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> I recently found out that my nephew's school had no take-home homework before high school, instead having kids complete assignments during class time. At firs

by csa 1y ago

> I recently found out that my nephew's school had no take-home homework before high school, instead having kids complete assignments during class time. At first, I was flabbergasted that they would deny kids the discipline building of managing unstructured time without direct supervision. Good! If they want to give kids the chance to develop the skill of managing unstructured time, that could easily be fit into the school day/week in a variety of ways. In most K-12 schools, there is a lot of time in the day that is used incredibly ineffeciently. For my personal experience, college was a time management joke after high school, mainly because I didn’t have to spend so much bullshit/wasted time in classes. > Homework- at home- seemed like such a fundamental part of the schooling experience. That’s a very privileged stance to take (I usually don’t play the “privilege card”, but it’s appropriate here). For many/most students, the home is not particularly conducive for doing homework a variety of reasons. Maybe not for the median HN contributor, many not for the median middle class person in the US, but these groups are not the majority of students.

flappyeagle 1y ago
I don’t think the time in school will miraculously become more efficient bc of no homework. Your second point… so what
underlipton 1y ago
My straight-As appeared and disappeared within a school year each of the time my family spent renting out an acquaintance's 4,000 square foot custom-built house. My bedroom had large, built-in desks (one for each occupant and a third for the computer) and a big window that looked out over the street. Light, fresh air, (relative) privacy, space. Every other house, I was doing work at the kitchen table or on the floor. It makes a huge difference. After we had to move on from there, you'd have thought that moving away from the distraction of a neighborhood full of classmates whose houses I could bike to on a whim (homework done or not) would be helpful, but it turns out that replacing physical afterschool hangouts with AIM chats and early social media was not exactly conducive to the physical and social well-being that supports youth academics. Yes, having these things straight is a massive privilege. And, even during the worst times, at least I was safe. I think a lot of Americans are clueless. Or, they prefer their kids competing against peers who are at a huge disadvantage. (One guess where the rampant prevalence of imposter syndrome comes from.)
StefanBatory 1y ago
My uni performance would always drop whenever my parents would fight at home. You aren't doing your homework when you're trying to not have a panic attack from shouting.
glitchc 1y ago
> For many/most students, the home is not particularly conducive for doing homework a variety of reasons. I think this speaks to the parents and the type of home environment that they create. This is one of the major sources of disagreement between the right and the left, where the former (sometimes strongly) feel the parents bear responsibility for the type of environment their kids grow up in while the latter (equally strongly) feel that they can't really help themselves due to external factors (abuse, addiction, sickness, etc.).
- jonathanlb 1y ago
  > external factors (abuse, addiction, sickness, etc.). Beside factors that body's performance, also consider factors that impact well-meaning parent or caregivers' _presence_ in the home, such economic realities, e.g., parents working multiple jobs, parents with challenging schedules, single parents, lack of community support (e.g., availability of a supportive neighbors or families.)
  - glitchc 1y ago
    Agreed, of course. All captured in the etc. Nothwithstanding these factors, the debate still boils down to who's responsible for the kids' well-being: Them or society.
    - Spooky23 1y ago
      It’s never that simple. When society creates an environment where neglect is baked in, society bears some culpability.
    - jonathanlb 1y ago
      I disagree with the binary (family/society) framing because the well-being of children has always depended on overlapping responsibilities between parents, communities, and society. Not only that, but that false dichotomy also ignores children's autonomy as well. Either way, in this debate, what really matters are outcomes- whether children thrive or not.
    - 1y ago
tripletpeaks 1y ago
> For my personal experience, college was a time management joke after high school, mainly because I didn’t have to spend so much bullshit/wasted time in classes. Same here. Junior high and high school especially were the least-flexible, strictest environments I’ve ever been in, including in work life. People (teachers, relatives) telling me things like “this is the best part of your life” and “they have to be tough on you because the real world is so much harder still”—luckily I got a job early in high school and started to get the sense they might all be wildly wrong about that, then went to college and instead of being harder, it was like a fuckin’ vacation. So much more flexible, humane, and chill. And yeah, 8 hours at school and 2+ hours of homework every night… in hindsight, I have to not think about it too hard or I’ll get angry. I could have learned more putting in literally 1/4 the time, and not been constantly stressed out to a degree I wouldn’t realize until later was extremely unhealthy. Not just a huge waste of time, but caused harm it took me more than a decade to mostly get over. And I wasn’t even seriously bullied or anything! I was even somewhat popular!
- tobyhinloopen 1y ago
  I am in my 30s and still think my school years age 12-16, was easily the worst time of my life. One big frustrating, stressful, unfair experience.
serf 1y ago
Doesn't it swing both ways? You view it as time wasted, another might view it as time socializing and self organizing -- primary school is there to teach people first and foremost how to integrate into society and be 'normal' citizens -- if we hyper-optimize it for academics something will be lost.
hn_acc1 1y ago
My kids (CA high school) were incredibly stressed with a heavy workload that seemed mostly pointless and specifically, teachers who didn't care and students who didn't care as a result and used AI and cheated whenever possible. Both opted out of high school after 2 years (GED-equivalent test, to junior college for 2 years). They were and are getting basically straight A/A+s. Older one just finished 2 years of JC with 2 associates degrees and 4 certificates, and transferred to state school for 2 years to finish BA. My experience was wildly different. I was what was generally considered a middle-of-the-road high school in a good-to-great school district in Canada (the highest-performing one next to the university was a whole different level). I rarely had much homework other than writing a few essays - which I often printed on my dot-matrix printer (yes, this was in the 80s). I studied half an hour for my highest-level senior chem final and aced it. Maybe studied 1-2 hours for calc, etc. Computer labs were some of the best times - hacking Basic on PETs. Got to university (computer engineering, just slightly below electrical engineering) and it was brutal. Dropped 25% from high school to 1A semester. Had no study habits, "just wing it" had worked just fine to this point - if anything, it had worked too well. Of course, basically everyone in my class of 80 had the same story: graduated #1 overall in their high school (just like me). Some had way better habits / discipline. We had one student who came back to school 10 years after trying to make it as a studio musician. I once asked him point blank: so, do you do 5 hours of homework a night (because he ALWAYS knew the answer, etc) - he looked at me straightfaced and said "I try to do 6". Eventually, I managed to graduate in the top 1/3 of my class, stay on to get an MASc and have had a ~30 year career in software, so I'm reasonably happy. But I've had a hard time identifying with my kids' experience - high school was a blast for me and super easy. University was not. It's the other way around for them.
- xyzzy123 1y ago
  It's hard to be fair to kids who put in the effort and kids who were not taught to put in the effort or do not want to or do not have to or do not have the opportunity to, at the same time.

by csa 1y ago

flappyeagle 1y ago

I don’t think the time in school will miraculously become more efficient bc of no homework. Your second point… so what

underlipton 1y ago

My straight-As appeared and disappeared within a school year each of the time my family spent renting out an acquaintance's 4,000 square foot custom-built house. My bedroom had large, built-in desks (one for each occupant and a third for the computer) and a big window that looked out over the street. Light, fresh air, (relative) privacy, space. Every other house, I was doing work at the kitchen table or on the floor. It makes a huge difference. After we had to move on from there, you'd have thought that moving away from the distraction of a neighborhood full of classmates whose houses I could bike to on a whim (homework done or not) would be helpful, but it turns out that replacing physical afterschool hangouts with AIM chats and early social media was not exactly conducive to the physical and social well-being that supports youth academics. Yes, having these things straight is a massive privilege. And, even during the worst times, at least I was safe. I think a lot of Americans are clueless. Or, they prefer their kids competing against peers who are at a huge disadvantage. (One guess where the rampant prevalence of imposter syndrome comes from.)

StefanBatory 1y ago

My uni performance would always drop whenever my parents would fight at home. You aren't doing your homework when you're trying to not have a panic attack from shouting.

glitchc 1y ago

> For many/most students, the home is not particularly conducive for doing homework a variety of reasons. I think this speaks to the parents and the type of home environment that they create. This is one of the major sources of disagreement between the right and the left, where the former (sometimes strongly) feel the parents bear responsibility for the type of environment their kids grow up in while the latter (equally strongly) feel that they can't really help themselves due to external factors (abuse, addiction, sickness, etc.).

jonathanlb 1y ago
> external factors (abuse, addiction, sickness, etc.). Beside factors that body's performance, also consider factors that impact well-meaning parent or caregivers' _presence_ in the home, such economic realities, e.g., parents working multiple jobs, parents with challenging schedules, single parents, lack of community support (e.g., availability of a supportive neighbors or families.)
- glitchc 1y ago
  Agreed, of course. All captured in the etc. Nothwithstanding these factors, the debate still boils down to who's responsible for the kids' well-being: Them or society.
  - Spooky23 1y ago
    It’s never that simple. When society creates an environment where neglect is baked in, society bears some culpability.
  - jonathanlb 1y ago
    I disagree with the binary (family/society) framing because the well-being of children has always depended on overlapping responsibilities between parents, communities, and society. Not only that, but that false dichotomy also ignores children's autonomy as well. Either way, in this debate, what really matters are outcomes- whether children thrive or not.
  - 1y ago

tripletpeaks 1y ago

> For my personal experience, college was a time management joke after high school, mainly because I didn’t have to spend so much bullshit/wasted time in classes. Same here. Junior high and high school especially were the least-flexible, strictest environments I’ve ever been in, including in work life. People (teachers, relatives) telling me things like “this is the best part of your life” and “they have to be tough on you because the real world is so much harder still”—luckily I got a job early in high school and started to get the sense they might all be wildly wrong about that, then went to college and instead of being harder, it was like a fuckin’ vacation. So much more flexible, humane, and chill. And yeah, 8 hours at school and 2+ hours of homework every night… in hindsight, I have to not think about it too hard or I’ll get angry. I could have learned more putting in literally 1/4 the time, and not been constantly stressed out to a degree I wouldn’t realize until later was extremely unhealthy. Not just a huge waste of time, but caused harm it took me more than a decade to mostly get over. And I wasn’t even seriously bullied or anything! I was even somewhat popular!

tobyhinloopen 1y ago
I am in my 30s and still think my school years age 12-16, was easily the worst time of my life. One big frustrating, stressful, unfair experience.

serf 1y ago

Doesn't it swing both ways? You view it as time wasted, another might view it as time socializing and self organizing -- primary school is there to teach people first and foremost how to integrate into society and be 'normal' citizens -- if we hyper-optimize it for academics something will be lost.

hn_acc1 1y ago

My kids (CA high school) were incredibly stressed with a heavy workload that seemed mostly pointless and specifically, teachers who didn't care and students who didn't care as a result and used AI and cheated whenever possible. Both opted out of high school after 2 years (GED-equivalent test, to junior college for 2 years). They were and are getting basically straight A/A+s. Older one just finished 2 years of JC with 2 associates degrees and 4 certificates, and transferred to state school for 2 years to finish BA. My experience was wildly different. I was what was generally considered a middle-of-the-road high school in a good-to-great school district in Canada (the highest-performing one next to the university was a whole different level). I rarely had much homework other than writing a few essays - which I often printed on my dot-matrix printer (yes, this was in the 80s). I studied half an hour for my highest-level senior chem final and aced it. Maybe studied 1-2 hours for calc, etc. Computer labs were some of the best times - hacking Basic on PETs. Got to university (computer engineering, just slightly below electrical engineering) and it was brutal. Dropped 25% from high school to 1A semester. Had no study habits, "just wing it" had worked just fine to this point - if anything, it had worked too well. Of course, basically everyone in my class of 80 had the same story: graduated #1 overall in their high school (just like me). Some had way better habits / discipline. We had one student who came back to school 10 years after trying to make it as a studio musician. I once asked him point blank: so, do you do 5 hours of homework a night (because he ALWAYS knew the answer, etc) - he looked at me straightfaced and said "I try to do 6". Eventually, I managed to graduate in the top 1/3 of my class, stay on to get an MASc and have had a ~30 year career in software, so I'm reasonably happy. But I've had a hard time identifying with my kids' experience - high school was a blast for me and super easy. University was not. It's the other way around for them.

xyzzy123 1y ago
It's hard to be fair to kids who put in the effort and kids who were not taught to put in the effort or do not want to or do not have to or do not have the opportunity to, at the same time.