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> former teacher Sorry but I'm going to be that person :) How much do you think parents should be involved with kids' homework? My wife and I got tired of th

• lr4444lr 10y ago
  I'll preface by saying that most issues surrounding homework are in general very debatable, and even the best educational research (which is not great) suggests a lot of age and subject dependent policy variation. And even the individual teacher and his or her relation with your daughter are confounding variables, not to mention whatever lessons in values and character building you and your wife might have, so this answer comes with a lot of unstated speculation on my part. It sounds like the original interaction you had with her consisted purely of negative reinforcement. That rarely produces the long term results loving parents want, even in very obedient kids. Your second approach is fine for a child who is either mature or has significant intrinsic motivation. A weekly assessment is a good frequency, but you're leaving it entirely up to her to report, and she seems to have the option to give you no feedback. Can you trust her not to slack off and surprise you with an unacceptable grade at the next test? Maybe you can; I don't know your child. Maybe she's naturally bright in the subject, or can at least pull her act together and study hard enough when test time comes around. Do you expect 100% mastery on each assignment? Not every mistake reflects a gap in knowledge or conceptual understanding, and the smartest children are often the most acutely aware of when they're penalized for careless errors or unnecessary formalism. That's not to say diligence and tolerating unliked procedures are bad lessons to learn either, but a good teacher can distinguish from the nature of the error what kind of feedback to give. I realize I'm raising more questions and factors instead of answering directly, because I'm trying to convey that parents should grow more sensitive in general to the academic behaviors and values their rules encourage. Be ready to iterate on your strategy (maybe 1 month of weekly feedback) make sure you're able to get reliable feedback. If you wanted a more proactive suggestion, why have her demonstrate her knowledge around homework at all? Typical 3rd grade psych. development sees children still interestep in showing their parents their accomplishments to seek their approval across the board. What if when you see her in a good mood, and not engrossed in something else, like around the dinner table in casual conversation, you ask her to teach _you_ something new she learned in class that day? (Maybe start with other subjects if the homework one is too sensitive.) Feign surprise and gratitude, as if she really taught you something new. Having to reexplain content knowledge in one's own words from memory is a very powerful retention technique.
• VLM 10y ago
  In American culture education-related jobs are to be aspired to and vocational-related jobs are looked down upon. Just observing, not propagandizing. Therefore school vocational activity is socially inferior to school educational activity. The best (only?) way to teach vocational skills is to practice them. Carpenters do not learn the dovetail joint by reading books but by making a hundred or so by hand. It works pretty well for vocational skills such as carpentry, arithmetic, and coding. But, vocational work is what social inferiors do at school. Kids on an education path should not be tainted by experiencing prole life such as homework therefore Americans generally don't like homework for social class reasons. Adding to the fire, higher math is educational, lower arithmetic is vocational grinding. Kids are going to spend most of their school time in "math" doing vocational grinding. Vocational work is prole and we are all socialized by our culture to hate vocational work so obviously the result is "I hate math". Meanwhile people who haven't learned arithmetic in 30 years think of all of math as educational experiences in topology theory in grad school or whatever and mistakenly think kids math is just like their last grad school math class, all deep thought and reasoning and education, therefore vocational grinding is inappropriate, although ironically its the best way to learn that early subset of the field. Its simultaneously true that grinding homework like a prole is an inefficient way to learn topology in grad school and a good way to learn addition in first grade. All you need to do to change American attitudes toward homework is upend the entire socioeconomic system and how culture views the socioeconomic system. Until then expect to hear a lot of "my kid gets too much homework" and "I don't like math". And people outside American culture will continue to be confused, and American kids will generally graduate somewhat innumerate compared to other cultures that have different hangups. Which results in a lot of crooks selling snake oil that'll fix everything "silver bullet style" if only we put bibles in school or fill in more scantron tests. And much like programming, WRT school and learning there is no silver bullet.