3 ms·

I have experienced both types of approaches from my family. As a kid attending school in Ukraine we had classes 6 days a week and hours of homework each day. My

I have experienced both types of approaches from my family. As a kid attending school in Ukraine we had classes 6 days a week and hours of homework each day. My grandmother was a teacher before retirement - I remember her having some very harsh words over my late nights doing math homework in 3rd-5th grade (I can't remember why but in my school there was no 4th grade, everyone in my class went from 3rd into 5th). I just could not get long division for the longest time - there was yelling and tears. When my family (not including grandparents) moved to the U.S., my parents noticeably loosened up. I think it was because they didn't feel like they had to chase after me to do well so much anymore. They were kind of caught off guard by the school system. Math was the most important, but the stuff we were learning in math at the U.S. school were things we learned long ago in Ukraine so to them it looked like I was doing well and needed no chasing. In truth I was only doing well because my grandmother made me drill math so hard in Ukraine in prior years! Unfortunately when in later years what we learned in American schools started to overtake what I had already known from Ukrainian schools, the relaxed attitude began to show in my grades. Perfect scores slipped to mid-lower 90s, then to Bs, and even some Cs. I remember failing one test - still can't remember why, even my teacher was shocked. I ended up graduating high school with "above average" grades, but nowhere near as good as they would've been had my grandmother kept charge of my learning. While I don't miss my grandmother's yelling, I do wish my parents were a bit more strict back then (and at the same time realize that my lack of motivation in school was entirely my fault). I turned out ok, but feel like having a stronger grasp of math and more structured study habits would've been very beneficial later in life.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
fossuser 10y ago
Coming from the other extreme where I had very little control of my life I'm not sure strict parents yelling at you a lot is a better motivator. If anything I'd get an emotional response to do the opposite even if rationally I knew I should be studying or preparing for something. Some autonomy to have your own life is preferred. It's with some irony that I largely have the job I do now because I ignored my mom and messed around with linux instead of constantly preparing for medschool. Though I did end up doing pre-med reqs in addition to CS anyway.
geebee 10y ago
That's an interesting story. One reason I'm not a perfectionist about my kids' homework is that a lot of it is crushingly uninteresting. I have two kids, and I work with them often on homework, especially math. I like to look for interesting ways to approach problems, to show them there are ways to do things that aren't a series of steps that need to be followed with high levels of exactness. Sometimes the teacher heaps on so much basic arithmetic that there's no time to do both. if it comes down to a choice between investigating interesting ways to go about a problem or chugging along with a mechanical approach, I'd rather investigate a problem in greater depth. That may mean a worse grade, but it's a balancing act. To be clear, I always advocate respect for the teacher in terms of civility and politeness, but I do want my kids to independently assess the learning value of their assignments. There have been assignments that seem to be little more than an exercise in penmanship. I have reflected on how teachers used to (perhaps still do) force kids to write a dull sentence 100 times as punishment. In that sense, at times, my kid's homework is nearly indistinguishable from a punishment. Just to be clear, this isn't always the case, my kids have also had good teachers and interesting assignments as well.
foobarian 10y ago
I went through K-12 in a different East European country, and it was mostly all drills and rote memorization. Our history teacher would read his notes, which would have a paragraph on any given subtopic (battle/kingdom/person). About 4 times a semester he would do oral exams, which took about 2 periods to go through 30 kids, so about 3 minutes per person. His question was one or two words which was the title of the topic, and we were expected to recite the paragraph from his notes word for word. Each word wrong one grade point down. We might as well have been reciting digits of pi. Overall the most useful studying technique I took away from this is math drills, which came in handy even in a run of the mill American university; the trick is to just do the same kind of problem over and over again until you internalize the intuition; it's kind of the wax-on-wax-off learning something you don't realize you're learning until a while after all the work is put in. I've no idea what to do for my kid when time comes. I don't want her to drill stupid, but I would like her to learn to work hard.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

fossuser 10y ago

Coming from the other extreme where I had very little control of my life I'm not sure strict parents yelling at you a lot is a better motivator. If anything I'd get an emotional response to do the opposite even if rationally I knew I should be studying or preparing for something. Some autonomy to have your own life is preferred. It's with some irony that I largely have the job I do now because I ignored my mom and messed around with linux instead of constantly preparing for medschool. Though I did end up doing pre-med reqs in addition to CS anyway.

geebee 10y ago

That's an interesting story. One reason I'm not a perfectionist about my kids' homework is that a lot of it is crushingly uninteresting. I have two kids, and I work with them often on homework, especially math. I like to look for interesting ways to approach problems, to show them there are ways to do things that aren't a series of steps that need to be followed with high levels of exactness. Sometimes the teacher heaps on so much basic arithmetic that there's no time to do both. if it comes down to a choice between investigating interesting ways to go about a problem or chugging along with a mechanical approach, I'd rather investigate a problem in greater depth. That may mean a worse grade, but it's a balancing act. To be clear, I always advocate respect for the teacher in terms of civility and politeness, but I do want my kids to independently assess the learning value of their assignments. There have been assignments that seem to be little more than an exercise in penmanship. I have reflected on how teachers used to (perhaps still do) force kids to write a dull sentence 100 times as punishment. In that sense, at times, my kid's homework is nearly indistinguishable from a punishment. Just to be clear, this isn't always the case, my kids have also had good teachers and interesting assignments as well.

foobarian 10y ago

I went through K-12 in a different East European country, and it was mostly all drills and rote memorization. Our history teacher would read his notes, which would have a paragraph on any given subtopic (battle/kingdom/person). About 4 times a semester he would do oral exams, which took about 2 periods to go through 30 kids, so about 3 minutes per person. His question was one or two words which was the title of the topic, and we were expected to recite the paragraph from his notes word for word. Each word wrong one grade point down. We might as well have been reciting digits of pi. Overall the most useful studying technique I took away from this is math drills, which came in handy even in a run of the mill American university; the trick is to just do the same kind of problem over and over again until you internalize the intuition; it's kind of the wax-on-wax-off learning something you don't realize you're learning until a while after all the work is put in. I've no idea what to do for my kid when time comes. I don't want her to drill stupid, but I would like her to learn to work hard.