6 ms·

The fundamental problem is that the US teenager has too much homework. You can like cut it in half and it won’t make a difference (look at like Finland). The ga

The fundamental problem is that the US teenager has too much homework. You can like cut it in half and it won’t make a difference (look at like Finland). The gained time can be then spent on hacking and exploration.

jkuria 9y ago
Hmmh, really? I thought they spend 6 hours on social media and another 4 hours watching TV? :)
- ausjke 9y ago
  or similar hours on games especially for boys. the smart phone is taking a toll on teenage daily.
  - megaman22 9y ago
    Without PC gaming and getting into modding as a teenager, I'd have never become a programmer. Not to mention all the experience unborking computers after trying to install something trashed the system. Or the history and geography I picked up by osmosis playing strategy games. Those hours were much more valuable in the long run than most of the time I spent in the classroom.
    - eat_veggies 9y ago
      Modern mobile/social games and even some PC games are pretty locked down and difficult to mod, which makes them way less educational than the PC games of your time.
      - megaman22 9y ago
        I'm sort of glad that my parents never got me and my sister any game consoles; we had the PC for my mother to write test reports, and do the taxes, and type up my father's logging invoices. Consequently, I had the advantage of getting to frig around a lot with getting games to run, and with PC games that had a thriving, if rough-around-the-edges modding scene. I don't think I would have gotten anything like the same learnings if I'd been playing on a SNES or Genesis, vs a Pentium clone. Not to mention the dramatic skew in the kinds of games that are available on the different platforms.
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  Yeah so what?
- TrainedMonkey 9y ago
  I think there is no standard for amount of homework. Amount of assigned homework mostly depends on the teacher. Students can choose electives which does provide some control over the total amount. From what I can remember amount of homework per-class features heavily on teacher review sites (ratemyproffesor.com).
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
avenoir 9y ago
I was a B student in a Russian school from 1 to 8th grade and started in an American High School in 1999. If you factored in ungodly amount of mandatory summer break reading everyone had to do in Russian schools, you'd probably end up with 3 times the material covered in a span of a year compared to American schools. This basically allowed me to just coast through all 4 years of High School with all kinds of stupid awards and a GPA of 4.0. The same amount of effort would've probably turned me into a dropout back in Russia. Kids here don't learn anything and I think lack of quality material both in and outside of school is to blame. Ironically, I hear they don't learn much in Russian schools either these days.
- maoistinquisitr 9y ago
  These anecdotes from smart foreigners contemptuous of Americans never make any sense against the stats. White Americans outperform all of them in the PISA tests. America only performs poorly in the PISA tests when you don't exclude non-whites.
  - eat_veggies 9y ago
    Non-whites are Americans too, and I don't see a reason to exclude them. The fact that non-white students perform so poorly as to drag down the average so much speaks of a massive systematic failure in education.
    - txcwpalpha 9y ago
      If whites have high test scores while non-whites don't, it might mean that the system does work for some groups, but not for others. This indicates as problem not with the curriculum, but rather with the way the curriculum is "distributed" (aka: the massive disparity between schools in wealthy areas vs poor urban areas). This is a pretty important distinction to make, given that this entire discussion is regarding the content of the curriculum.
      - maoistinquisitr 9y ago

jkuria 9y ago

Hmmh, really? I thought they spend 6 hours on social media and another 4 hours watching TV? :)

ausjke 9y ago
or similar hours on games especially for boys. the smart phone is taking a toll on teenage daily.
- megaman22 9y ago
  Without PC gaming and getting into modding as a teenager, I'd have never become a programmer. Not to mention all the experience unborking computers after trying to install something trashed the system. Or the history and geography I picked up by osmosis playing strategy games. Those hours were much more valuable in the long run than most of the time I spent in the classroom.
  - eat_veggies 9y ago
    Modern mobile/social games and even some PC games are pretty locked down and difficult to mod, which makes them way less educational than the PC games of your time.
    - megaman22 9y ago
      I'm sort of glad that my parents never got me and my sister any game consoles; we had the PC for my mother to write test reports, and do the taxes, and type up my father's logging invoices. Consequently, I had the advantage of getting to frig around a lot with getting games to run, and with PC games that had a thriving, if rough-around-the-edges modding scene. I don't think I would have gotten anything like the same learnings if I'd been playing on a SNES or Genesis, vs a Pentium clone. Not to mention the dramatic skew in the kinds of games that are available on the different platforms.
adamnemecek 9y ago
Yeah so what?
TrainedMonkey 9y ago
I think there is no standard for amount of homework. Amount of assigned homework mostly depends on the teacher. Students can choose electives which does provide some control over the total amount. From what I can remember amount of homework per-class features heavily on teacher review sites (ratemyproffesor.com).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

avenoir 9y ago

I was a B student in a Russian school from 1 to 8th grade and started in an American High School in 1999. If you factored in ungodly amount of mandatory summer break reading everyone had to do in Russian schools, you'd probably end up with 3 times the material covered in a span of a year compared to American schools. This basically allowed me to just coast through all 4 years of High School with all kinds of stupid awards and a GPA of 4.0. The same amount of effort would've probably turned me into a dropout back in Russia. Kids here don't learn anything and I think lack of quality material both in and outside of school is to blame. Ironically, I hear they don't learn much in Russian schools either these days.

maoistinquisitr 9y ago
These anecdotes from smart foreigners contemptuous of Americans never make any sense against the stats. White Americans outperform all of them in the PISA tests. America only performs poorly in the PISA tests when you don't exclude non-whites.
- eat_veggies 9y ago
  Non-whites are Americans too, and I don't see a reason to exclude them. The fact that non-white students perform so poorly as to drag down the average so much speaks of a massive systematic failure in education.
  - txcwpalpha 9y ago
    If whites have high test scores while non-whites don't, it might mean that the system does work for some groups, but not for others. This indicates as problem not with the curriculum, but rather with the way the curriculum is "distributed" (aka: the massive disparity between schools in wealthy areas vs poor urban areas). This is a pretty important distinction to make, given that this entire discussion is regarding the content of the curriculum.
    - maoistinquisitr 9y ago