No more homework in New Jersey?

[waggy]

I'd agree with this. Looking back on my grade school days I remember getting A LOT of busywork, which I didn't see the point of then and still don't see the point of now. I'd like to see them revamp the school day somehow and eliminate the need for at least some of the homework.

yeah i remember that. much of the homework (and we had a bunch) was just busywork.

 

[CZroe]

And you don't think I did? You don't get much homework in high school at all. Did anyone even study in HS? If you don't screw around all day, 2 hours of homework, tops.

mrjminer said "if" they got it in every class it would be 2hrs tops indicating that it was worst case scenario because they usually didn't get homework in every single class every single day. Not only that, it assumes light workloads and coordination between classes, which is a bit idealistic. He'll, all my classes were taught by two teachers, a husband and wife, in private school and they piled on the workload. "Oh. It's Friday. Here's 3x+ the homework!" I remember being angry after hearing my public school friends saying that they didn't have homework "because it's Friday." That obviously was a reason to do just the opposite in my schools and I hated them for it.

 

[amdhunter]

I always thought the point of homework was to get parents involved in their kids learning. The problem is, most parents don't know/don't care to help their kids at home.

 

[sactoking]

I could see the claims being valid. In the mid-/late-90s when I was in HS we regularly got 2-4 hours of HW each and every night. The problem, which this article barely touched on but which is the true heart of the issue, is that HS teachers rarely if ever coordinate HW loads among themselves. It's not uncommon for a HS teacher to assume that their class (1 out of 6-8 being studied) is the only one that matters. Those teachers will usually assign HW every night and it can easily take 1-2 hours to do their assignments. If your kid is unlucky enough to have 2 or 3 of those teachers at the same time they can easily get 3-6 hours of HW each and every night.

Where I live HW may be abolished, but for another reason. The per-pupil funding is lower than all but 4 or 5 states and the budget is about to be cut another 20%. Because of this school districts cannot afford to buy books. Some of them are actually prohibiting kids from taking their books home after school and on weekends b/c the districts cannot afford to replace lost/damaged books. If the kids can't take the books home they can't do homework.

 

[polarmystery]

I always thought the point of homework was to get parents involved in their kids learning. The problem is, most parents don't know/don't care to help their kids at home.

This was my biggest problem in school. Luckily for me though, my inner desire to WANT to learn made myself able to be successful in school. IE: I sought help from teachers and other students since my parents didn't want to/care to help. I feel that most students probably don't care because their parents don't, which is a shame.

 

[Bill Brasky]

Rather than homework or busy work, I had a teacher who gave bi-weekly quizzes. Great stuff right there.

 

[nageov3t]

I always thought the point of homework was to get parents involved in their kids learning. The problem is, most parents don't know/don't care to help their kids at home.

I always assumed that the point was to reinforce the concepts that they're learning in class, to help educate them better.

 

[DrPizza]

Also, getting teachers to coordinate homework assignments is virtually impossible. All it takes is a mandatory fire drill to throw a class off by 10 minutes and shift homework assignments for that course by one night.

 

[zokudu]

In my local middle school we have "teams" and each "team" has the same teachers for each class. So like their science teacher is the same for everyone on team delta (They used greek letters to name the teams) I know it may not work in High School but in that middle school all the teachers on a team coordinated together and it worked well.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

I never did homework. Made my life that much easier.

I made it through my senior year by not doing homework and getting perfect scores on my tests. The final grades where high enough to pass.

I hated doing homework. I knew the material, and didn't want to do drills to "re-enforce" what I already knew.

Currently, my 7 year old gets maybe 2 hours of homework a week. She's in the magnet school and will be going into the uber-smarty pants classes next year.
The kids are grossly over exagerating their homework times.
Take what they say and divide by 3.
As far as the kid complaining that he has sports after school. Tough. School is for learning. Not playing footbal or basketball.

 

[Leros]

I had 5-7 hours of homework during high school (plus 8-12 hours on the weekend), but I was taking the maximum number of advanced classes.

A typical student, taking regular level classes would have 30 minutes max (probably 0 most of the time). Granted, the regular classes were quite pathetic at my school due to the shitty quality of the average student. These students were so pathetic that they had to supply things like pencils in the classrooms because the students wouldn't even bring anything to school.

Before anybody asks about the difference between students: Somebody had a genius idea to move the advanced academics program to one of the schools in the ghetto. The school had about 3000 students (200 of which were super smart taking all advanced classes and the rest were the worst quality student you could imagine). The school was riddled with gangs, had about a 25% drop out rate, at least half of the girls got pregnant, and a rather large percentage of the guys were in prison within a few years of graduating.

 

[JSt0rm]

Usually it was just worthless busywork that I usually didn't do until minutes before class.

.

The purpose is to teach kids to follow directions of their corporate masters.

 

[Bignate603]

Also, getting teachers to coordinate homework assignments is virtually impossible. All it takes is a mandatory fire drill to throw a class off by 10 minutes and shift homework assignments for that course by one night.

And any decent school will have a variety of classes that the kids might be in, you'll have 30 kids in a class, each taking a different combination of classes. There's no way to coordinate that.

While I think there is some homework that's not so useful, there is some that's very useful. For example, in math or science courses there's rarely enough time in class for the kids to work enough problems to really understand how to do it. Just watching a teacher solve a problem or two is not going to get them to be able to do it themselves.

In other classes, there's often things that the kids need to read like outside of class because there's no time to read novels or parts of their history book. They'll need to do research and write papers outside of class too.

Beyond that, it's just good to teach kids to study and work on their own. If they never have to do that they're not going to survive their first semester at college.

 

[Broheim]

I never did homework. Made my life that much easier.

this. motherfucking this.

 

[Leros]

Also, getting teachers to coordinate homework assignments is virtually impossible. All it takes is a mandatory fire drill to throw a class off by 10 minutes and shift homework assignments for that course by one night.

All you need to do is give the student's a decent amount of time, say a week, to complete an assignment. If many assignments are due on the same date, it is their responsibility to plan their time wisely and do their homework in advance. If they wait until the night before, you can't have too much sympathy.

I know that in a university setting, it would be unacceptable to give less than a week's notice for an assignment. I don't remember what it was like in high school.

 

[rocadelpunk]

blanket statements:

It's all time management. These kids don't use their classtime or their schooltime or their weekends efficiently.

I can't speak for other classes, but if you don't practice mathematics everyday the likelihood of you succeeding is slim to none.

I teach and know kids who are in all AP/IB, sports year round (some with 2 a day practices) and various clubs. They do just fine because they are motivated and know how to manage their time very well.

A lot of kids in AP/IB are there because parents want them to, not because they want to...Of course they will bitch and moan at the work that is meant to be college level.

Do those kids that are all ap/clubs/sports think it is tough? Absolutely, but again it's their choice and you rarely hear any complaints from these students.

If you have good time management and you're staying up till 1-2 everyday with your classes/activities that means you need to drop something.

 

[Jaepheth]

I'd say eliminate the busywork homework and emulate college more with more projects, papers, and exams/quizzes.

They have to learn to study on their own without being assigned "homework"

Although, for this to work, you have to make it possible for teachers to fail kids who won't or can't do the work.

 

[rocadelpunk]

I'd say eliminate the busywork homework and emulate college more with more projects, papers, and exams/quizzes.

They have to learn to study on their own without being assigned "homework"

Although, for this to work, you have to make it possible for teachers to fail kids who won't or can't do the work.

That's one of the big problems in AZ. You can't hold back/fail a kid in junior high, it's nearly impossible (I've tried).

At my HS over 30% of the incoming freshmen failed the 8th grade standardized test in mathematics. Historically, about 30% of our freshmen fail year 1 math (4 years of math are now required to graduate). Some of our students haven't passed a math class in the last 4-5 years.

There's simply no punishment for failure...Until you get to HS, it's only then for the first time that we say oh you failed you don't get any credits.

 

[SZLiao214]

A lot of students in my high school that were taking all ap/ib classes would be putting out 3-6 hours of hw/studying a night to stay completive. I was never at this level of academic focus but a lot of my friends would do this every single weekday.

Quite a few of these kids entered college pretty close to having enough credits to be considered sophomores.

 

[rocadelpunk]

Also, we're required to accept late work in "regular" classes...Can't have too many F's it looks bad!

Even worse if you earn a 75% you don't have to take finals. It used to be 70%.

Just a couple of the reasons I'm looking forward to teaching in the midwest again :0...I hope it hasn't gone downhill since I've been there.

 

[xanis]

I made it through my senior year by not doing homework and getting perfect scores on my tests. The final grades where high enough to pass.

I hated doing homework. I knew the material, and didn't want to do drills to "re-enforce" what I already knew.

Currently, my 7 year old gets maybe 2 hours of homework a week. She's in the magnet school and will be going into the uber-smarty pants classes next year.
The kids are grossly over exagerating their homework times.
Take what they say and divide by 3.
As far as the kid complaining that he has sports after school. Tough. School is for learning. Not playing footbal or basketball.

This x1000000000.

 

[xanis]

Also, we're required to accept late work in "regular" classes...Can't have too many F's it looks bad!

My mother is a teacher and thanks to No Child Left Behind and some other laws she's actually not allowed to fail her Special Education kids. The lowest grade she can give them (I think) is a D.

 

[nageov3t]

I made it through my senior year by not doing homework and getting perfect scores on my tests. The final grades where high enough to pass.

I hated doing homework. I knew the material, and didn't want to do drills to "re-enforce" what I already knew.

shutting up and doing what the people in power want you to do regardless of how little sense it makes is a pretty good life skill to learn, though.

 

[rocadelpunk]

I made it through my senior year by not doing homework and getting perfect scores on my tests. The final grades where high enough to pass.

I hated doing homework. I knew the material, and didn't want to do drills to "re-enforce" what I already knew.

Currently, my 7 year old gets maybe 2 hours of homework a week. She's in the magnet school and will be going into the uber-smarty pants classes next year.
The kids are grossly over exagerating their homework times.
Take what they say and divide by 3.
As far as the kid complaining that he has sports after school. Tough. School is for learning. Not playing footbal or basketball.

What classes were you taking your senior year?

I can't imagine doing well in a language course, mathematics course, science course without studying/homework.

Maybe if you're a good enough BS'er or just watched the movies/cliff notes/spark notes you could get by in a film class or english class.

Heck even in a photo class you'd have to do work outside school.

And if you were taking some legitimate courses
a.) Bravo, few could do what you did.
b.) You might have discovered on your own some deeper connections with the material if you had spent some time on your own with it.
c.) You could have done the homework, gotten a nice gpa and had scholarships/get paid to go to college.

 

[Shadow Conception]

And you don't think I did? You don't get much homework in high school at all. Did anyone even study in HS? If you don't screw around all day, 2 hours of homework, tops.

Yeah man, only noobs study in high school. Try getting a 5 on an AP history exam without studying. Good luck.