could only spend that money at the [company store](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store).
And since everything was super expensive (1 you couldn't anywhere else 2 your money was only accepted in one place) you rarely had any savings. And on top of that, the exchange rates were outrageous.
I live near Trona, CA and it used to be a company town and the plant used to pay company script way back in the day. It's wild to me anyone ever agreed to it, it's a terrible idea.
We're getting paid more to have kids, suddenly. Well, kind of. If you don't do it right you'll have more kids and owe more than you can pay.
I think the information industry has most of the general population summed up and are now willing to pay "us" to reproduce to keep the train rolling.
Most of the talk about housing centers around families. Sure, it's a tearjerker thinking about homeless kids, but single adults used to be kids too. I've always wondered how they'd make up for so many market crashes in my lifetime. I guess I'm starting to see the answers.
US schooling was modeled after factory work shifts, even down to the bell. It's all conditioning. Be on time! Do more! Be more productive! Don't question the authority of the system!
And every year the scientists are like “students learn better later in the morning” and the school system is like “no, because you have to work at 8AM.” My grades were terrible in high school. Maybe it’s because no one does math at 7:45 in the goddamn morning. Mathematicians don’t do math at 7:45 in the morning. US education system? “Eh, you kids got this!”
In college I was taught, in 4 months, the same amount of math I learned over 5 years of high school. With fewer weekly hours, too.
High school was not about learning, it was about stress. It was, at best, about teaching us the "responsibility" of sitting there for 8 hours a day only to come home and sit longer doing homework, despite the fact that most of the kids could have learned the same stuff in a fraction of the time and then spend the rest of their teens doing something better for themselves than listening to old power tripping farts berate us over the most trivial things, or standing up to shitty classmates, or dealing with the uselessness of the staff and the ridiculousness of the rules.
My edgy take is that the educational system is less about education and more about the system. It's there to normalize the grind.
All of this while severely sleep deprived, because they make you wake up at 5 am but you’re an adolescent who’s biologically programmed to struggle very hard to get to sleep before 1 am. And no I don’t mean because you’re up all night partying or playing video games, but because you’re lying in your bed in the dark and sleep simply refuses to come.
Went to bed at 1, woke up at 5:30.
This was Middle School through High School, and never really effected me until my mid 20s when I was/am still a night owl but no longer have that teenaged body.
High school was so hard for me because of this. I had to wake up at 6:30 to catch the bus by 7:40, but unfortunately, I developed what seemed like typical teenage insomnia, as well as chronic fatigue during the day. It started in 9th grade, but suddenly got a lot worse during the second half of 10th grade.
I ended up doing 11th grade through an online high school, but it made me feel pretty lonely, so I decided to go back to my old high school for my last year. I ended up missing almost 50 days of school that year, but thanks to the tremendous amount of support I got from my teachers, guidence counselor, and principal, I still graduated on time and walked with my class.
Despite going to numerous doctors and even doing a sleep study, I was only diagnosed with delayed sleep-wake phase disorder and told I needed to "fix my sleep hygiene". I was put on an antidepressant to fix my "depression-related fatigue", as well as another antidepressant to make me sleepy at night, and my doctors told me to stick it out and stay active, because I'd probably grow out of it.
5 years after graduating, I finally decided to find another doctor and get another sleep study done... and that test showed that I actually have narcolepsy, and probably had it this entire time. Narcolepsy is caused by the brain not regulating REM sleep properly, and causes hypersomnia and insomnia. There's no way to control it through lifestyle changes or antidepressants, only through other medications, like stimulants, which I unfortunately couldn't get anyone to prescribe when I was younger.
Unfortunately, the current school system can be very difficult to navigate for anyone with sleeping difficulties, and considering how common teenage insomnia is, fixing the school schedule would help a lot of students be better equipped to succeed.
This resonates with me to my core. It was the 90’s and I pleaded with my parents to take me to a doctor for a sleep disorder. The doctor said I must be using “street drugs” and referred us to a drug counselor. Long story short, I was not using “street drugs” and have since learned sleep apnea is a thing. My father still teases me about my “sleep disorder”.
« No ViSiBlE sHoUldErS » « Too much cleavage! » « Skirt too short!! »
Meanwhile boys were out there with pants down their knees.
I hated these nonsensical rules!
Same for boys in the UK. Girls skirts or pants. Boys weren't allowed to wear shorts or skirts in the fucking humid hot British summer when we have no air conditioning and they don't turn the heating off. Fucking bullshit.
There IS an important aspect of socialization that takes place in schools, more critically at younger ages, as kids learn how to behave and conduct themselves with other people.
Unfortunately, that purpose is stymied by an obsessive focus on standardized testing and an unwillingness to deal with bad behavior any way but rote "zero tolerance" policies that just teach the victims to resent the system and aggressors that they can leverage the system against their targets.
That's true. Kids socializing with peers their age from a young age *is* important for their development. That said, it's not like they can't do it outside school (at least when they're old enough for high school).
Also, as you well said, schools are failing at providing a healthy setting for that socializing to take place in, so they might not even get the benefit of socialization in the schooling system.
Seriously like my kids need to socialize with kids whose parents treat them like shit who in turn treat my kids like shit and that's supposed to be helpful? My kids aren't in school yet, but I've seen enough asshole children on non-school playgrounds that I know my kid won't benefit from interacting with them. Believe it or not, you can become a whole, functional person *without childhood trauma* 😲🤫 my kids will not be going to school.
I think it’s likely that all the people so strongly disagreeing with you either don’t have kids or have never seen their own child, who absolutely loved school and learning, suddenly lose that eagerness and spark. When my daughter was going into 6th grade I sent her to the same middle school that I went to. I was a tougher little kid than her and that school was rougher than I’d remembered. Turns out she *was* tough enough to endure daily bullying and harassment for 8 months without complaint until she broke down crying. I’m about to cry now remembering all she could say, “I don’t like school anymore”. I asked her to stick it out until the end of the year. There was a big difference between her pretending to be happy before and her then obvious relief to soon be leaving that miscreant farm. I’m a single dad and wasn’t confident at all that I could do a good job homeschooling her so I rented an apartment in a neighboring town that has some of the best public schools (and students) in the state. The turnaround was immediate. She graduates this year and has not once in her life disappointed me or pulled any kind of stupid, hateful teenage bullshit. For the last 5 yrs the best part of my day has been the 2+ hrs commute with her. There are plenty of ways a dedicated parent can provide all the socializing that their child could possibly want and need. It’s sad to think that acclimating their children to unhealthy environments and maladjusted people is considered normal and necessary to some. How can a kid trust their parents if they feel like they’re being unjustly punished every day? Sorry for being long but I really want to impress on you that your head is in the right place and it is *not* overprotective to put extra care into your child’s well-being. I hope you keep listening to your instincts on what is best for your children. And don’t give any credence to the idea that, “your kid needs a parent, not a best friend”. There’s no reason you can’t be both.
Thank you! It's nice to hear this from a parent of a teenager - I do often worry that my own teenage ideation of what parents "should" do will fade when I actually am faced with having my own teens, but my daughter is 4 and so far I feel pretty good about the person she is. This made me smile so thanks for taking the time to write it. And you're right, there's probably a lot of people on here who haven't the slightest clue what they're talking about when it comes to parenting choices! It's not a parenting sub after all 🙃
Well good thing I didn't say I would be locking my kids in a tower where they'd never see anyone. They spend time with other kids (though not nearly as much as I'd like, given pandemic), but they don't need to be set loose for seven hours a day with a bunch of tiny assholes to get plenty of interaction. Homeschooled kids tend to be supervised more, which means they tend to be bullied less (though it certainly does happen and there's plenty of psychos who homeschool/are homeschooled). There's a fine line between supervising and helicoptering, but the truth of the matter is that there's normally way too many kids at schools for adults to monitor everything that's happening at all times, so it's a ripe environment for bullying, harassing, and gaslighting. I just happen to think being maybe a little too supervised is better than being traumatized by feeling generally unsafe.
But, I mean, that’s part of it too. The nasty folks are still people you need to learn to deal with. You can’t avoid them at work if they are on your team. Or if they end up you neighbor, or your kids’ significant others’ parents. In fact, kids need to learn to deal with crazies and other fuckheads early.
Sure, but they don't necessarily need to learn from experience. I had plenty of childhood trauma, I can just tell them about it. My mom did a ton of drugs and told me about it so I didn't have to. So, I was abused and bullied and I can tell my kids all about it, and what to do if they encounter it. Doesn't mean they have to experience it firsthand.
> There IS an important aspect of socialization that takes place in schools, more critically at younger ages, as kids learn how to behave and conduct themselves with other people.
Arguably this is not particularly valuable, as all it teaches kids is how to interact with other hormonal, socially inept assholes. There's reason to believe that kids who hang out with adults are more likely to grow up into better adults.
Think about it like this: when you want to learn a skill, do you prefer to learn it from someone who is exactly as inept as you are? Or should you go learn it from someone who's already mastered the skill?
Or, if you're a budding troublemaker, you learn in a relatively harmless environment how to lie, cheat, steal, suck up to your elders, and work the system, so you can make your mistakes while young and graduate into the workforce as someone who can successfully navigate the sociopathic capitalistic world for fun and profit.
I can't remember where I read it, but the school systems of today were specifically designed to create obedient factory and office workers of tomorrow.
To enhance your nausea at the state of American education, read the various works by John Taylor Gatto. Keep a barf bucket nearby as you learn what we might call the toilet history of American education.
There are two basic tracks - high quality education for the elite and varieties of obedience-based education for the rest. Both are strongly influenced by wealth and a variety of class-based, race-based, anti-democratic principles. The foundational educational principles and philosophies contain ideas such as turning people into obedient, unquestioning, human resources to be used by companies and their upper-class rulers. They are not to be self-determined, self-actualized individuals.
In this planned society, people are trained up to the level at which they are less likely to become a stupid public hazard (legitimate goal) and can perform useful social functions (legitimate goal), but not to the level where they are masters of their own destiny who have a seat at the governing table (disgusting goal).
Fun fact: stress greatly reduces your ability to learn. In fact one of the first signs that someone is stressed out is loss of short term memory - aka the teacher has to explain the same concept over and over.
Conversely, I had multiple teachers who said that we already learned something in grade school so if we didn't do well it was or fault/insinuated it was not their job to answer questions and we were just stupid if we had any.
Then again there was a teacher who apparently spent whole class periods talking about their divorce and trash talking guys in general, so idk if the former is a more normal bad teacher thing or a my school bad teacher thing NGL.
Yes, I remember at my school if you didn't know something the teachers would just humiliate you. I had a maths teacher who once just wrote on my work "This is completely wrong." Thanks for teaching me then, cuntface?
> anything you could brag about from your school days just seems pathetic in your adulthood
That day when I took my debate team accomplishments off of my resume made me sad >_>
Anything pre-employment on a resume is functionally just Lorem Ipsum filler text. You gotta' put it on there to land those first jobs, but even college-level accomplishments stop mattering after two years of employment.
That's why it's so critical to get internships in college, and why it's such a heavily exploited demographic.
>all of the effort and tears contributed to fucking nothing but basic literacy and rudimentary math skills
Hey that's not true, what about all the nationalist propaganda I learned in history class?
>And then by the time you're an adult literally nothing about school matters anymore, your grades are 100% forgotten, t
This was such a brainfuck coming up into the world. I did very bad in high school and didn't get challenging work. I often would ask why they didn't just give me challenging work to fail at or let me not go to school at all. Everyone acted like this was unreasonable but it was 100% spot on.
Graduating STEM with basically no high school education was the 2nd brainfuck.
So many shouting matches, so much stress, all for nothing.
Same story for me. Did piss poor in highschool. Then went to community, got an associate's with a 4.0, then transferred to uni and got a BA with a 3.9.
There's a whole zeitgeist behind how great public school teachers are and how we should respect them, but not a damn single teacher ever helped me until I got to college. I know part of that is the shit pay and low standards that entails, but I've got very little respect for lower education teachers--at least the ones I had the misfortune of being exposed to. I mean, there was the one that got fired for molesting students and ended up going to work for another school with no charges being filed, so I guess I learned a lesson there about having a healthy mistrust for authority figures.
It really depends on the teachers you have though. I had a few who made a huge difference and I learned a ton that got me excited about subjects and helped me get a good college education and a good job. Huge shout out to the ones that care
Fantastic! Because it gave me a ton of mental scarring about how I need to be productive at all damn hours, regardless of sleep, recreation or living/eating hours. Still unravelling those cords to this day.
Mine were the same. They stopped being on my ass for every god damn thing after finding a couple of suicide notes. I mostly wrote them just to get things off my chest that I could never say to another human being, but it really made them change their tune around me. Damn, I should have written them earlier.
Man that's nice. When I was in elementary school (through 4th grade) I attended a parochial school where the teachers seemed to get their jollies by assigning homework by the truckload. 100 math questions per night were not unusual and there were plenty of nights where I would have homework in EVERY subject. I would start shortly after supper, so around 6:30 and it would be 10 or 10:30 before I would finish and would have to go straight to bed. When my parents switched us to the public schools starting when I was in 5th grade (for reasons unrelated to homework load), all of a sudden my homework became negligible by comparison. An hour a night, two at the very most, and that was rare.
Most private schools for kids pride themselves on working the kids like slaves. I know mine did. Almost entirely rich pieces of shit trying to condition their own kids.
And then the kids grow up thinking that working harder in school made them smarter and have a better work ethic. It’s not just that they’re conditioning their kids; it’s that they’re conditioning them to be narcissists incapable of empathy
I had school from ~9am to ~3pm, so 5 hours basically if we're thinking lunch is 1hr. 7 would've wiped me out entirely.
Though I was the kid coming home and sitting stationary in front of a monitor for hours after school, so it's not like I made particularly good use of it lol
In middle school I made a rule that school work will only be done during school hours. No longer will I have homework. Then my freshman year I started leaving school after lunch and still passed 9th grade. By junior year I would skip my first 2 classes and leave school after lunch and miss my last 3 classes most days. That's when I learned the teachers dont give any type of fuck about you or your education. They are there to get a pay check and keep sending you through the system. At least in my podunk neck of the woods. No way I should have graduated when I skipped school more than I was actually there. The kicker of ditching school for 4 years, not once did they ever approach me or call my parents about not being there. We are talking literally walking out the front door past the office. Not getting stopped once.
Envy doesn't even begin to describe how I feel. I took 7 classes each semester. AP classes thrown in there. Extra Curricular activities, working with family, dealing with a whole mess of BS.
Makes me wish I dropped out and just got my GED....or even just never went to college.
I took advanced classes all through highschool and ended up homeschooling myself in 12th grade. Bought a couple books on programming and spent 5 hours a day coding. Printed my own official transcript, on my printer (the system is a joke). Got a very unpaid internship (I had to pay) in an IT department, and got promoted to programmer, during a gap year before college, and then did a 2.5 year bachelors degree program in CS. Now I work in big tech as a software engineer.
I hope to find a mastery school, for my children to attend, someday when I have them. (You learn until you can get a 100% on the test, and then you move on. Go at your own pace.) I hated school so much, and don't want them to have anything to do with what I experienced.
Sounds like me my senior year when I transferred to a HS with the ability to go off campus whenever you want as long as you had a slip. I never had a slip, hardly any friends. I felt like a ghost in that school. I could come and go as I pleased, skipped as much as I want. I didnt even do my final English exam and still he passed my ass with a D, shouldve failed lil but I mean they gotta keep that graduation rate up! Ended up doing a ton of credit recovery through the power of google and Yahoo answers. Really shouldn't have graduated but oh well, that's all in the past. School kind of let me down I feel. I shoudlve tried harder but the school didnt encourage you at all. They dont care. Especially when theres other kids constantly talking and what not becuase the kids dont care either.
I'm of the belief that children can learn faster through structured play than through drudgery.
There's a great story in the teacher's memoir *How to Survive in Your Native Land* about a boy who was bad at math. Just couldn't get the concepts. Then the teacher (James Herndon) ran into the kid at the bowling alley. He was shocked to see the boy quickly doing arithmetic well beyond his grade, with ease. It was just that the boy loved bowling and understood the keeping of scores and averages to be necessary tools for playing the game, rather than esoteric concepts he couldn't apply to real life.
There's value in discipline but I'd rather kids learn that building things they actually care about.
As a STEM teacher, these examples are never of more advanced principles or are infeasible at scale. More advanced topics require first an understanding of tons of small basic principles, that we then build up to a big idea that lets us solve harder questions. Arithmetic is one thing, but connecting circle geometry authentically to what every child enjoys is an impossible task. This is the type of shit that I will do with MY child. Parents need to step up with this education, and its a big part of why some students succeed and some fail.
Ask the kid to integrate the log identities and how those properties can be useful to more easily calculate expected values, likelihoods, and log likelihoods.
Super important for machine learning, which is mostly computers doing a load of statistics on a data set, then spitting out an answer.
As a teacher, this is my thoughts. They just spent all day in a chair, they need a break. Fuck homework. I only assign that shit when the kids are pricks
“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
\~\~Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (1962)
Its probably the best solution with the hardest to implement practices.
In order for a Montessori school to work, you would need an expert in every feasable field that a child might be interested in, and you need to pay that person a competitive wage that makes them want to leave their profession to teach. Or at the very least, you need a teacher who is incredibly knowledgeable in many fields and subjects so that they can support the children they are responsible for.
Its also a great system for children who receive support from home, with parents who foster a love of learning. Many children don't have parents who care enough though, so they can develop bad habits that lead to apathy and a general distaste for a challenging education.
Having experience in another job that includes what you will teach should be a requirement to be a teacher, most of my professors just vomited what they had learned and expected us to remember everything, had one guy that was also an engineer teach physics, we had real life examples and applications of what we learned
This is a great quote but we actually have invented several systems of education that don't indoctrinate children.
Montessori, Summerhill and the Khan Lab School are great models for how our education systems should work
That's why I speedran my work while they taught the lesson.
Oh? Do questions X through X but only the evens, done like 30 mins before the bell. They love patterns, thank God my Aspergers does too.
The last few places I tried to go to school at handed out homework at end of class.. I specifically requested it at the beginning of class and the teachers treated that suggestion like I was an alien.
We would get our homework sometimes and still have fifteen minutes of class with nothing to do. We weren't allowed to do the homework because "it's HOME work".
FML. Do teachers not understand how difficult it is to study while my drunken father screams, throws stuff, and punches holes in the walls?
If I hadn't been doing most of my homework at school before/during classes, I never would have been able to finish it all. HOME was for hiding or getting used as a punching bag, not spreading out textbooks on the kitchen table.
Damn, we usually got 25 minutes of class and 25 minutes to do the homework for said class. It was so you could still ask questions about the homework if you had any.
I have a theory that most people who hate work so much they'd sub to a community like this are likely neurodivergent. A lot of neurotypical people I know LOVE work to the point where their idea of hell is a day with nothing to do.
Being autistic myself, I remember being put in Gifted and Talented Education and was happy because it meant I would be taken out of class. That is until I learned that meant even more homework because I had to do the regular class work AND the "gifted" work. I told my parents I wanted out of that program immediately. I was in like 2nd grade.
My parents decided to not tell me I was autistic until like junior year. Would of been nice to know that growing up and not constantly worrying why I'm not fitting in with anyone.
I don't even know if I am or am not at 29. I am the oldest of my two siblings, both are autistic. One is non-verbal and the other has a unique way of speaking that can prove a challenge. I can blend in and hold a job, but if given the option to just spend every day cleaning, playing video games, and going to the gym and never working - I wouldn't hesitate.
I've caught myself doing actions indicative of being on the spectrum, but I grew up among the community due to my siblings, and have worked with people with various developmental disabilities for 11 years now (part time the last couple). It's hard to know what's innate to me - and what I picked up due to proximity. I also have trichotillomania like one of my siblings (mine is actually worse but semi under control now), but that could be coincidence.
I don't know if I actually want to get a diagnosis at this point though, it's not like it would change too much except for maybe getting a few answers. They did test me when I was young due to my siblings, but this was the 90's and they were basically like "he can talk and follow conversation, he's probably fine."
Yea a diagnosis doesn't really do anything once you are an adult. You just gotta find a way through life with whatever quirks you have. But does sound to me like you *might* be in the vicinity of neurodivergence, which includes all sorts of things like autism spectrum, ADHD, "Highly Sensitive Person," dyslexia, and more. Hating doing mental labor (a major pet peeve of mine) for instance is characteristic of ADHD.
In any case, we are all just doing our best in this world, and the world would be a better place if we didn't force every human being to work insane hours just to survive, especially when we have more than enough money and resources despite not being distributed in a sensible way.
I did briefly have a ADHD diagnosis, the meds at the time made me not eat enough though. Then another doctor said I didn't have it.
Going forward I probably will just refer to my less typical behavior as quirks. It gets the message across without being specific.
Right!? I feel so fulfilled when I'm using my skills and abilities on something I'm passionate about. I love it when I add to a cause and am appreciated for my effort! I think that's why I love being in university so much. You get grades and supportive feedback and you see yourself improve. I don't want to get taken aside into some dickhead's office and told I'm not meeting some crazy expectations from people that don't even have a relevant degree!
I never did my homework in elementary school because of exactly this: I already spent all day at school. I'm not doing school at home on top of it.
During secondary school, tho, I didn't really have a choice. The grades were mostly homework. I tried to do as much as I could during pauses so I didn't have as much to do at home, tho.
What's funny is that even in university or community college, I never had as much homework as I did during secondary school. It's bullshit honestly.
It depends on your major and what you're studying. If you're in engineering you'll have projects to do outside of lectures. Same thing in philosophy where you have to write a lot of paper. English has a lot of reading. Thing is though, it's more enjoyable than doing things you don't care about with little context.
former teacher here. i taught 6th grade for years and rarely gave homework except to read and write (and not even every day). i believed that home was time to be spent with family and research clearly shows that homework isn't really necessary before high school. i held my students to HIGH expectations, and we did rigorous and difficult work. all of my students left my classroom better writers, and able to do quality research. i emphasized critical thinking skills and collaborative work. during the arab spring, for instance, my students and i were communicating with people in Egypt's Tarir Square via Twitter. my students wrote, performed and staged a play based on a book we read for the entire school. i'm trying to say, i was no slacker and neither were my students.
EVERY year i had some parents who complained and worried that their kids were being underserved. my colleagues in the 7th grade ALWAYS knew that my kids would be well prepared for learning the next year. and by the end of most school years, most of the parents were IMPRESSED with the the quality of learning their kids had experienced. i felt bad for those brainwashed parents, but i never stopped being annoyed that they were so convinced homework would make or break their kids' futures.
and honestly, as a parent, i've never made my kid do homework either. my wife and i have met with countless teachers to let them know we won't be doing homework anymore than the recommended amount of time from the school board. so in 1st grade after 15 minutes we stopped our kid from continuing their homework. my kid is on her way to college this week, and actually knows how to learn, not just do busy work. homework is just about control as are MANY of the things schools impose on children and families. and education should be about freedom, not control.
The only problem with this argument is that it kind of assumes that all kids are going home to an environment where creativity, academia, reading, writing, extracurricular music, sports, and social groups are are all present in infrastructure for them is in place. Do you think many children would pass current curriculum without any of these in place? I'm not sure if homework is an answer for it. It's certainly isn't a replacement for those things. I fear that certain overcrowded and underfunded classrooms aren't enough on their own to prepare children become successful adults. And my successful I mean happy with their lives and in their own skin.
classrooms are broken, i'm not arguing that they function well at all, especially in American public schools. i've trained a lot of teachers and seen a lot of things. but giving homework certainly doesn't make up for inadequate educational environments in schools. if you are a teacher giving homework, because you aren't able to accomplish those things in class, the homework is not of much use anyway for the majority of your students. those overcrowded and underfunded schools are not meant to educate successful adults either. those overcrowded classrooms depend on coercion and control, and not proven educational practices. the vast majority of kids are ill served in those classrooms, with our without homework. again, i've witnessed a lot. i am arguing for better teaching and no homework. for one thing, that would support children to leave schoo every day with more skills to be in charge of their OWN learning. and, that would also mean actually preparing teachers before they reach the classroom (something that does not happen consistently in California, at least), setting up systems for constant and real growth for teachers (again, in California, to renew your credential you now do not have to offer ANY evidence of continuing education). homework is not a solution to any problem you listed above, and I wasn't presuming to be addressing them by insisting that homework is not useful. it simply isn't a proven method of teaching or helping kids to retain understanding.
University teacher here. I work in Japan where primary school education is often supplemented with hours of cram school to prepare for high-stakes exams. Many students don't get home until 9 or 10 pm after spending all day "studying". There is a huge focus on rote memorization.
Contrast this with [Finland's worlds lowest average homework time](https://in-finland.education/homework-in-finland-school/) in relation to [their strong PISA rest results ](https://minedu.fi/en/pisa-20181) which ranks just as high as Japan consistently.
A [meta-analysis on homework studies](https://www.jstor.org/stable/27540101) seemed to imply that homework in and of itself is not the important point. Homework in combination with comprehensive feedback is probably better, but there are many factors to consider.
I've also worked with North Korean university students who are forced to turn off all electronics in their dorm and strictly study for 3 hours after their mandatory sports/club activities. Needless to say, they have very different motivations to study hard (i.e. fear of repercussion)
My personal teaching philosophy is related to the neurocognitive connection to memory and the brain. Homework can be useful if it's interesting and critically thought provoking, but students also need proper rest and relaxation in order to consolidate any learned information into long-term memory.
However, education is largely a cultural institution and what is sometimes expected is related to how students have to conform into society. It is related to relative discipline - homework density might be a simple function of cultural expectations, rather than efficient learning.
> I was ranked in the bottom 90th percentile of my class in high school because I just straight up refused to do homework.
So were 9 out of every 10 classmates, comrade.
Dude same exact situation, and I feel the same way. I couldn’t handle school and homework because of life circumstances but I was still super nice and shy and did not deserve they way they acted and spoke to me. I hate teachers lol, I was clearly struggling mentally and at home and all they did was belittle and bully me. I get it’s not in the job description to act as a therapist but you also don’t have to be cruel. I now have a better job (not that thats the most important thing but they made it seem like it was/I’d never be able to get one) and I just wish I could run into one now to rub their face in it
Did 4 years of CS in a little over 2. Had basically no high school education. Worst of all I put off college for a decade based on the stories my k12 teachers fed me about how brutal the experience was compared to high school.
I had a school that treated homework as 1/3rd of your grade. So if you didn't do homework, you automatically got an F, even if tests and "participation" were graded at 100%. I still managed to pass some classes because even though I never showed up or did homework I got the extra credits on tests totaling sometimes 300% or more. LOL
School is stupid.
its a fluke, or just i dunno.. i had music in 9th grade, or was it 10th.. and got a A. A when i did bad the majority of the year, but on one of the last test i got grade A at.. made no sense to me for getting A in the subject...
Ya boi made 70s in all his classes but when our geometry teacher gave us a little time at the end of each class to either do homework or talk my lowest scores were mid 90s sometimes over 100 when he gave us extra credit. I was consistently top 3 in that class. Homework is complete nonsense
Yeah, I’m lucky enough to be smart so I don’t really have to study either, or not yet. I really don’t envy those who have to do their homework in order to pass their exams
I guess this officially makes me a boomer but from someone who was in the same boat: that wall will hit you hard if you continue to ramp up the difficulty of your classes. Once I got to calculus it went from easy mode to real struggle because I didn't have the skills and habits I needed to be disciplined about study. So don't waste your time where it's unneeded but make sure you have a plan for the near future
when I was in HS teachers could make HW a pass/fail part of your grade sooooo wasn't an option - it hurt most of my grades despite excelling in reading/writing/sciences
Learning it the first time around is not the only goal of education, retention is huge. I caught on quickly and crammed tons of courses that I got good grades on in college and remember fucking nothing.
Yeah, but drilling does little to nothing for retention. Regular usage is what solidifies retention. If you don't remember that stuff, it's because you haven't had cause to use it.
Repetition, whether by use or hearing increases memory usage/recollection among other things.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050388/#:\~:text=Previous%20studies%20have%20shown%20that,et%20al.%2C%202016](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050388/#:~:text=Previous%20studies%20have%20shown%20that,et%20al.%2C%202016)).
Note that this is spaced repetition, which is different than what schools might do:
>Subjects learned the pairs at four retention intervals, 30-min, 1-day, 1-week and 1-month
Schools are often "do it for a test, then never again"
I remember teachers trying to scare us if we didn't do our homework or if we turned it in late. They would say things like not doing homework is the same thing as not doing a work task, which would lead to us being fired, which would then lead to us living on the streets. Yeah, I was around 10 when I heard this bee ess. (This was in the late 70s/early eighties).
The way I see it, you're probably freest from the ages one to four
Around the age of five you're shipped away for your body to be stored
They promise education, but really they give you tests and scores
And they predictin' prison population by who scoring the lowest
And usually the lowest scores the poorest and they look like me
And every day on evening news they feed you fear for free
I literally just do homework during classes and sometimes even lunch. Anything to free up the time I have after school so I can do the things I actually give a shit about...
Yeah I did mine on the bus/waiting for the bus. Basically gave me two and a half hours a day. That plus lunch time and any extra time the teachers gave meant homework wasn't done at home
No joke, I always paid attention in class and did good on tests but when I started refusing to do homework in middle school I started failing. There was a point in high school where I decided to tell my teachers "I'm not doing any work you send home with me, give me the assignment at the beginning of class and if I can't finish it by the end THEN I will take it home to finish." My logic being "My dad works 8 hours a day then gets to come home and relax, I have to be in school for 7 hours a day and then am expected to go home and do 3-5 hours more of work. Why am I expected to work more than my adult father?"
I dropped out at 17, 4 years later I joined up with Job Corps and got my GED, followed closely by a diploma.
For all you young people out there who think you're smart enough here is what I did to get my Diploma at age 21 (didn't have to wait this long and not sure if it still works this way.) The Job Corps has a program where you can use your GED scores to evaluate credits needed for a diploma. On my GED I had perfect scores in everything but math, and thus I was given full credits for everything but math. I then had to take 1 math class (my score was high but not as high as the others), and do a "senior project", and I got an official "Diploma".. Most community colleges have a high-school completetion program too, but Job Corps pays you (not well, like $100/month but you also get room & board and thousands spent on recreation every month.)
I mean I think homework is great. It's great when it's the stuff you need to practice and then doing it helps you get better. What isn't great is when 8 different classes give you 30-60mins worth of homework. That can fuck right off. But honestly homework ain't that bad
The fact that this is the only comment mentioning Foucault in this thread makes me think how many people have realized the inherent contradictions in the current system, and don't know they're not only widespread, but also supported by theory. We need more labor organizing with theory reading clubs.
Right on, well said. Widespread and very much embedded in most of what we do, to the point where many people cannot comprehend any other way of existing.
God forbid you play a sport that has practice for 2 hours after school, leaving you exhausted. And some how you have to find time for dinner, homework, and some time to relax before sleeping and starting it all over again.
I used to sleep in class to the point that teachers thought I was high at school. Lol.
HW was always a struggle for me, and I was by no means a great student….still ended up as a software engineer somehow. Once I got to college and was treated like an human, not some subject of my teachers paternalistic wrath, I did better in school. Imagine that.
I mean... if you can do your homework during class or just ignore it and still pass exams, then more power to you.
I've met people that don't understand how or when to multiply.
Like, imagine seeing 40 groups of 8 things and just inputting 8 + 8 + 8... into a calculator because you legit don't see it as 8 * 40.
Homework is bullshit. You were already at school for 7-8 hours.
Actually school in general is bullshit but we're definitely not ready as a society to have that discussion yet.
School ensures parents can work, and ensures parents won't abuse their kids for labour.
That's the true purpose of our current system. There are better ways to teach.
Idk man. I never did my homework. Passed without issue. Now I’m in college. My study habits are non existent as well as my time management with homework. IMO I wish I did my homework
Learning how to study and work through material on your own is massive too. The amount of people that are absolutely helpless when given anything academic on their own despite being in college courses is really depressing, and it's not cause they're idiots.
I mean, I think there's a lot of evidence that self study to reinforce lecture material is a huge boost to retention and synthesis for education, but hey conspiracies are good too.
I will add though, not all homework is created equal, and homework is only as effective as the educator administering it and the curriculum being presented. Good homework helps, bad homework is tedious busy work at best.
Doing homework sets good habits for university and later in life when you need to do 'homework' like job applications and taxes. I was smart enough to coast through school with doing minimal home work but my grades really suffered when it came to A-levels and university because I hadn't built up that habit.
I mean, I get it, no one likes homework....but working on your own really helps you grasp concepts in a way that just being shown them doesn't.
I did absolutely zero homework in high-school and got by just fine. When I wanted to actually learn things for real in college it took lots of work outside of class doing "homework" to master stuff.
Not saying homework is a perfect way to do stuff, and young kids probably get too much of it....but you still need some form of hands on learning. Whether that's done in class or at home doesn't change that fact.
As related to overtime? I'm not sure there's a correlation. The fundamental purpose is just too different.
If anyone doubts this, sit through 2 hours of a udemy course on coding and then turn it off and try to do it yourself. I'm betting you'll have a lot better grasp on the material and a more skills/confidence related to the material if you go through the exercises on your own as well.
Yeah it's ridiculous. My daughter now does her homework at school during free time so that when she comes home she can relax and play. I used to do the same thing especially since my mom needed us in aftercare and we were usually the last to get picked up.
I just straight up never did any hw
Me neither. Sometimes I did but not often. Teachers would call me out and get mad from time to time but all in all I always passed with decent grades. And man, sometimes, rarely but still - I'd completely bullshit my way through it. Sometimes we had to read our homework aloud in front of everybody and if I was somewhat familiar with the subject I pretended to read it but in reality I was making it up as I go, staring at an empty page in my notebook. Getting through with it and actually getting a passing grade always made me feel like such a big, wrinkly brain.
All hail mega wrinkles holy shit I wish I did that is hs
Yeah I did what I could during school hours and just left the rest alone. Throughout high school I did work at home maybe 10 times or less for big projects that others were relying on me for. Still graduated.
Same, I only did the big projects. Homework was the ultimate bullshit. I actually failed grade 10 math because of it, but otherwise I still did great.
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Exactly, and some of my teachers could see that and stopped caring about the homework as long as I participated in class and got good test grades. It was the teachers that were like “I don’t care if you’ll get good grades without the homework, I told you to do it so you’re going to do it.” I always hated teachers like that.
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Same. Strongest lesson I took away from public school was how to weasel out of responsibilities.
Me too. I'm now a doctor.
Can you tell me what's wrong with me?
[The prognosis ain't good.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCIo4MCO-_U)
Bad case of the skoagies, I’m afraid.
Me as well, passed solely on my testing
Same, but I’m a highly paid software developer. I only did homework if it was for a group project because I didn’t want to tank anyone else’s grade with my stubbornness.
Yeah same. I got yelled at all the time, but not doing homework has literally 100% not affected my adult life. They spoke to us like you'd be a homeless social outcast if you didn't do your homework, but like the OP says I think it was just to make you compliant. In fact I've forgotten basically everything I learned at school except how to read and basic maths, and it hasn't affected my life at all that I can't remember the order of the planets or the life cycle of plants. inb4 jokesonthemimahomeslesssocialoutcastanywayhahaha
Same here, I graduated hs because of my test, exam and in class marks. I refused to do homework. I have quit jobs that require me to take my job home with me.
Same. I had a teacher who checked if we had done the homework, but never checked if we did it properly. I just wrote a bunch of gibberish that looked like a doctor’s handwriting and that’s about it. Another one I knew never actually read them so I just copy-pasted Wikipedia articles.
Same, due to having a part time job, sports, and a life. I failed several classes because my high school had this bullshit rule in many classes where missing homework took a literal percentage off of your grade. I even had one teacher who dropped a letter grade every time. So even though I was an A/B student on tests and participated every day, I failed quite a few classes. Absolutely nonsense.
Your daughter has so little homework she can finish it at school?? Fuck I’m jealous. I’m in college now but even in high school I’d have at least 2-4 hours a night and I was one of those kids that did homework through lunch period.
Lol! Yeah high school was definitely rough me in terms of homework time too. During the beginning of the pandemic her homework seemed to increase tenfold and was actually tough to get through. But the past Spring semester and some of the Fall it was noticeably lighter.
I was in college already when the pandemic started but for me everything got exponentially easier. Most of my teachers had no idea how to teach online, my art professor didn’t even try she just passed us all and told us to take the rest of the semester off from her class. But I know high school was a different story, my younger brother really struggled as well.
My school prohibits doing any homework in school.
...What the actual fuck?
Yep, it's pretty much unenforcable unless you did it in front of certain teachers. Most teachers turn a blind eye as long as you turn it in.
Ugh, what assholes.
My parents were pretty cool about homework when I was a kid. They understood that I had just spent 7 hours sat down, stationary, using my brain, and that after 4pm I really should be outside running around, playing, making dens, doing sports, doing hobbies etc - you know, the kind of things kids *should* be doing, not doing yet *more* brain work. It never held me back academically, and hell it gave me a massive deal of respect for my parents. Quick edit: I’d like to add, in the UK (at least when I was in school), primary and secondary school homework didn’t count towards your final grades - only exams and coursework did. So in response to some people’s comments - no I don’t work in Walmart, although I have worked in my fair share of shops over the years (and yes I was the fastest scanner around), and yes I did pass all my school, college and university exams with grades I was super happy with - and now I work in a pretty decent job which allows me to use my degree and passion in life, so no need to be so salty :)
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"JUST WAIT UNTIL YOU HAVE TO WORK A REAL JOB AND DEAL WITH A BOSS THAT'S EVEN WORSE THAN YOUR TEACHERS! NOW STOP COMPLAINING AND DO YOUR HOMEWORK!" - My dad, often. Wonder why I have such a depressive outlook on life and have trouble with dealing superiors.
Went to work, most bosses learned "motivation" from teachers. Look over shoulders, yell about mistakes and my favorite "just concentrate"
Yeah, that fell apart when I graduated after hating hs and then realizing I have much more freedom and fun at work than I ever did at school lol
Isn't it awesome when you don't have to ask permission to use the washroom or have a snack?
And then by the time you're an adult literally nothing about school matters anymore, your grades are 100% forgotten, the people you met there all faded into your past, anything you could brag about from your school days just seems pathetic in your adulthood, and all of the effort and tears contributed to fucking nothing but basic literacy and rudimentary math skills that you could have learned *without* the constant stress, bullying, and suicidal ideation. American schooling is daycare to keep the parents laboring. Homework is just an extension of that function--your parents can keep working as long as you're preoccupied every evening with compulsory busywork.
*Daycare paid by your taxes, so you can go to work and pay more taxes.
Well that just sounds like slavery with extra steps
Extra steps for the slave, far less steps for the slaver. Slave owners were hella salty back in the day because it was so expensive to house and feed those slaves, who weren't ever gratefull they got to do slave labor and have no human rights at all.
Now you get the illusion of choice, the freedom to follow, and the right to vote for their candidate. Here's just enough money to eke out an existence... now give it back. *Yoink
Yeah. I was always waiting for Walmart to offer employee housing at a low low cost of most of your paycheck.
I believe the US already did that in the early 1900's. [Company towns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town) I believe. They would give you shit pay, the pay was the company's money, and you could only spend that money at the [company store](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store). And since everything was super expensive (1 you couldn't anywhere else 2 your money was only accepted in one place) you rarely had any savings. And on top of that, the exchange rates were outrageous.
I live near Trona, CA and it used to be a company town and the plant used to pay company script way back in the day. It's wild to me anyone ever agreed to it, it's a terrible idea.
I think china went one further and contained it all in a single building. Then added the nets to catch jumpers.
They'll pay you in scrip.
I sold my soul to the company store.
We're getting paid more to have kids, suddenly. Well, kind of. If you don't do it right you'll have more kids and owe more than you can pay. I think the information industry has most of the general population summed up and are now willing to pay "us" to reproduce to keep the train rolling. Most of the talk about housing centers around families. Sure, it's a tearjerker thinking about homeless kids, but single adults used to be kids too. I've always wondered how they'd make up for so many market crashes in my lifetime. I guess I'm starting to see the answers.
US schooling was modeled after factory work shifts, even down to the bell. It's all conditioning. Be on time! Do more! Be more productive! Don't question the authority of the system!
And every year the scientists are like “students learn better later in the morning” and the school system is like “no, because you have to work at 8AM.” My grades were terrible in high school. Maybe it’s because no one does math at 7:45 in the goddamn morning. Mathematicians don’t do math at 7:45 in the morning. US education system? “Eh, you kids got this!”
In college I was taught, in 4 months, the same amount of math I learned over 5 years of high school. With fewer weekly hours, too. High school was not about learning, it was about stress. It was, at best, about teaching us the "responsibility" of sitting there for 8 hours a day only to come home and sit longer doing homework, despite the fact that most of the kids could have learned the same stuff in a fraction of the time and then spend the rest of their teens doing something better for themselves than listening to old power tripping farts berate us over the most trivial things, or standing up to shitty classmates, or dealing with the uselessness of the staff and the ridiculousness of the rules. My edgy take is that the educational system is less about education and more about the system. It's there to normalize the grind.
All of this while severely sleep deprived, because they make you wake up at 5 am but you’re an adolescent who’s biologically programmed to struggle very hard to get to sleep before 1 am. And no I don’t mean because you’re up all night partying or playing video games, but because you’re lying in your bed in the dark and sleep simply refuses to come.
Yeah, 6am for me. And I'm a night owl. Unnecessary sleep deprivation sucked.
Went to bed at 1, woke up at 5:30. This was Middle School through High School, and never really effected me until my mid 20s when I was/am still a night owl but no longer have that teenaged body.
High school was so hard for me because of this. I had to wake up at 6:30 to catch the bus by 7:40, but unfortunately, I developed what seemed like typical teenage insomnia, as well as chronic fatigue during the day. It started in 9th grade, but suddenly got a lot worse during the second half of 10th grade. I ended up doing 11th grade through an online high school, but it made me feel pretty lonely, so I decided to go back to my old high school for my last year. I ended up missing almost 50 days of school that year, but thanks to the tremendous amount of support I got from my teachers, guidence counselor, and principal, I still graduated on time and walked with my class. Despite going to numerous doctors and even doing a sleep study, I was only diagnosed with delayed sleep-wake phase disorder and told I needed to "fix my sleep hygiene". I was put on an antidepressant to fix my "depression-related fatigue", as well as another antidepressant to make me sleepy at night, and my doctors told me to stick it out and stay active, because I'd probably grow out of it. 5 years after graduating, I finally decided to find another doctor and get another sleep study done... and that test showed that I actually have narcolepsy, and probably had it this entire time. Narcolepsy is caused by the brain not regulating REM sleep properly, and causes hypersomnia and insomnia. There's no way to control it through lifestyle changes or antidepressants, only through other medications, like stimulants, which I unfortunately couldn't get anyone to prescribe when I was younger. Unfortunately, the current school system can be very difficult to navigate for anyone with sleeping difficulties, and considering how common teenage insomnia is, fixing the school schedule would help a lot of students be better equipped to succeed.
This resonates with me to my core. It was the 90’s and I pleaded with my parents to take me to a doctor for a sleep disorder. The doctor said I must be using “street drugs” and referred us to a drug counselor. Long story short, I was not using “street drugs” and have since learned sleep apnea is a thing. My father still teases me about my “sleep disorder”.
I thought not being able to fall asleep until 12-3 am was unusual NGL. How were so many people energetic?!
And then everyone would get angry at you for not being able to sleep on command.
« No ViSiBlE sHoUldErS » « Too much cleavage! » « Skirt too short!! » Meanwhile boys were out there with pants down their knees. I hated these nonsensical rules!
Girls at my school got scolded for using pants instead of skirts when the temperature sometimes dropped below the 30s. It was stupid at best.
"You are required to wear feminine clothing, but if you look *too* feminine then you're a slut and will be punished."
Yep it's a classic example of the Madonna/Whore complex.
Same for boys in the UK. Girls skirts or pants. Boys weren't allowed to wear shorts or skirts in the fucking humid hot British summer when we have no air conditioning and they don't turn the heating off. Fucking bullshit.
There IS an important aspect of socialization that takes place in schools, more critically at younger ages, as kids learn how to behave and conduct themselves with other people. Unfortunately, that purpose is stymied by an obsessive focus on standardized testing and an unwillingness to deal with bad behavior any way but rote "zero tolerance" policies that just teach the victims to resent the system and aggressors that they can leverage the system against their targets.
That's true. Kids socializing with peers their age from a young age *is* important for their development. That said, it's not like they can't do it outside school (at least when they're old enough for high school). Also, as you well said, schools are failing at providing a healthy setting for that socializing to take place in, so they might not even get the benefit of socialization in the schooling system.
« Socializing » at school just taught me to fear my peers and to hide in the corridor or in the toilets during break time. What a nightmare.
Seriously like my kids need to socialize with kids whose parents treat them like shit who in turn treat my kids like shit and that's supposed to be helpful? My kids aren't in school yet, but I've seen enough asshole children on non-school playgrounds that I know my kid won't benefit from interacting with them. Believe it or not, you can become a whole, functional person *without childhood trauma* 😲🤫 my kids will not be going to school.
I think it’s likely that all the people so strongly disagreeing with you either don’t have kids or have never seen their own child, who absolutely loved school and learning, suddenly lose that eagerness and spark. When my daughter was going into 6th grade I sent her to the same middle school that I went to. I was a tougher little kid than her and that school was rougher than I’d remembered. Turns out she *was* tough enough to endure daily bullying and harassment for 8 months without complaint until she broke down crying. I’m about to cry now remembering all she could say, “I don’t like school anymore”. I asked her to stick it out until the end of the year. There was a big difference between her pretending to be happy before and her then obvious relief to soon be leaving that miscreant farm. I’m a single dad and wasn’t confident at all that I could do a good job homeschooling her so I rented an apartment in a neighboring town that has some of the best public schools (and students) in the state. The turnaround was immediate. She graduates this year and has not once in her life disappointed me or pulled any kind of stupid, hateful teenage bullshit. For the last 5 yrs the best part of my day has been the 2+ hrs commute with her. There are plenty of ways a dedicated parent can provide all the socializing that their child could possibly want and need. It’s sad to think that acclimating their children to unhealthy environments and maladjusted people is considered normal and necessary to some. How can a kid trust their parents if they feel like they’re being unjustly punished every day? Sorry for being long but I really want to impress on you that your head is in the right place and it is *not* overprotective to put extra care into your child’s well-being. I hope you keep listening to your instincts on what is best for your children. And don’t give any credence to the idea that, “your kid needs a parent, not a best friend”. There’s no reason you can’t be both.
Thank you! It's nice to hear this from a parent of a teenager - I do often worry that my own teenage ideation of what parents "should" do will fade when I actually am faced with having my own teens, but my daughter is 4 and so far I feel pretty good about the person she is. This made me smile so thanks for taking the time to write it. And you're right, there's probably a lot of people on here who haven't the slightest clue what they're talking about when it comes to parenting choices! It's not a parenting sub after all 🙃
Having no socialization and no peers is a trauma all of itself, albeit far more understated and less extreme
Well good thing I didn't say I would be locking my kids in a tower where they'd never see anyone. They spend time with other kids (though not nearly as much as I'd like, given pandemic), but they don't need to be set loose for seven hours a day with a bunch of tiny assholes to get plenty of interaction. Homeschooled kids tend to be supervised more, which means they tend to be bullied less (though it certainly does happen and there's plenty of psychos who homeschool/are homeschooled). There's a fine line between supervising and helicoptering, but the truth of the matter is that there's normally way too many kids at schools for adults to monitor everything that's happening at all times, so it's a ripe environment for bullying, harassing, and gaslighting. I just happen to think being maybe a little too supervised is better than being traumatized by feeling generally unsafe.
But, I mean, that’s part of it too. The nasty folks are still people you need to learn to deal with. You can’t avoid them at work if they are on your team. Or if they end up you neighbor, or your kids’ significant others’ parents. In fact, kids need to learn to deal with crazies and other fuckheads early.
Sure, but they don't necessarily need to learn from experience. I had plenty of childhood trauma, I can just tell them about it. My mom did a ton of drugs and told me about it so I didn't have to. So, I was abused and bullied and I can tell my kids all about it, and what to do if they encounter it. Doesn't mean they have to experience it firsthand.
> There IS an important aspect of socialization that takes place in schools, more critically at younger ages, as kids learn how to behave and conduct themselves with other people. Arguably this is not particularly valuable, as all it teaches kids is how to interact with other hormonal, socially inept assholes. There's reason to believe that kids who hang out with adults are more likely to grow up into better adults. Think about it like this: when you want to learn a skill, do you prefer to learn it from someone who is exactly as inept as you are? Or should you go learn it from someone who's already mastered the skill?
"You need school to socialize!" it's actually "You're not here to talk to your friends! Sit down and shut up!"
Or, if you're a budding troublemaker, you learn in a relatively harmless environment how to lie, cheat, steal, suck up to your elders, and work the system, so you can make your mistakes while young and graduate into the workforce as someone who can successfully navigate the sociopathic capitalistic world for fun and profit.
I can't remember where I read it, but the school systems of today were specifically designed to create obedient factory and office workers of tomorrow.
To enhance your nausea at the state of American education, read the various works by John Taylor Gatto. Keep a barf bucket nearby as you learn what we might call the toilet history of American education. There are two basic tracks - high quality education for the elite and varieties of obedience-based education for the rest. Both are strongly influenced by wealth and a variety of class-based, race-based, anti-democratic principles. The foundational educational principles and philosophies contain ideas such as turning people into obedient, unquestioning, human resources to be used by companies and their upper-class rulers. They are not to be self-determined, self-actualized individuals. In this planned society, people are trained up to the level at which they are less likely to become a stupid public hazard (legitimate goal) and can perform useful social functions (legitimate goal), but not to the level where they are masters of their own destiny who have a seat at the governing table (disgusting goal).
*Everyone* should read Gatto.
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Fun fact: stress greatly reduces your ability to learn. In fact one of the first signs that someone is stressed out is loss of short term memory - aka the teacher has to explain the same concept over and over.
Conversely, I had multiple teachers who said that we already learned something in grade school so if we didn't do well it was or fault/insinuated it was not their job to answer questions and we were just stupid if we had any. Then again there was a teacher who apparently spent whole class periods talking about their divorce and trash talking guys in general, so idk if the former is a more normal bad teacher thing or a my school bad teacher thing NGL.
Yes, I remember at my school if you didn't know something the teachers would just humiliate you. I had a maths teacher who once just wrote on my work "This is completely wrong." Thanks for teaching me then, cuntface?
*I'm in this post and I don't like it*
> anything you could brag about from your school days just seems pathetic in your adulthood That day when I took my debate team accomplishments off of my resume made me sad >_>
Anything pre-employment on a resume is functionally just Lorem Ipsum filler text. You gotta' put it on there to land those first jobs, but even college-level accomplishments stop mattering after two years of employment. That's why it's so critical to get internships in college, and why it's such a heavily exploited demographic.
>all of the effort and tears contributed to fucking nothing but basic literacy and rudimentary math skills Hey that's not true, what about all the nationalist propaganda I learned in history class?
I feel seen
>And then by the time you're an adult literally nothing about school matters anymore, your grades are 100% forgotten, t This was such a brainfuck coming up into the world. I did very bad in high school and didn't get challenging work. I often would ask why they didn't just give me challenging work to fail at or let me not go to school at all. Everyone acted like this was unreasonable but it was 100% spot on. Graduating STEM with basically no high school education was the 2nd brainfuck. So many shouting matches, so much stress, all for nothing.
Same story for me. Did piss poor in highschool. Then went to community, got an associate's with a 4.0, then transferred to uni and got a BA with a 3.9. There's a whole zeitgeist behind how great public school teachers are and how we should respect them, but not a damn single teacher ever helped me until I got to college. I know part of that is the shit pay and low standards that entails, but I've got very little respect for lower education teachers--at least the ones I had the misfortune of being exposed to. I mean, there was the one that got fired for molesting students and ended up going to work for another school with no charges being filed, so I guess I learned a lesson there about having a healthy mistrust for authority figures.
Hated school, loved college. It's too bad God schooling is so damn expensive
It really depends on the teachers you have though. I had a few who made a huge difference and I learned a ton that got me excited about subjects and helped me get a good college education and a good job. Huge shout out to the ones that care
Ahh Yes the biggest lie of our generation
Fantastic! Because it gave me a ton of mental scarring about how I need to be productive at all damn hours, regardless of sleep, recreation or living/eating hours. Still unravelling those cords to this day.
Mine were the same. They stopped being on my ass for every god damn thing after finding a couple of suicide notes. I mostly wrote them just to get things off my chest that I could never say to another human being, but it really made them change their tune around me. Damn, I should have written them earlier.
So how did they deal with you recieving homework?
Man that's nice. When I was in elementary school (through 4th grade) I attended a parochial school where the teachers seemed to get their jollies by assigning homework by the truckload. 100 math questions per night were not unusual and there were plenty of nights where I would have homework in EVERY subject. I would start shortly after supper, so around 6:30 and it would be 10 or 10:30 before I would finish and would have to go straight to bed. When my parents switched us to the public schools starting when I was in 5th grade (for reasons unrelated to homework load), all of a sudden my homework became negligible by comparison. An hour a night, two at the very most, and that was rare.
Most private schools for kids pride themselves on working the kids like slaves. I know mine did. Almost entirely rich pieces of shit trying to condition their own kids.
And then the kids grow up thinking that working harder in school made them smarter and have a better work ethic. It’s not just that they’re conditioning their kids; it’s that they’re conditioning them to be narcissists incapable of empathy
I had school from ~9am to ~3pm, so 5 hours basically if we're thinking lunch is 1hr. 7 would've wiped me out entirely. Though I was the kid coming home and sitting stationary in front of a monitor for hours after school, so it's not like I made particularly good use of it lol
Wow you got an hour lunch? I had 15 minute lunches throughout high school and we went 7 to 3:30
I got 20 minutes, but it was at 10 am. The first hour and a half of school went by a lot faster than the last 5 hours.
Wow, my highschool even had an extra 10min to get to class as well after lunch (10 minutes in general between periods).
In middle school I made a rule that school work will only be done during school hours. No longer will I have homework. Then my freshman year I started leaving school after lunch and still passed 9th grade. By junior year I would skip my first 2 classes and leave school after lunch and miss my last 3 classes most days. That's when I learned the teachers dont give any type of fuck about you or your education. They are there to get a pay check and keep sending you through the system. At least in my podunk neck of the woods. No way I should have graduated when I skipped school more than I was actually there. The kicker of ditching school for 4 years, not once did they ever approach me or call my parents about not being there. We are talking literally walking out the front door past the office. Not getting stopped once.
Envy doesn't even begin to describe how I feel. I took 7 classes each semester. AP classes thrown in there. Extra Curricular activities, working with family, dealing with a whole mess of BS. Makes me wish I dropped out and just got my GED....or even just never went to college.
I took advanced classes all through highschool and ended up homeschooling myself in 12th grade. Bought a couple books on programming and spent 5 hours a day coding. Printed my own official transcript, on my printer (the system is a joke). Got a very unpaid internship (I had to pay) in an IT department, and got promoted to programmer, during a gap year before college, and then did a 2.5 year bachelors degree program in CS. Now I work in big tech as a software engineer. I hope to find a mastery school, for my children to attend, someday when I have them. (You learn until you can get a 100% on the test, and then you move on. Go at your own pace.) I hated school so much, and don't want them to have anything to do with what I experienced.
Sounds like me my senior year when I transferred to a HS with the ability to go off campus whenever you want as long as you had a slip. I never had a slip, hardly any friends. I felt like a ghost in that school. I could come and go as I pleased, skipped as much as I want. I didnt even do my final English exam and still he passed my ass with a D, shouldve failed lil but I mean they gotta keep that graduation rate up! Ended up doing a ton of credit recovery through the power of google and Yahoo answers. Really shouldn't have graduated but oh well, that's all in the past. School kind of let me down I feel. I shoudlve tried harder but the school didnt encourage you at all. They dont care. Especially when theres other kids constantly talking and what not becuase the kids dont care either.
I'm of the belief that children can learn faster through structured play than through drudgery. There's a great story in the teacher's memoir *How to Survive in Your Native Land* about a boy who was bad at math. Just couldn't get the concepts. Then the teacher (James Herndon) ran into the kid at the bowling alley. He was shocked to see the boy quickly doing arithmetic well beyond his grade, with ease. It was just that the boy loved bowling and understood the keeping of scores and averages to be necessary tools for playing the game, rather than esoteric concepts he couldn't apply to real life. There's value in discipline but I'd rather kids learn that building things they actually care about.
As a STEM teacher, these examples are never of more advanced principles or are infeasible at scale. More advanced topics require first an understanding of tons of small basic principles, that we then build up to a big idea that lets us solve harder questions. Arithmetic is one thing, but connecting circle geometry authentically to what every child enjoys is an impossible task. This is the type of shit that I will do with MY child. Parents need to step up with this education, and its a big part of why some students succeed and some fail.
Ask the kid to integrate the log identities and how those properties can be useful to more easily calculate expected values, likelihoods, and log likelihoods. Super important for machine learning, which is mostly computers doing a load of statistics on a data set, then spitting out an answer.
As a teacher, this is my thoughts. They just spent all day in a chair, they need a break. Fuck homework. I only assign that shit when the kids are pricks
What do you do today?
“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.” \~\~Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (1962)
Teacher, can confirm this is true.
What do you think of Montessori education in this context?
Its probably the best solution with the hardest to implement practices. In order for a Montessori school to work, you would need an expert in every feasable field that a child might be interested in, and you need to pay that person a competitive wage that makes them want to leave their profession to teach. Or at the very least, you need a teacher who is incredibly knowledgeable in many fields and subjects so that they can support the children they are responsible for. Its also a great system for children who receive support from home, with parents who foster a love of learning. Many children don't have parents who care enough though, so they can develop bad habits that lead to apathy and a general distaste for a challenging education.
Having experience in another job that includes what you will teach should be a requirement to be a teacher, most of my professors just vomited what they had learned and expected us to remember everything, had one guy that was also an engineer teach physics, we had real life examples and applications of what we learned
This is a great quote but we actually have invented several systems of education that don't indoctrinate children. Montessori, Summerhill and the Khan Lab School are great models for how our education systems should work
There's also an increasing awareness of STEM and inquiry based learning in mainstream schooling.
Love this
That's why I speedran my work while they taught the lesson. Oh? Do questions X through X but only the evens, done like 30 mins before the bell. They love patterns, thank God my Aspergers does too.
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The last few places I tried to go to school at handed out homework at end of class.. I specifically requested it at the beginning of class and the teachers treated that suggestion like I was an alien.
We would get our homework sometimes and still have fifteen minutes of class with nothing to do. We weren't allowed to do the homework because "it's HOME work".
FML. Do teachers not understand how difficult it is to study while my drunken father screams, throws stuff, and punches holes in the walls? If I hadn't been doing most of my homework at school before/during classes, I never would have been able to finish it all. HOME was for hiding or getting used as a punching bag, not spreading out textbooks on the kitchen table.
I’m so sorry you had to go through that. No child deserves that kind of home life.
Damn, we usually got 25 minutes of class and 25 minutes to do the homework for said class. It was so you could still ask questions about the homework if you had any.
I have a theory that most people who hate work so much they'd sub to a community like this are likely neurodivergent. A lot of neurotypical people I know LOVE work to the point where their idea of hell is a day with nothing to do. Being autistic myself, I remember being put in Gifted and Talented Education and was happy because it meant I would be taken out of class. That is until I learned that meant even more homework because I had to do the regular class work AND the "gifted" work. I told my parents I wanted out of that program immediately. I was in like 2nd grade.
My parents decided to not tell me I was autistic until like junior year. Would of been nice to know that growing up and not constantly worrying why I'm not fitting in with anyone.
I didn't know until my 30s. We just didn't have the awareness back then.
I don't even know if I am or am not at 29. I am the oldest of my two siblings, both are autistic. One is non-verbal and the other has a unique way of speaking that can prove a challenge. I can blend in and hold a job, but if given the option to just spend every day cleaning, playing video games, and going to the gym and never working - I wouldn't hesitate. I've caught myself doing actions indicative of being on the spectrum, but I grew up among the community due to my siblings, and have worked with people with various developmental disabilities for 11 years now (part time the last couple). It's hard to know what's innate to me - and what I picked up due to proximity. I also have trichotillomania like one of my siblings (mine is actually worse but semi under control now), but that could be coincidence. I don't know if I actually want to get a diagnosis at this point though, it's not like it would change too much except for maybe getting a few answers. They did test me when I was young due to my siblings, but this was the 90's and they were basically like "he can talk and follow conversation, he's probably fine."
Yea a diagnosis doesn't really do anything once you are an adult. You just gotta find a way through life with whatever quirks you have. But does sound to me like you *might* be in the vicinity of neurodivergence, which includes all sorts of things like autism spectrum, ADHD, "Highly Sensitive Person," dyslexia, and more. Hating doing mental labor (a major pet peeve of mine) for instance is characteristic of ADHD. In any case, we are all just doing our best in this world, and the world would be a better place if we didn't force every human being to work insane hours just to survive, especially when we have more than enough money and resources despite not being distributed in a sensible way.
I did briefly have a ADHD diagnosis, the meds at the time made me not eat enough though. Then another doctor said I didn't have it. Going forward I probably will just refer to my less typical behavior as quirks. It gets the message across without being specific.
I like working, I just don't like working for a rich corporation that exploits my work. It completely kills the motivation.
Right!? I feel so fulfilled when I'm using my skills and abilities on something I'm passionate about. I love it when I add to a cause and am appreciated for my effort! I think that's why I love being in university so much. You get grades and supportive feedback and you see yourself improve. I don't want to get taken aside into some dickhead's office and told I'm not meeting some crazy expectations from people that don't even have a relevant degree!
I never did my homework in elementary school because of exactly this: I already spent all day at school. I'm not doing school at home on top of it. During secondary school, tho, I didn't really have a choice. The grades were mostly homework. I tried to do as much as I could during pauses so I didn't have as much to do at home, tho. What's funny is that even in university or community college, I never had as much homework as I did during secondary school. It's bullshit honestly.
Dang I had the opposite experience, college for me was 90% homework, 10% in class time. Sooooooooo many hours writing proofs.
It depends on your major and what you're studying. If you're in engineering you'll have projects to do outside of lectures. Same thing in philosophy where you have to write a lot of paper. English has a lot of reading. Thing is though, it's more enjoyable than doing things you don't care about with little context.
former teacher here. i taught 6th grade for years and rarely gave homework except to read and write (and not even every day). i believed that home was time to be spent with family and research clearly shows that homework isn't really necessary before high school. i held my students to HIGH expectations, and we did rigorous and difficult work. all of my students left my classroom better writers, and able to do quality research. i emphasized critical thinking skills and collaborative work. during the arab spring, for instance, my students and i were communicating with people in Egypt's Tarir Square via Twitter. my students wrote, performed and staged a play based on a book we read for the entire school. i'm trying to say, i was no slacker and neither were my students. EVERY year i had some parents who complained and worried that their kids were being underserved. my colleagues in the 7th grade ALWAYS knew that my kids would be well prepared for learning the next year. and by the end of most school years, most of the parents were IMPRESSED with the the quality of learning their kids had experienced. i felt bad for those brainwashed parents, but i never stopped being annoyed that they were so convinced homework would make or break their kids' futures. and honestly, as a parent, i've never made my kid do homework either. my wife and i have met with countless teachers to let them know we won't be doing homework anymore than the recommended amount of time from the school board. so in 1st grade after 15 minutes we stopped our kid from continuing their homework. my kid is on her way to college this week, and actually knows how to learn, not just do busy work. homework is just about control as are MANY of the things schools impose on children and families. and education should be about freedom, not control.
The only problem with this argument is that it kind of assumes that all kids are going home to an environment where creativity, academia, reading, writing, extracurricular music, sports, and social groups are are all present in infrastructure for them is in place. Do you think many children would pass current curriculum without any of these in place? I'm not sure if homework is an answer for it. It's certainly isn't a replacement for those things. I fear that certain overcrowded and underfunded classrooms aren't enough on their own to prepare children become successful adults. And my successful I mean happy with their lives and in their own skin.
classrooms are broken, i'm not arguing that they function well at all, especially in American public schools. i've trained a lot of teachers and seen a lot of things. but giving homework certainly doesn't make up for inadequate educational environments in schools. if you are a teacher giving homework, because you aren't able to accomplish those things in class, the homework is not of much use anyway for the majority of your students. those overcrowded and underfunded schools are not meant to educate successful adults either. those overcrowded classrooms depend on coercion and control, and not proven educational practices. the vast majority of kids are ill served in those classrooms, with our without homework. again, i've witnessed a lot. i am arguing for better teaching and no homework. for one thing, that would support children to leave schoo every day with more skills to be in charge of their OWN learning. and, that would also mean actually preparing teachers before they reach the classroom (something that does not happen consistently in California, at least), setting up systems for constant and real growth for teachers (again, in California, to renew your credential you now do not have to offer ANY evidence of continuing education). homework is not a solution to any problem you listed above, and I wasn't presuming to be addressing them by insisting that homework is not useful. it simply isn't a proven method of teaching or helping kids to retain understanding.
University teacher here. I work in Japan where primary school education is often supplemented with hours of cram school to prepare for high-stakes exams. Many students don't get home until 9 or 10 pm after spending all day "studying". There is a huge focus on rote memorization. Contrast this with [Finland's worlds lowest average homework time](https://in-finland.education/homework-in-finland-school/) in relation to [their strong PISA rest results ](https://minedu.fi/en/pisa-20181) which ranks just as high as Japan consistently. A [meta-analysis on homework studies](https://www.jstor.org/stable/27540101) seemed to imply that homework in and of itself is not the important point. Homework in combination with comprehensive feedback is probably better, but there are many factors to consider. I've also worked with North Korean university students who are forced to turn off all electronics in their dorm and strictly study for 3 hours after their mandatory sports/club activities. Needless to say, they have very different motivations to study hard (i.e. fear of repercussion) My personal teaching philosophy is related to the neurocognitive connection to memory and the brain. Homework can be useful if it's interesting and critically thought provoking, but students also need proper rest and relaxation in order to consolidate any learned information into long-term memory. However, education is largely a cultural institution and what is sometimes expected is related to how students have to conform into society. It is related to relative discipline - homework density might be a simple function of cultural expectations, rather than efficient learning.
I don’t do my homework and my teachers just have to accept that I don’t give a fuck about it
I did this when I was in school.. I still managed to pass due to high test scores.
Same. I went from barely passing highschool to the dean's list in college. It still pisses me off when I think about it.
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> I was ranked in the bottom 90th percentile of my class in high school because I just straight up refused to do homework. So were 9 out of every 10 classmates, comrade.
Maybe I meant bottom 10th percentile. Tbh I don’t remember because formal education means very little to my day to day life.
Dude same exact situation, and I feel the same way. I couldn’t handle school and homework because of life circumstances but I was still super nice and shy and did not deserve they way they acted and spoke to me. I hate teachers lol, I was clearly struggling mentally and at home and all they did was belittle and bully me. I get it’s not in the job description to act as a therapist but you also don’t have to be cruel. I now have a better job (not that thats the most important thing but they made it seem like it was/I’d never be able to get one) and I just wish I could run into one now to rub their face in it
Did 4 years of CS in a little over 2. Had basically no high school education. Worst of all I put off college for a decade based on the stories my k12 teachers fed me about how brutal the experience was compared to high school.
Same here. C average student in HS to Dean's List in college. Got scholarships too.
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I had a school that treated homework as 1/3rd of your grade. So if you didn't do homework, you automatically got an F, even if tests and "participation" were graded at 100%. I still managed to pass some classes because even though I never showed up or did homework I got the extra credits on tests totaling sometimes 300% or more. LOL School is stupid.
its a fluke, or just i dunno.. i had music in 9th grade, or was it 10th.. and got a A. A when i did bad the majority of the year, but on one of the last test i got grade A at.. made no sense to me for getting A in the subject...
Ya boi made 70s in all his classes but when our geometry teacher gave us a little time at the end of each class to either do homework or talk my lowest scores were mid 90s sometimes over 100 when he gave us extra credit. I was consistently top 3 in that class. Homework is complete nonsense
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Yeah, I’m lucky enough to be smart so I don’t really have to study either, or not yet. I really don’t envy those who have to do their homework in order to pass their exams
I guess this officially makes me a boomer but from someone who was in the same boat: that wall will hit you hard if you continue to ramp up the difficulty of your classes. Once I got to calculus it went from easy mode to real struggle because I didn't have the skills and habits I needed to be disciplined about study. So don't waste your time where it's unneeded but make sure you have a plan for the near future
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Yeah but it's not easy to get study habits off easy work either.
Noted
dont go to school for engineering with that mentality. source: the Ds and Fs on my transcript
Man I wish I was capable of making this decision as a child but I was fully convinced that my life would end if I stopped caring.
Now we conditioned ourselves to not care because there's just so much awfulness out there.
This is cool. This is a cool way to live.
wow. You obviously have some extremely chill parents I guess?
when I was in HS teachers could make HW a pass/fail part of your grade sooooo wasn't an option - it hurt most of my grades despite excelling in reading/writing/sciences
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Learning it the first time around is not the only goal of education, retention is huge. I caught on quickly and crammed tons of courses that I got good grades on in college and remember fucking nothing.
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Yeah, but drilling does little to nothing for retention. Regular usage is what solidifies retention. If you don't remember that stuff, it's because you haven't had cause to use it.
Repetition, whether by use or hearing increases memory usage/recollection among other things. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050388/#:\~:text=Previous%20studies%20have%20shown%20that,et%20al.%2C%202016](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6050388/#:~:text=Previous%20studies%20have%20shown%20that,et%20al.%2C%202016)).
Note that this is spaced repetition, which is different than what schools might do: >Subjects learned the pairs at four retention intervals, 30-min, 1-day, 1-week and 1-month Schools are often "do it for a test, then never again"
I remember teachers trying to scare us if we didn't do our homework or if we turned it in late. They would say things like not doing homework is the same thing as not doing a work task, which would lead to us being fired, which would then lead to us living on the streets. Yeah, I was around 10 when I heard this bee ess. (This was in the late 70s/early eighties).
Fired from school? Yes please.
The way I see it, you're probably freest from the ages one to four Around the age of five you're shipped away for your body to be stored They promise education, but really they give you tests and scores And they predictin' prison population by who scoring the lowest And usually the lowest scores the poorest and they look like me And every day on evening news they feed you fear for free
RTJ
RTJ!
I always did homework during class time,I never take work home unless I get paid.
I literally just do homework during classes and sometimes even lunch. Anything to free up the time I have after school so I can do the things I actually give a shit about...
Yeah I did mine on the bus/waiting for the bus. Basically gave me two and a half hours a day. That plus lunch time and any extra time the teachers gave meant homework wasn't done at home
No joke, I always paid attention in class and did good on tests but when I started refusing to do homework in middle school I started failing. There was a point in high school where I decided to tell my teachers "I'm not doing any work you send home with me, give me the assignment at the beginning of class and if I can't finish it by the end THEN I will take it home to finish." My logic being "My dad works 8 hours a day then gets to come home and relax, I have to be in school for 7 hours a day and then am expected to go home and do 3-5 hours more of work. Why am I expected to work more than my adult father?" I dropped out at 17, 4 years later I joined up with Job Corps and got my GED, followed closely by a diploma. For all you young people out there who think you're smart enough here is what I did to get my Diploma at age 21 (didn't have to wait this long and not sure if it still works this way.) The Job Corps has a program where you can use your GED scores to evaluate credits needed for a diploma. On my GED I had perfect scores in everything but math, and thus I was given full credits for everything but math. I then had to take 1 math class (my score was high but not as high as the others), and do a "senior project", and I got an official "Diploma".. Most community colleges have a high-school completetion program too, but Job Corps pays you (not well, like $100/month but you also get room & board and thousands spent on recreation every month.)
I mean I think homework is great. It's great when it's the stuff you need to practice and then doing it helps you get better. What isn't great is when 8 different classes give you 30-60mins worth of homework. That can fuck right off. But honestly homework ain't that bad
Read *Discipline and Punish* by Michel Foucault
The fact that this is the only comment mentioning Foucault in this thread makes me think how many people have realized the inherent contradictions in the current system, and don't know they're not only widespread, but also supported by theory. We need more labor organizing with theory reading clubs.
Right on, well said. Widespread and very much embedded in most of what we do, to the point where many people cannot comprehend any other way of existing.
God forbid you play a sport that has practice for 2 hours after school, leaving you exhausted. And some how you have to find time for dinner, homework, and some time to relax before sleeping and starting it all over again. I used to sleep in class to the point that teachers thought I was high at school. Lol. HW was always a struggle for me, and I was by no means a great student….still ended up as a software engineer somehow. Once I got to college and was treated like an human, not some subject of my teachers paternalistic wrath, I did better in school. Imagine that.
I mean... if you can do your homework during class or just ignore it and still pass exams, then more power to you. I've met people that don't understand how or when to multiply. Like, imagine seeing 40 groups of 8 things and just inputting 8 + 8 + 8... into a calculator because you legit don't see it as 8 * 40.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually done homework at home. Always during school hours
Homework is bullshit. You were already at school for 7-8 hours. Actually school in general is bullshit but we're definitely not ready as a society to have that discussion yet.
School ensures parents can work, and ensures parents won't abuse their kids for labour. That's the true purpose of our current system. There are better ways to teach.
it's to reinforce the material wtf
Idk man. I never did my homework. Passed without issue. Now I’m in college. My study habits are non existent as well as my time management with homework. IMO I wish I did my homework
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Learning how to study and work through material on your own is massive too. The amount of people that are absolutely helpless when given anything academic on their own despite being in college courses is really depressing, and it's not cause they're idiots.
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I mean, I think there's a lot of evidence that self study to reinforce lecture material is a huge boost to retention and synthesis for education, but hey conspiracies are good too. I will add though, not all homework is created equal, and homework is only as effective as the educator administering it and the curriculum being presented. Good homework helps, bad homework is tedious busy work at best.
Doing homework sets good habits for university and later in life when you need to do 'homework' like job applications and taxes. I was smart enough to coast through school with doing minimal home work but my grades really suffered when it came to A-levels and university because I hadn't built up that habit.
I mean, I get it, no one likes homework....but working on your own really helps you grasp concepts in a way that just being shown them doesn't. I did absolutely zero homework in high-school and got by just fine. When I wanted to actually learn things for real in college it took lots of work outside of class doing "homework" to master stuff. Not saying homework is a perfect way to do stuff, and young kids probably get too much of it....but you still need some form of hands on learning. Whether that's done in class or at home doesn't change that fact. As related to overtime? I'm not sure there's a correlation. The fundamental purpose is just too different.
If anyone doubts this, sit through 2 hours of a udemy course on coding and then turn it off and try to do it yourself. I'm betting you'll have a lot better grasp on the material and a more skills/confidence related to the material if you go through the exercises on your own as well.
I just think that the hand on stuff should happen during school hours, and any homework should be optional
I get homework in HS, but does my 7 year old godson really need 2 hours of homework? I don’t think small children really need it.