12 ms·

Parents in poorer countries devote more time to their kids' homework

142 points by known 9y ago

meric 9y ago
National income is correlated with percent of population in workforce. Poorer countries are correlated with lower levels of total employment. Assuming all else being equal then parents with less time involved in employment will have more time for other activities, including spending time with children. Is this right?
- commonsense123 9y ago
  please don't think about it in terms of first world problems of time management. it is more like, they are poor and they want kids to get a solid education and get good jobs and lead a happier, fulfilling life compared to them. fyi: username is a function of yours'.
  - mjburgess 9y ago
    please don't think about it in terms of "the virtues of unfortunate". Everyone wants "kids to get a solid education and get good jobs and lead a happier, fulfilling life". please, rather, try to think about it in terms of what best-explains the difference. this data seems highly inversely correlated with productivity, in countries with lower productivity, people spend more time with their child. Time available seems to be the best explanatory factor.
    - anouk_anca 9y ago
      Does reduced productivity at work correlate with more available time though? Take subsistence agriculture, which is very common in poor countries - it is usually done inefficiently, and yet it is very time consuming. In my experience, it's more the leisure time that gets sacrificed - parents have almost no social life while their child is growing up.
    - timthorn 9y ago
      > Everyone wants "kids to get a solid education..." No, this is not universal. There are parents who had a bad experience of education and think that is universal, and those who fear that their children will move away if they become educated. It's one of the challenges of teaching in particular areas.
      - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        Do you mean "a bad experience of education" or do you mean "a bad experience of school"? If its the former could you expand on that, like they learnt to read and it messed their life up? I understand the selfish desire to keep children near, no need to go in to that.
  - meric 9y ago
    By poor I mean lower GDP rather than poverty. The countries up top have lower cost of living and the bottom ones higher, the countries at the top of the table have less parents working, and the bottom, more. Therefore the countries at the top can afford to spend time with children, and the countries at the bottom, can’t afford it. “Rich countries” are time poor that’s why they produce time related articles like these. :) What does your FYI line mean - very cryptic.
- oblio 9y ago
  > National income is correlated with percent of population in workforce. Poorer countries are correlated with lower levels of total employment. How did you draw that conclusion? Do you have any data for this? Intuitively I'd expect poor people to work more since they still need a baseline amount of money (food, rent, etc.) and it takes them longer to get it.
  - meric 9y ago
    Two parents working have more income counted in GDP than one parent. Higher GDP is thus correlated with more parents working. More parents working means less parent hours available. In the table the bottom countries have highest number of parents working and the top countries, lowest.
- devdas 9y ago
  In poorer countries, getting an education is the easiest way out of poverty. All else is not equal here.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    But India - the top on the list is not a poor country and I suspect that the really poor in India are not doing this but the growing middle class are.
    - ivanche 9y ago
      Wow, bold claim. India's GDP per capita for 2017 is $7,200, ranked 156th in the world. I'd say they're not far away from being poor. Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
      - meric 9y ago
        By poorer I mean less income counted in GDP. The lower cost of living make it more viable for parents spend more time with children. I could also argue India is rich compared to, say, Japan, who don’t have much resources to spend on having children.
        FabHK 9y ago
        It's 156 in the world by GDP per capita PPP (purchase power parity) with under USD 8000 (USD 2200 nominal), so cost of living is taken into account, and a HDI of 0.624 (131st in the world). Many positive things might be said about India, but the notion that it is not a poor country is objectively quite mistaken.
    - haihaibye 9y ago
      India is not Sub Saharan Africa poor but has ~20% of their population living in poverty which they define as something like 50 cents a day. This is a bit of a numbers/definition game. I don't know if there's an official definition of poor but if over half of the population lacks indoor plumbing and makes only a few dollars a day, I'd say most people in the 1st world would call it a poor country.
mjburgess 9y ago
It's important to add here that homework has never been shown to improve grades or educational outcomes generally, and it's a very well-studied topic.
- anouk_anca 9y ago
  On the other hand, parental involvement in their children's education has been shown to have a positive impact on children's development.
  - scandox 9y ago
    How did they distinguish parental involvement specifically in education from the fact that supportive, encouraging parents are likely to engage with their child's education? I ask because my instinct is that emotional stability and encouragement are probably more important than homework.
    - anouk_anca 9y ago
      > emotional stability and encouragement are probably more important than homework I'm not sure if there is any work directly comparing the two, but it's true that emotional stability and encouragement are very important. "The most determinative factor in parental involvement appears to be what could be called: good parenthood in the home situation (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003; Fantuzzo et al., 2004; McWayne et al., 2004). This factor is characterised by the establishing of a safe and stable home setting, stimulation of intellectual development e.g. by discussions between parent and child, modeling, disseminating the importance of education and fostering high expectations about children’s school success." [0] [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265632472_Parental_involvement_in_children%27s_education_A_review_study_about_the_effect_of_parental_involvement_on_children%27s_school_education_with_a_focus_on_the_position_of_illiterate_parents https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265632472_Parental_...
- cyberjunkie 9y ago
  Are there also studies on the effects of parents' addiction to social media and other forms of screen time?
humptydumpty001 9y ago
This should have been done in terms of percentage of time taken by child to do homework and how much of that parents get involved in. There is huge difference in amount of homework given in countries like India and that in Australia. We cannot compare that in exact hours. Just my 2cents.
lumberjack 9y ago
The reason for this is pretty simple: you get free public education in these poor countries, but only if you pass the entrance examinations. For a lot of families this is the only way for their kids to get out of poverty. Moreover because of the way the school system is structured, your kid could easily fall behind at age 7 and never recover. The reason for this is because of stratified classes, where they group kids into classes, by their performance on yearly examinations. So there is simply much more incentive for families in poor countries to put more effort into homework, which BTW, is nothing like the homework that American kids get. It is nonsensical to try to compare what parents in India and parents in Finland are doing.
- 1k 9y ago
  Yes, this exactly. Your kids’ education is the way out of poverty. In some families, one child with a decent job will provide a lifeline for the whole family. Even if the system is broken, even if the quality of education is bad, you have to play along because private education is too expensive.
- bunderbunder 9y ago
  > For a lot of families this is the only way for their kids to get out of poverty. By contrast, in countries that have been industrialized for over a century, the preceding several generations found that they could relatively easily find low- to moderate-skill factory jobs that secured a reasonably prosperous lifestyle. There are also industrialized countries with stratified school systems, and I see that some of them fall toward the bottom of the graph.
k__ 9y ago
First thought: Well, they got nothing better to do. Second thought: my mother was unemployed at least 70% of my childhood and didn't devote any time at all to my homework
- spdionis 9y ago
  Third thought: I'm glad my parents didn't devote too much time to my homework. I was the no-effort-good-grades type. Maybe if I dedicated myself more I would've left my country and got a prestigious degree. Who cares. I'm glad I was taught independence and responsibility by my parents instead of them trying to control me.
westiseast 9y ago
Very surprised the article doesn’t mention a few things: 1. Some places just have more homework than others. Chinese kids have mountains of homework aged 7, vastly more than British kids. Chinese parents spend much more time either managing or literally doing their kids homework for them. 2. Efficiency/productivity - What are kids doing in school if their parents are still spending hours and hours after school helping them with homework? How is this a productive use of parents precious work/leisure time?
- lighthazard 9y ago
  An argument can be made that doing homework with your child is the leisure.
  - CannisterFlux 9y ago
    Ha, I think that argument is made by people who don't have kids (with homework). It's not leisure for me at all. While I worry about being branded a terrible father for this comment, I will admit that I am a terrible teacher. I have no patience for it. My kids mess around, constantly want breaks ("Well I've written a line! time for a 10 minute break!"), waste hours doing shit that should take them minutes... When they start "accidentally" dropping their pencils on the floor because they'd rather be faffing around picking it up than working, I often just lose my temper. Man, I'm getting slightly pissed off just thinking about it now! xD There are brief moments of joy/relief where you can see they've grasped a concept or improved and you can be proud of 'em. But most of the time it is a frustrating experience, slow going, and a slog to get them to do anything. The worst of learning, with the worst of kids messing around, with a massive feeling of wasting everone's time.
    - madengr 9y ago
      Ha ha, same issue with me last night. My 3rd grade boy brought home some horribly long reading comprehension homework. He HATES English homework. I do too. Fortunately my wife took over as I was becoming frustrated. I do enjoy helping with math & science homework, but that’s it. My 6th grade daughter is total opposite; never had a B student, science fair winner, violin & cello player. My son a video game & skateboard slacker; just like me. The joys of parenting.
maire 9y ago
Ideally, parents shouldn't spend any time on their children's homework. I can understand answering occasional questions and giving encouragement but nothing more. Children learn by figuring out homework on their own. Otherwise, why have homework?
- watwut 9y ago
  That assumes that child will do homework if left alone and that the homework is within child skills. Which often is not the case - many kids will start to play simply because there is too much of it and their attention span is not there yet. Homework also often basically expects parents to contribute, because the child is not able to fully do it.
- snarf21 9y ago
  I would guess that you've never been a teacher. The problem is that any teacher has a classroom with students with abilities and aptitudes that range between some Low and some High. The teacher must always teach to the middle kid in that spectrum. Going slower/lower bores the kids in the top half and going faster/higher completely loses the kids in the bottom half. Half of the kids may just "get it" and not need help but the bottom half will need help that the school system can't provide. Note: I don't condone the parent just doing the homework for their kid. The problem here is that the parents best able to help their children are more likely to have kids in the top half (who don't need help) and the ones least able to help have the kids who need help the most. This can be solved with a restructuring of our school system but very few schools are willing to try. Instead we stick with the ridiculous age == learning level method.
  - maire 9y ago
    I am not a teacher but I did volunteer in my children's classroom when they were young. I do understand what you mean by the range in comprehension. I am not counting the other things a parent does to enhance a child's learning experience as homework time - so we all might be saying the same thing. I will give a small example which might illustrate having an enhanced learning experience. One of my volunteer assignments was to teach children math using coins. My son and daughter were naturally motivated to understand how much money they had because I had them save money buy things at a very young age. I was shocked that some classmates did not understand denominations and others could not do the math. My husband made coin dice for the classroom kids. They rolled the dice and added the values to figure out how much money they had on the coins. This was a big hit with the kids. What I didn't want to do was do homework for my kids or give answers. Discovery is how children learn. My kids ended up proud of what they could do on their own. When they failed - we discussed taking ownership of failure.
watwut 9y ago
Possible explanation - parents in rich countries have enough power to pressure on schools to assign homework that requires less parental involvement. If you are "suspect parent", you are less likely to argue that there is too much homework because that might badly influence how teachers perceive your kid. If you are rich parent with good social standing, you are free to say so and while teachers might complain at home about "spoiled rich kids", you are likely get your way. Also, I am more involved where I think school is not sufficient to fix the issue. Where I trust the teacher and school, I am involved much less.
potatote 9y ago
Hmm...a bit different experience by me growing up and graduated from high school in a poor Southeast Asian country. There, a lot of parents (esp. from lower and mid-middle class) invest a good chunk of money/resources on their kids' education. BUT, unlike this article claims, they aren't that heavily involved in kids' homework. The parents in my country seem to believe that once they pay money to send kids to after-school classes, the progress in students' learning is up to the teachers in those after-school programs. Most of them don't have time or mental energy left to tend to their kids' homework because they are too busy working (both parents working is typical in poor countries too) and/or running errands (thanks to inefficient bureaucratic system and insufficient infrastructure such as frequent power outages, life's chores take enormously more time than they would in developed world...)
rdlecler1 9y ago
Some thoughts: people in poorer countries may spend their time differently. No internet or TV distractions, no long commutes.
vezycash 9y ago
This article conflicts with my experience. All I think this article proves is that data is malleable to a researcher's goals. Also, the results from the highly competitive India and China might be skewing the results. Finally, survey is the worst method for this research. Because parent would lie instead of admitting negligence about their kid(s) education.
- haihaibye 9y ago
  Maybe the 2 biggest countries on earth should count more than your personal experience?
  - vezycash 9y ago
    Results from two countries should be generalized to every country in the world? If you travelled a little bit like I have, you'll discover a few things. E.g. The poor are usually uneducated. Meaning they can't help with homework. Even in poor black American communities, house work is often more important than school work. More important, the poor tend to work longer and harder on mental jobs. They most impoverished behave like reptiles (no insult intended) give birth to many children and abandon them to varying degrees. (Fulani people actually, literally abandon their kids and may never see em again) Read about how American Indian handled children.
    - potatote 9y ago
      > E.g. The poor are usually uneducated. Meaning they can't help with homework. > Even in poor black American communities, house work is often more important than school work. You pretty much nailed what I wanted to described earlier. My mother works from home and although she has a bachelor's degree, since the education system (esp. in her times) was poor, she is not even at the level of a high school grad in terms of knowledge regarding math, humanities and science. This is not to mention that she (nor my more educated, late father, who was a doctor) wouldn't be able to help her/his children with their homework due to lack of knowledge/education or time. One thing I remember though is that after finishing homework, my mom would expect us to help out with house chores like sweeping the floor, collecting clothes from clotheslines, buying small grocery items, etc.
liberte82 9y ago
Joke's on them when the US decides educational facts are fake news and we pull a full 180.
BeetleB 9y ago
This article is rather poor. So many things not considered: 1. Perhaps people in some countries get a lot more homework than others. This does not look like a normalized plot. 2. Perhaps some countries see helping their kids with homework as a positive, whereas others do not. 3. What is the pressure to do well? We already have another HN submission on the pressures students have in India to do well. Maybe people in developed countries don't help them as much because they know their kids are not at risk of not being able to get into college. Spend an hour and you can probably double the list above.
tnuc 9y ago
The full report has some interesting details. https://www.varkeyfoundation.org/sites/default/files/People/VF%20Parents%20Survey%2018%20-%20Single%20Pages%20for%20FlipBook.pdf https://www.varkeyfoundation.org/sites/default/files/People/...
isa 9y ago
This is also assuming that parents know how to help children with their schoolwork. What is the rate where children in school are past their parents' education level?
endangered 9y ago
Kids won't learn if their parents are the ones doing the homework.

142 points by known 9y ago

National income is correlated with percent of population in workforce. Poorer countries are correlated with lower levels of total employment. Assuming all else being equal then parents with less time involved in employment will have more time for other activities, including spending time with children. Is this right?

commonsense123 9y ago
please don't think about it in terms of first world problems of time management. it is more like, they are poor and they want kids to get a solid education and get good jobs and lead a happier, fulfilling life compared to them. fyi: username is a function of yours'.
- mjburgess 9y ago
  please don't think about it in terms of "the virtues of unfortunate". Everyone wants "kids to get a solid education and get good jobs and lead a happier, fulfilling life". please, rather, try to think about it in terms of what best-explains the difference. this data seems highly inversely correlated with productivity, in countries with lower productivity, people spend more time with their child. Time available seems to be the best explanatory factor.
  - anouk_anca 9y ago
    Does reduced productivity at work correlate with more available time though? Take subsistence agriculture, which is very common in poor countries - it is usually done inefficiently, and yet it is very time consuming. In my experience, it's more the leisure time that gets sacrificed - parents have almost no social life while their child is growing up.
  - timthorn 9y ago
    > Everyone wants "kids to get a solid education..." No, this is not universal. There are parents who had a bad experience of education and think that is universal, and those who fear that their children will move away if they become educated. It's one of the challenges of teaching in particular areas.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      Do you mean "a bad experience of education" or do you mean "a bad experience of school"? If its the former could you expand on that, like they learnt to read and it messed their life up? I understand the selfish desire to keep children near, no need to go in to that.
- meric 9y ago
  By poor I mean lower GDP rather than poverty. The countries up top have lower cost of living and the bottom ones higher, the countries at the top of the table have less parents working, and the bottom, more. Therefore the countries at the top can afford to spend time with children, and the countries at the bottom, can’t afford it. “Rich countries” are time poor that’s why they produce time related articles like these. :) What does your FYI line mean - very cryptic.
oblio 9y ago
> National income is correlated with percent of population in workforce. Poorer countries are correlated with lower levels of total employment. How did you draw that conclusion? Do you have any data for this? Intuitively I'd expect poor people to work more since they still need a baseline amount of money (food, rent, etc.) and it takes them longer to get it.
- meric 9y ago
  Two parents working have more income counted in GDP than one parent. Higher GDP is thus correlated with more parents working. More parents working means less parent hours available. In the table the bottom countries have highest number of parents working and the top countries, lowest.
devdas 9y ago
In poorer countries, getting an education is the easiest way out of poverty. All else is not equal here.
- walshemj 9y ago
  But India - the top on the list is not a poor country and I suspect that the really poor in India are not doing this but the growing middle class are.
  - ivanche 9y ago
    Wow, bold claim. India's GDP per capita for 2017 is $7,200, ranked 156th in the world. I'd say they're not far away from being poor. Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
    - meric 9y ago
      By poorer I mean less income counted in GDP. The lower cost of living make it more viable for parents spend more time with children. I could also argue India is rich compared to, say, Japan, who don’t have much resources to spend on having children.
      - FabHK 9y ago
        It's 156 in the world by GDP per capita PPP (purchase power parity) with under USD 8000 (USD 2200 nominal), so cost of living is taken into account, and a HDI of 0.624 (131st in the world). Many positive things might be said about India, but the notion that it is not a poor country is objectively quite mistaken.
  - haihaibye 9y ago
    India is not Sub Saharan Africa poor but has ~20% of their population living in poverty which they define as something like 50 cents a day. This is a bit of a numbers/definition game. I don't know if there's an official definition of poor but if over half of the population lacks indoor plumbing and makes only a few dollars a day, I'd say most people in the 1st world would call it a poor country.

mjburgess 9y ago

It's important to add here that homework has never been shown to improve grades or educational outcomes generally, and it's a very well-studied topic.

anouk_anca 9y ago
On the other hand, parental involvement in their children's education has been shown to have a positive impact on children's development.
- scandox 9y ago
  How did they distinguish parental involvement specifically in education from the fact that supportive, encouraging parents are likely to engage with their child's education? I ask because my instinct is that emotional stability and encouragement are probably more important than homework.
  - anouk_anca 9y ago
    > emotional stability and encouragement are probably more important than homework I'm not sure if there is any work directly comparing the two, but it's true that emotional stability and encouragement are very important. "The most determinative factor in parental involvement appears to be what could be called: good parenthood in the home situation (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003; Fantuzzo et al., 2004; McWayne et al., 2004). This factor is characterised by the establishing of a safe and stable home setting, stimulation of intellectual development e.g. by discussions between parent and child, modeling, disseminating the importance of education and fostering high expectations about children’s school success." [0] [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265632472_Parental_involvement_in_children%27s_education_A_review_study_about_the_effect_of_parental_involvement_on_children%27s_school_education_with_a_focus_on_the_position_of_illiterate_parents https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265632472_Parental_...
cyberjunkie 9y ago
Are there also studies on the effects of parents' addiction to social media and other forms of screen time?

humptydumpty001 9y ago

This should have been done in terms of percentage of time taken by child to do homework and how much of that parents get involved in. There is huge difference in amount of homework given in countries like India and that in Australia. We cannot compare that in exact hours. Just my 2cents.

lumberjack 9y ago

The reason for this is pretty simple: you get free public education in these poor countries, but only if you pass the entrance examinations. For a lot of families this is the only way for their kids to get out of poverty. Moreover because of the way the school system is structured, your kid could easily fall behind at age 7 and never recover. The reason for this is because of stratified classes, where they group kids into classes, by their performance on yearly examinations. So there is simply much more incentive for families in poor countries to put more effort into homework, which BTW, is nothing like the homework that American kids get. It is nonsensical to try to compare what parents in India and parents in Finland are doing.

1k 9y ago
Yes, this exactly. Your kids’ education is the way out of poverty. In some families, one child with a decent job will provide a lifeline for the whole family. Even if the system is broken, even if the quality of education is bad, you have to play along because private education is too expensive.
bunderbunder 9y ago
> For a lot of families this is the only way for their kids to get out of poverty. By contrast, in countries that have been industrialized for over a century, the preceding several generations found that they could relatively easily find low- to moderate-skill factory jobs that secured a reasonably prosperous lifestyle. There are also industrialized countries with stratified school systems, and I see that some of them fall toward the bottom of the graph.

k__ 9y ago

First thought: Well, they got nothing better to do. Second thought: my mother was unemployed at least 70% of my childhood and didn't devote any time at all to my homework

spdionis 9y ago
Third thought: I'm glad my parents didn't devote too much time to my homework. I was the no-effort-good-grades type. Maybe if I dedicated myself more I would've left my country and got a prestigious degree. Who cares. I'm glad I was taught independence and responsibility by my parents instead of them trying to control me.

westiseast 9y ago

Very surprised the article doesn’t mention a few things: 1. Some places just have more homework than others. Chinese kids have mountains of homework aged 7, vastly more than British kids. Chinese parents spend much more time either managing or literally doing their kids homework for them. 2. Efficiency/productivity - What are kids doing in school if their parents are still spending hours and hours after school helping them with homework? How is this a productive use of parents precious work/leisure time?

lighthazard 9y ago
An argument can be made that doing homework with your child is the leisure.
- CannisterFlux 9y ago
  Ha, I think that argument is made by people who don't have kids (with homework). It's not leisure for me at all. While I worry about being branded a terrible father for this comment, I will admit that I am a terrible teacher. I have no patience for it. My kids mess around, constantly want breaks ("Well I've written a line! time for a 10 minute break!"), waste hours doing shit that should take them minutes... When they start "accidentally" dropping their pencils on the floor because they'd rather be faffing around picking it up than working, I often just lose my temper. Man, I'm getting slightly pissed off just thinking about it now! xD There are brief moments of joy/relief where you can see they've grasped a concept or improved and you can be proud of 'em. But most of the time it is a frustrating experience, slow going, and a slog to get them to do anything. The worst of learning, with the worst of kids messing around, with a massive feeling of wasting everone's time.
  - madengr 9y ago
    Ha ha, same issue with me last night. My 3rd grade boy brought home some horribly long reading comprehension homework. He HATES English homework. I do too. Fortunately my wife took over as I was becoming frustrated. I do enjoy helping with math & science homework, but that’s it. My 6th grade daughter is total opposite; never had a B student, science fair winner, violin & cello player. My son a video game & skateboard slacker; just like me. The joys of parenting.

maire 9y ago

Ideally, parents shouldn't spend any time on their children's homework. I can understand answering occasional questions and giving encouragement but nothing more. Children learn by figuring out homework on their own. Otherwise, why have homework?

watwut 9y ago
That assumes that child will do homework if left alone and that the homework is within child skills. Which often is not the case - many kids will start to play simply because there is too much of it and their attention span is not there yet. Homework also often basically expects parents to contribute, because the child is not able to fully do it.
snarf21 9y ago
I would guess that you've never been a teacher. The problem is that any teacher has a classroom with students with abilities and aptitudes that range between some Low and some High. The teacher must always teach to the middle kid in that spectrum. Going slower/lower bores the kids in the top half and going faster/higher completely loses the kids in the bottom half. Half of the kids may just "get it" and not need help but the bottom half will need help that the school system can't provide. Note: I don't condone the parent just doing the homework for their kid. The problem here is that the parents best able to help their children are more likely to have kids in the top half (who don't need help) and the ones least able to help have the kids who need help the most. This can be solved with a restructuring of our school system but very few schools are willing to try. Instead we stick with the ridiculous age == learning level method.
- maire 9y ago
  I am not a teacher but I did volunteer in my children's classroom when they were young. I do understand what you mean by the range in comprehension. I am not counting the other things a parent does to enhance a child's learning experience as homework time - so we all might be saying the same thing. I will give a small example which might illustrate having an enhanced learning experience. One of my volunteer assignments was to teach children math using coins. My son and daughter were naturally motivated to understand how much money they had because I had them save money buy things at a very young age. I was shocked that some classmates did not understand denominations and others could not do the math. My husband made coin dice for the classroom kids. They rolled the dice and added the values to figure out how much money they had on the coins. This was a big hit with the kids. What I didn't want to do was do homework for my kids or give answers. Discovery is how children learn. My kids ended up proud of what they could do on their own. When they failed - we discussed taking ownership of failure.

watwut 9y ago

Possible explanation - parents in rich countries have enough power to pressure on schools to assign homework that requires less parental involvement. If you are "suspect parent", you are less likely to argue that there is too much homework because that might badly influence how teachers perceive your kid. If you are rich parent with good social standing, you are free to say so and while teachers might complain at home about "spoiled rich kids", you are likely get your way. Also, I am more involved where I think school is not sufficient to fix the issue. Where I trust the teacher and school, I am involved much less.

potatote 9y ago

Hmm...a bit different experience by me growing up and graduated from high school in a poor Southeast Asian country. There, a lot of parents (esp. from lower and mid-middle class) invest a good chunk of money/resources on their kids' education. BUT, unlike this article claims, they aren't that heavily involved in kids' homework. The parents in my country seem to believe that once they pay money to send kids to after-school classes, the progress in students' learning is up to the teachers in those after-school programs. Most of them don't have time or mental energy left to tend to their kids' homework because they are too busy working (both parents working is typical in poor countries too) and/or running errands (thanks to inefficient bureaucratic system and insufficient infrastructure such as frequent power outages, life's chores take enormously more time than they would in developed world...)

rdlecler1 9y ago

Some thoughts: people in poorer countries may spend their time differently. No internet or TV distractions, no long commutes.

vezycash 9y ago

This article conflicts with my experience. All I think this article proves is that data is malleable to a researcher's goals. Also, the results from the highly competitive India and China might be skewing the results. Finally, survey is the worst method for this research. Because parent would lie instead of admitting negligence about their kid(s) education.

haihaibye 9y ago
Maybe the 2 biggest countries on earth should count more than your personal experience?
- vezycash 9y ago
  Results from two countries should be generalized to every country in the world? If you travelled a little bit like I have, you'll discover a few things. E.g. The poor are usually uneducated. Meaning they can't help with homework. Even in poor black American communities, house work is often more important than school work. More important, the poor tend to work longer and harder on mental jobs. They most impoverished behave like reptiles (no insult intended) give birth to many children and abandon them to varying degrees. (Fulani people actually, literally abandon their kids and may never see em again) Read about how American Indian handled children.
  - potatote 9y ago
    > E.g. The poor are usually uneducated. Meaning they can't help with homework. > Even in poor black American communities, house work is often more important than school work. You pretty much nailed what I wanted to described earlier. My mother works from home and although she has a bachelor's degree, since the education system (esp. in her times) was poor, she is not even at the level of a high school grad in terms of knowledge regarding math, humanities and science. This is not to mention that she (nor my more educated, late father, who was a doctor) wouldn't be able to help her/his children with their homework due to lack of knowledge/education or time. One thing I remember though is that after finishing homework, my mom would expect us to help out with house chores like sweeping the floor, collecting clothes from clotheslines, buying small grocery items, etc.

liberte82 9y ago

Joke's on them when the US decides educational facts are fake news and we pull a full 180.

BeetleB 9y ago

This article is rather poor. So many things not considered: 1. Perhaps people in some countries get a lot more homework than others. This does not look like a normalized plot. 2. Perhaps some countries see helping their kids with homework as a positive, whereas others do not. 3. What is the pressure to do well? We already have another HN submission on the pressures students have in India to do well. Maybe people in developed countries don't help them as much because they know their kids are not at risk of not being able to get into college. Spend an hour and you can probably double the list above.

tnuc 9y ago

The full report has some interesting details. https://www.varkeyfoundation.org/sites/default/files/People/VF%20Parents%20Survey%2018%20-%20Single%20Pages%20for%20FlipBook.pdf https://www.varkeyfoundation.org/sites/default/files/People/...

isa 9y ago

This is also assuming that parents know how to help children with their schoolwork. What is the rate where children in school are past their parents' education level?

endangered 9y ago

Kids won't learn if their parents are the ones doing the homework.