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Does homework suck?

Working Dad at the Seattle PI seems to think there is a debate over whether homework sucks. Ha! Homework sucks. It’s hard for me to believe that anyone thinks it does not suck. Our daughter was getting homework in kindergarten and now even more in first grade. I don’t think I had a similar homework load until 3rd or 4th grade and I turned out pretty well—anyway, I don’t think doing homework in kindergarten would have helped me earn my engineering degree.

“Nearly nine out of 10 teachers (89 percent) say students who use technology for help with homework do better on their assignments than those who do not."

What does that mean? Googling the answers?

Comments

  1. eduwonk on 2006-10-04 10:32:21 wrote: Homework especially the kind given to most kindergarden and first grade students is worthless busy work which reinforces two things: one, that school is tedious and boring; two, very seldomly the lessons learned during the day. The publishers have a very vested interest in pushing this message because they sell more books. You can even see this in the number of testing publishers www.ctb.com, www.ncspearson.com and www.riverside.com that are promoting earlier and earlier testing. Some of this is driven by the US falling test scores internationally and that some nations, UK start agressive education at age 4. My son would have been attending full day school at age 4-5 in UK and expected to read a whole year earlier than in the US. The system there as well still targets the best and brightest and syphons them off into narrow one subject centered education programs by age 16. There university participation rates still fall well behind the US in that they only send 16% to University when only a decade ago it was 8%. The numbers increase is mainly driven by the older members of their society realizing what they missed going back to school at a poly technic or to get that degree they missed Having said all that……I am not sure you have your daughter boycott the homework. Just welcome her to the machine and find ways to stimulate the creative thinking necessary to be successful in the participation age. Good luck…… The Eduwonk

  2. Hemlock on 2006-10-04 11:45:10 wrote: I think the first memory I have of homework was Grade 3… and it was hardly homework. It was vocabulary, and probably only took me half an hour. By Grade 4 I wasn’t even taking homework home… but that kind of got me in trouble. But Kindergarden to Grade 2? Come on!!! Leave kids alone!

  3. Jake Stichler on 2006-10-04 20:15:55 wrote: Of course homework sucks. I didn’t do it in high school, and I’m still not doing it. Jake

  4. Anita on 2006-10-10 11:12:50 wrote: Remember writing ‘I WILL NOT BLOW MY NOSE IN BOYS HAIR’ and similar messages on the chalkboard 25 times? These “assignments” often turned into homework for me, often for not doing homework. About once per week I had to write ‘I WILL NOT SKIP MY HOMEWORK’ or similar messages 100X in a notebook and bring it back in (this was a lutheran school with very strange punishments). Luckily, this got me out of doing homework for another few days, so I never did it. By 4th or 5th grade, I was able to convince my teacher that it would be better for my learning to type these nonsense statements rather than write them. She didn’t realize they had typewriters with copy/paste capabilities (this is before we had a computer). While everyone else was doing an hour of homework, I just hit copy … paste … copy … paste. Sweet.

  5. Jan on 2006-12-03 11:56:58 wrote: We don’t assign homework at our school unless it is necessary for the understanding of whatever the subject is. If we can’t get it done in the classroom then we have failed.

  6. Chelsea on 2007-01-09 10:50:42 wrote: Home work sucks…i don’t think that I should have to do homework, the teachers should give kids enough time to finish the work during school. If they don’t then the teachers should just forget about it our try and finish it the next day. We already spend enough time in school and we don’t want to take home school work with us. I think that home work just makes me dislike school even more, or maybe even make me dislike it in the first place.

  7. Betsey on 2007-02-21 09:22:01 wrote: home work is the lamest thing on this earth. i mean think about it school work is for SCHOOL, not for the home. i took a survey and more than half the students dont do their homwork, and if more is assigned then that will make us do it………..not, what are people thinking we are not doing it, wont do it, and im pretty sure it doesnt matter that much, im still alive and am probable going to succeed in life……….

  8. Wtf on 2007-03-14 15:18:22 wrote: Homework really does blow. I always do my homework, but that’s because it affects my grades in the end if I don’t. But I’m regularly up until 12 AM trying to finish the shit we’re assigned, then I have to get up at 7:30AM and drag my ass off back to do more of the shit. It’s utter bollocks. Seriously, SCRAP HOMEWORK.

  9. David on 2007-03-20 05:47:26 wrote: Homework is such a drag, honestly. Not only is it incredibly boring and takes away from the time could be used to do more important things, but it makes kids hate school and creates a lot of tension at home. Why not let children spend their free time playing outside and having fun instead? They’ll learn more from that than they would from sitting at the kitchen table punching numbers into a calculator or writing book reports, I’m sure. I’m in high school and the amount of work they expect you to do is unbelievable. If I wanted to finish every single piece of homework I get assigned, I’d be up until 2 AM every night. And I have to be up at 6:30 to get to school in the first place. All that so I can learn nothing but how to bore myself out of my skull.

  10. matt on 2007-03-28 12:43:02 wrote: homework really does suck. it is the worst thing i have ever had.(i am forced to do it)

  11. Kelly on 2007-04-26 14:50:00 wrote: I agree. Homework is just an excuse for teachers to spend less time actually teaching to the class. Very often my younger sister [8] will bring home work that was not taught in school. Now it becomes our job to teach her division and multiplication; subjects that should be taught IN school.

  12. keigan on 2007-05-11 12:19:50 wrote: homework….. im actualy taking a break from it now but i have not started and probibly wont 4 a while

  13. Kate on 2008-01-20 12:55:06 wrote: Haha, I’m reading this as I procrastinate from hwork ;) Seriously though, we finish a french book on Friday and then have an oral presentation + report due on it… on MONDAY? Ha, screw that, I’m just going to work on the other 7 things we have due this week. Seriously, if they expect us to finish everything on time, we’d be up way too late (some people have to get up at 6 AM anyway just to make it to the bus. And at the same time, they’re pushing kids to get 8-9 hours of sleep, which is fricking impossible even WITHOUT all the extra homework). I actually have to skip Monday so I have extra time for hwork… ridiculous Well, my break is over in 2 mins, so I should post this and go. Ughhhhh… gr 8 sucks sometimes

  14. John on 2008-03-17 13:54:43 wrote: Greetings, discouraged youth who come here to vent about homework! Homework may indeed suck but working at McDonald’s for the rest of your life because you didn’t get decent marks in school is about eleventy billion times worse. Hopefully you can take some solace in the knowledge that you are not the first and you are not alone. Meanwhile, comments on this post are now closed. Have a nice day!