Second-grade teacher's unique homework policy goes viral

Thats refreshing to hear.

Homework is piled on kids at a young age and is absolutely ridiculous considering the bs taught in schools today.

This year alone ( the school year just began) I have went to 3 students funerals from suicide. The bullying that takes place, the amount of homework, never spending time with family, and more, are reasons for an unhealthy life at such a young age.

When I was a kid we barely had homework and I was able to spend a lot of time with my family farming. My cousins and I made up outdoor games to entertain us and we were so happy!! Kids today will never know what it's like to have such a peaceful and loving childhood.

They are too worried about social media and what other kids think. They have no family time and know nothing about respect much less self respect. Parents don't teach anymore everything is learned from their childish peers.

originally posted by: stiver
If foreign kids value education so much, the foreign educational system is so much better while the American system is so bad, then why the American colleges are filled with foreign students?

There is a difference between pre-college education and college education. Conflating the two doesn't help.

There is also a certain amount of kudos attached to saying "I went to an American university", partly due to the perception of a higher standard of teaching but largely due to bragging rights.

From studying with, and later teaching, foreign students, I will say this: certain countries (naming no names, Jordan, but countries beginning with "J" and ending with "ordan" come to mind) fail miserably at encouraging the kind of free thought and independent thinking that underpins a lot of the western undergraduate and postgraduate education. Well, it used to underpin the western system. Now we have "triggering" and "safe spaces".

What's the problem with homework? I was given 4-5 hours a night worth of homework when I was in grade school.

Are these kids really going to benefit when they get a third grade teacher that assigns an average amount of homework? In several subjects homework is a good thing too, because it lets the student actually practice what is being taught.

a reply to: Aazadan

I love our world, it's so grand.

No one's allowed to be people anymore and we glorify it.

Kids come home, then are expected to work 4-5 hours as you put it. It's building character making them better workers in the future improving their education.

So when do they get to be kids? Where's their family time? When do they get to positively interact with people and build meaningful relationships with other humans?

Then we get out of school and are expected to work 60 hours a week. No wonder I'm contemplating offing myself, we've given up on living and replaced it with slavery. We don't get any meaningful opportunity to enjoy the fruits of our labor assuming we even make any after bills and basic sustenance is accounted for. Then we have to use our off time to deal with chores first. So what time do we have to build meaningful relationships with others? See our loved ones? Almost none. Then if we do find a significant other. It turns out they are working the same crazy hours. So once again you barely have time to see each other, unless lucky enough to be on same shift and schedule. Then kids get involved and stuck with a choice work opposite shifts and never see each other, probably destroying your relationship, or pay a crazy amount for daycare making paying the bills even more difficult causing finance related stress and fights.

So yeah ok, get the kids used to no meaningful human contact, because that's their future. Your right.

I'm getting so tired watching this world fall to hell. Someone seriously come kill me cause to date I'm still too much a coward.

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: tikbalang

She's stopped giving homework to kids, now she's giving homework to whole families.

Just the three R's teach, don't tell me how to run my household.

If there's something wrong with kids playing outside, eating dinner as a family or getting to bed early please feel free to explain the problem.

a reply to: Asktheanimals

Fine, all that is fine. Why does it have to be directed from an outside agency? Do the kids have to tell when they get back to class? Maybe the parents will get report cards? Its the control thing I have an issue with, not healthy families.

Let some bureaucrat agency like schools inside the home and theres soon no end to it. Pretty soon the education channel and the administrator barking, "Alright everyone, calisthenics, jumping jacks. All together now..."

ring any bells?

originally posted by: Asktheanimals

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: tikbalang

She's stopped giving homework to kids, now she's giving homework to whole families.

Just the three R's teach, don't tell me how to run my household.

If there's something wrong with kids playing outside, eating dinner as a family or getting to bed early please feel free to explain the problem.

I would like to. The problem is workers will not work in their free time and this will affect productivity and hence the income of CEO's etc. We just can't have workers spend time with their kids, besides the kids need to do homework as well. It's a perfect picture don't you think, mom and dad preparing for some meeting the next day or just finishing work, the things they didn't get around to during the day while the kids are doing the same.

More education = higher productivity = more $$$ (just not particularly for you)

But to be fair I'd rather see people compete in education (between countries, to survive) than war. At least there is some progress compared to the centuries of non-education (for the masses) and warfare.

a reply to: Puppylove

There's nothing wrong with people getting time to kick back and relax too, but that doesn't mean we should exclude homework. Grade school is 5 hours per day excluding recess and breaks. 4-5 hours of homework given that schedule is reasonable. Less would be better, but we just don't have more efficient ways of teaching certain subjects.

I'm not a fan of the Asian style which leads to a huge number of suicides, but the Finland style at the complete opposite end has it's own problems too. We actually do a pretty good job at educating in the US. A few states like Florida have issues, but most of the states do just fine. We'll have a much better grasp of this in 3 months when the PISA tests are finally published (expect a lot of education "news" at that time) after a 3 year wait.

The thing is though, education almost by definition requires more effort than work. Education as a whole is a field that's constantly expanding. Every day there is another days worth of history to learn, another days worth of new mathematical breakthroughs, another days worth of scientific understanding, and so on. The amount there is to learn in life is always growing. You had it easier in this regard than kids today, and kids today have it easier than kids in 100 years will have it, because those kids will have to learn both current and prior understandings of the world.

Work on the other hand is decreasing. 200 years ago, outside of the farmers the average work week was 66 hours (11 hours/day, 6 days a week). 60 years ago it was 50 hours. 50 years ago it was 45 hours. Today it is 40 hours, and should arguably be 25.

The wage issue aside (how much labor is worth is a separate topic to how much labor is needed), there is much less work that needs to be done today. It's almost inversely proportional to education actually.

I'm all for making life leisurely, education however is one area where we're saddled with an ever increasing body of knowledge to teach, and a lack of more efficient ways to teach it. That means that more time needs to be spent, either in the form of longer days or more years of compulsory education. I favor more years myself, but homework has it's place. I think the ideal amount of time spent on homework should be enough to fill the gap between getting out of school and people getting home from work and making dinner. If someone gets off at 5 that means dinner is probably done around 7. If kids get out at 2:30 and home at 3, that means 4 hours of homework per night.

a reply to: Aazadan

Not exaclly true

The work week thing is not exactly true at all capitalism has made things worse for us overall in terms of leisure not better.

originally posted by: Puppylove
a reply to: Aazadan

Not exaclly true

The work week thing is not exactly true at all capitalism has made things worse for us overall in terms of leisure not better.

I said nothing of capitalism. I also went back 200 years to the industrial revolution, your article goes back even further than that, to where most of the economy had to do with farming. Farming had a lot of leisure time because it couldn't be done at night, and once stuff was planted there is little to do other than wait for it to grow, which I also excluded from those work estimates.

The problem with those estimates though, are that we won't be going back to a preindustrial model any time soon.

a reply to: Aazadan

Our work hours have been going up not down. Our current average is over 47 hours.

That's a problem.

originally posted by: Puppylove
a reply to: Aazadan

Our work hours have been going up not down. Our current average is over 47 hours.

That's a problem.

That has to do with labor not paying enough, which again, is a separate issue (and I specifically mentioned that) the average is increasing entirely due to the low end where wages have gone backwards. The need for workers itself has actually substantially declined which means there's less work to go around, and in turn should lower the work week.

That will sort itself out over the next 10 years as service sector jobs automate and eliminate those positions. That will probably create an even larger group of people getting some form of assistance and lower quality of life, but the workweek will be sorted out.

I hope I am seeing a method to this madness.

Kids need kid time. They need to run and rip and play and spend time with Mom and Dad. If they are deprived of this, they learn to hate school and learn as little as they can get by with. That's not a good thing, because they wind up at a disadvantage later on.

On the other hand, some homework is a good thing, as it helps them to learn.

I think (hope) this teacher is trying to strike a balance. She's giving kids time to be kids, and trying to encourage family time together. When third grade comes, maybe that homework will be a part of family time. Start a habit with expectations of how it will develop.

Maybe it'll work; maybe not. But it's worth a try. Kids are that important.

TheRedneck

a reply to: Aazadan

Right and all the jobs I've had lately working you six to seven days a week, months on end have nothing to do with it either I'm sure.

This situation would best be fixed if factory jobs would do a mass hire and cut their hours to a reasonable amount and accept that they'll take a bit of a hit for a few months til they regain a work force that can fill all the new shifts.

What most factories currently have is hours most people can't maintain, so it's a constant revolving door.

They could run 24/7 by doing better scheduling and hiring more workers for fewer hours. Only reason they never have enough workers to make the adjustment is they expect more than most can handle, so most don't stay.

They'd make the adjustment if could keep enough workers from what I understand, but well it requires them to be confident the workers won't bail so the workers need to stay. Which they won't because most are simply lacking in either the physical or mental fortitude to do it.

The only fix is the companies being willing to lose a bit of profit and production for a time to adjust. But heaven forbid they do that.

Even though long term it means paying no overtime and will save them millions.

originally posted by: stiver


BTW, some of the people here, who claim homework is useless misspelled the word homework and wrote "home work."

And someone educated might be quick to realize that a simple misspell does not denote anything other than a mistake. They might also be educated enough to know that people with PhD's, EdD's, and MD's spell stuff wrong on a frequent basis

also....BTW should be spelled out if we want to be super detailed about it

Anyway....to the rest

I like this idea quite a bit, but with perhaps one change. I feel like the homework idea would be better done with maybe once a week/once every other week homework instead of zero. Either way I am quite excited to see the results. Kids who aren't allowed to be kids can feel emotionally and socially held back.

anywho....I'll be happy to watch this closely

I think it's less about homework than it is about parents who overschedule kids. Since it's not allowed for kids to simply be free range, I think parents try to compensate by structuring everything, but structured time in activities, even with other kids, isn't the same as plain old unstructured play time. But, if you let your kid roam the neighborhood, you get reported to CPS by the well-meaning.

Maybe the homework wouldn't so bad if little Johnny wasn't also taking karate, swim club, choir, and piano on top of having to do it?

a reply to: ketsuko

I know it's ridiculous. When I was a kid I roamed all over my neighborhood with no issues. I feel bad for kids today, regulated into prisons to protect them...

a reply to: tikbalang


Brilliant.

I cannot tell you how many times I have run into problems
With my own child re: homework, when he was younger, I was trying to show him
the importance of the multiplication table, and he kept insisting
That isn't how my teacher does it (Common Core). He would get very
Frustrated and tell me NO the teacher doesn't want us to do it that way
Then he would not sign his papers. I have seen this with many kids, because they were told
They didn't have to.

I would insist they sign their work.

I have over the years watched other neighbors do phenomenal
Jobs on various dioramas, the kids did none of the work, so the parents
Would joke I have to go do my homework now.

So much time wasted on homework, many families working 12 hour days and dreading
Getting home, making dinner, cleaning up, doing 2 hours of homework; and if you're lucky,
You'll be able to shower by 9:00.

I feel kids are inundated with homework. I literally have enough paper by the time summer comes around to
wallpaper a house.

The only thing that helped my son focus when he was younger was playing classical music while doing
his homework to calm him from the frustration that he felt due to having to be in so early and not out riding his bike.

a reply to: KTemplar

If i had an idea, that would actually reinforce a good behavior outside of school without the stress of results.. I would try to make that idea into a reality, even force it. I hope games like "pokemon go" can reinforce something.

Just my opinion.

originally posted by: Puppylove
They could run 24/7 by doing better scheduling and hiring more workers for fewer hours. Only reason they never have enough workers to make the adjustment is they expect more than most can handle, so most don't stay.

They'd make the adjustment if could keep enough workers from what I understand, but well it requires them to be confident the workers won't bail so the workers need to stay. Which they won't because most are simply lacking in either the physical or mental fortitude to do it.

It's a twofold problem. The first problem is that the economics of the situation haven't adjusted. We could shift to a 25 hour work week as we should have, but salaries haven't adjusted to compensate... that can only happen if we reverse the downward trend of CPI over the past 3 decades (meaning, it will be at least 40 years to make back those gains). France has a 35 hour week and has had an unending stream of issues due to it. The US has effectively been jolted to 29, but that just results in people working 2 29 hour jobs instead of 1 40 hour job which has been a short term negative (but a good thing long term I think).

The other issue is one you touched on which is that of workers. Companies have no loyalty to employees today, so the employees also have no loyalty to a company. In the US it is very common to job hop, but in some other countries like Japan it's very uncommon. I don't really know which is better... corporate lords or mercenaries but I do know companies can't just expect to run for 168 hours per week opposed to 40 hours per week and quadruple their employees, basically spreading hours throughout the day, because most places require a critical mass of workers to function and even when they don't, quadrupling your hours in business is quadrupling your liability for no gain.