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Free school lunch and breakfast were supposed to help compensate for differences in home life so disadvantaged students could perform better. I think that gener

Free school lunch and breakfast were supposed to help compensate for differences in home life so disadvantaged students could perform better. I think that general approach is probably better for helping kids succeed. Homework wasn't really supposed to teach the subject per se. It was supposed to instill some discipline and personal responsibility. When I homeschooled, chores replaced homework for purposes of teaching those lessons. We seem to have forgotten why we did things the way we did things.

brailsafe 4y ago
Just because we did them a way though, doesn't mean it accomplished anything. Requiring someone to do something I would think removes their autonomy over it, and if it doesn't have a bearing on their understanding of a subject, is pretty quickly revealed as an arbitrary waste of time that favours people who are already likely to be able to succeed at it. Homework to me is just reps, which are only useful because of how things are tested, which aren't terribly useful, but at least if that's explained up-front then you learn that reps are sometimes kind of useful. People who succeed at homework were raised in a way and lucky enough imo (in that specific context) to be imbued with a sense that everything depends on perfection
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  I'm a proponent of homeschooling but the pandemic made it clear a lot of people hate it. They want their kids to go to school and have a teacher. Chores had to be done because chores had to be done, not "because mom said so." If the trash didn't go out, it piled up and became a problem. At first, I would get "Can it wait until the next commercial? I'm watching TV." I would say "Yes." The result: I nagged for hours without results. Then I started saying "No. You can never remember to do it on the next commercial. It's taking too much of my time and energy to keep asking you to do it. Do it now." The result: After a few days of having his fun interrupted, he proactively took trash out before his TV shows started and then asked if there was anything else he needed to do because he didn't want his shows interrupted. But the folks who hate homeschooling and decry it as the work of the devil don't want to hear that chores are a good substitute for assigned homework. However we do it, taking ownership of a task is something we need to instill in kids.
steveBK123 4y ago
Sometimes I think that at the end of the day a lot of the goals in terms of helping the most disadvantaged kids are capacity constrained simply by % of hours in school out of the year. I mean you're already covering 2 out of 3 meals per day, and in places like NYC the free meals continue through summer when school is out of session. Kids spend ~7hrs/day, ~180 days/year in school. Deducting 8hrs/day sleep, kids spend 22% of their awake time in school. Aggressive 3hrs/day before&after school programs gets that up to.. 30%. Add a 30hr/week x 10week summer program and we are at.. 35%. Add a half day weekend program while school is in session and you barely hit 37%. For a middle/upper middle class kid, they go home to a structured enough environment, get food, shelter, attention and discipline. So the other 70-89% of the time is neutral to beneficial. For disadvantaged kids, their home life may be mayhem and actively detrimental to their development. I'm not sure what you can do with 20-30% of their hours to counteract the other 70-80%. I'd wager most of the marginal improvement you can get is less about making the in-classroom hours X% better, but, sadly, minimizing the % of hours spent in troubled households. So focussing more on redirection of after hours & weekends to Boys&Girls Club, academic clubs, in-school after school programs, mentorship, etc. This is of course much more expensive, and morally, potentially brings in problematic conflict between the state & parents, etc... in terms of who is ultimately responsible for raising a child. The number of dollars & hours to substitute a stable household is staggering, and the parents may not ultimately want it.
slowmovintarget 4y ago
That's not... no.. Math requires practice. Math homework gave you the repeated practice necessary to encompass the subject. History homework was often a reading assignment, so the classroom time could be spent on discussion instead of variable reading speeds. The same for sciences, where instead of reading, the classroom time could be spent on discussion and experiments. Even grammar homework had its point in the learning process. So no, it wasn't just about learning discipline, it was often about the practice. We homeschool. Finding suitable practice books was a large part of the job.
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  I did not need math practice. I was just good at it. My oldest son brought his classroom math work home for a year, lied to me and told me it was homework because he wanted to understand and the teacher couldn't explain it in a way he found helpful. Then he would fight with me for an hour until he was in tears. Different kids have different strengths and weaknesses.
secondcoming 4y ago
Homework also has the role of letting parents see how you're doing, at least for those whose parents took an interest in checking homework.
red-iron-pine 4y ago
> Homework wasn't really supposed to teach the subject per se. It was supposed to instill some discipline and personal responsibility. Wut. Not at all. Studies have shown you need to touch / interact with / refresh something at least 3 times for it to stick. The point is that you do the lesson at school, touch it again, later, at home, and then ideally once or twice more before a test. Maybe many more times, like running through problem sets or flash cards. It also serves as a way to see how well lessons are sinking in. If Lil Timmy ain't scoring well on math homework but does okay on English then maybe he needs someone to explain it differently, push him a little, try different approaches, etc. Chores are a fine way to teach responsibility, but that ain't why 8th graders get math homework or college students write term papers.

brailsafe 4y ago

Just because we did them a way though, doesn't mean it accomplished anything. Requiring someone to do something I would think removes their autonomy over it, and if it doesn't have a bearing on their understanding of a subject, is pretty quickly revealed as an arbitrary waste of time that favours people who are already likely to be able to succeed at it. Homework to me is just reps, which are only useful because of how things are tested, which aren't terribly useful, but at least if that's explained up-front then you learn that reps are sometimes kind of useful. People who succeed at homework were raised in a way and lucky enough imo (in that specific context) to be imbued with a sense that everything depends on perfection

DoreenMichele 4y ago
I'm a proponent of homeschooling but the pandemic made it clear a lot of people hate it. They want their kids to go to school and have a teacher. Chores had to be done because chores had to be done, not "because mom said so." If the trash didn't go out, it piled up and became a problem. At first, I would get "Can it wait until the next commercial? I'm watching TV." I would say "Yes." The result: I nagged for hours without results. Then I started saying "No. You can never remember to do it on the next commercial. It's taking too much of my time and energy to keep asking you to do it. Do it now." The result: After a few days of having his fun interrupted, he proactively took trash out before his TV shows started and then asked if there was anything else he needed to do because he didn't want his shows interrupted. But the folks who hate homeschooling and decry it as the work of the devil don't want to hear that chores are a good substitute for assigned homework. However we do it, taking ownership of a task is something we need to instill in kids.

steveBK123 4y ago

Sometimes I think that at the end of the day a lot of the goals in terms of helping the most disadvantaged kids are capacity constrained simply by % of hours in school out of the year. I mean you're already covering 2 out of 3 meals per day, and in places like NYC the free meals continue through summer when school is out of session. Kids spend ~7hrs/day, ~180 days/year in school. Deducting 8hrs/day sleep, kids spend 22% of their awake time in school. Aggressive 3hrs/day before&after school programs gets that up to.. 30%. Add a 30hr/week x 10week summer program and we are at.. 35%. Add a half day weekend program while school is in session and you barely hit 37%. For a middle/upper middle class kid, they go home to a structured enough environment, get food, shelter, attention and discipline. So the other 70-89% of the time is neutral to beneficial. For disadvantaged kids, their home life may be mayhem and actively detrimental to their development. I'm not sure what you can do with 20-30% of their hours to counteract the other 70-80%. I'd wager most of the marginal improvement you can get is less about making the in-classroom hours X% better, but, sadly, minimizing the % of hours spent in troubled households. So focussing more on redirection of after hours & weekends to Boys&Girls Club, academic clubs, in-school after school programs, mentorship, etc. This is of course much more expensive, and morally, potentially brings in problematic conflict between the state & parents, etc... in terms of who is ultimately responsible for raising a child. The number of dollars & hours to substitute a stable household is staggering, and the parents may not ultimately want it.

slowmovintarget 4y ago

That's not... no.. Math requires practice. Math homework gave you the repeated practice necessary to encompass the subject. History homework was often a reading assignment, so the classroom time could be spent on discussion instead of variable reading speeds. The same for sciences, where instead of reading, the classroom time could be spent on discussion and experiments. Even grammar homework had its point in the learning process. So no, it wasn't just about learning discipline, it was often about the practice. We homeschool. Finding suitable practice books was a large part of the job.

DoreenMichele 4y ago
I did not need math practice. I was just good at it. My oldest son brought his classroom math work home for a year, lied to me and told me it was homework because he wanted to understand and the teacher couldn't explain it in a way he found helpful. Then he would fight with me for an hour until he was in tears. Different kids have different strengths and weaknesses.

secondcoming 4y ago

Homework also has the role of letting parents see how you're doing, at least for those whose parents took an interest in checking homework.

red-iron-pine 4y ago

> Homework wasn't really supposed to teach the subject per se. It was supposed to instill some discipline and personal responsibility. Wut. Not at all. Studies have shown you need to touch / interact with / refresh something at least 3 times for it to stick. The point is that you do the lesson at school, touch it again, later, at home, and then ideally once or twice more before a test. Maybe many more times, like running through problem sets or flash cards. It also serves as a way to see how well lessons are sinking in. If Lil Timmy ain't scoring well on math homework but does okay on English then maybe he needs someone to explain it differently, push him a little, try different approaches, etc. Chores are a fine way to teach responsibility, but that ain't why 8th graders get math homework or college students write term papers.