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twodot posted:So you've got something other than a vague anecdote? Sure, you absurd pedant gimmick. It is (or should be) commonly known by everyone involved in this argument that the average adult US worker does more than 40 hours a week of work. The most basic searches on our great information network can get you this information. Here, I will help you. https://www.bls.gov/tus/charts/chart1.pdf According to the BLS, the average adult American worker does almost 9 hours of work (not including lunch or breaks) per weekday. I'm sure you can do the basic multiplication, or do you need your hand held for that too?
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May 2, 2017 04:01
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twodot posted:Cool, I'm happy to replace every instance of "40" with "45" in my posts on this thread if that will make you happy. Your tone implies a dismissal of nearly a full extra workday of hours. Is that what you mean to imply? That almost an entire full extra workday of hours is trivial? Edit: Let's see, the average American has 2 days off a week, no? If you spend nearly a full extra workday of hours working on one of those days, what percentage of your time off have you lost?
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May 2, 2017 04:05
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twodot posted:It's trivial to my point that society is unwilling to employee secondary teachers for the length of time necessary to teach secondary students, according to certain posters in this thread. Your point is flawed at the core because you fail to recognize that independent study is a part of education at the secondary school level. Arguing your point is trivial because your point lacks merit.
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May 2, 2017 04:06
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twodot posted:So your argument is that society is willing to employee teachers for as long as is necessary to education secondary students, but doesn't for what reasons? independent study can exist at schools. This is an argument that nobody has made except your own mind. Teachers are employed (in most states) at a fixed rate, regardless of hours worked. Independent study does exist in schools, but eats into guided practice time if it is never practiced outside of the set number of regular classroom hours. If you think this is a beneficial thing or somehow prepares secondary school students for the college experience, then your understanding of the reality of the situation is flawed to such a degree that I can only offer you pity.
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May 2, 2017 04:12
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Hastings posted:I'm sure with certain kids who are having a hard time really getting material can benefit from extra worksheets. But again, those should be gone over with a tutor, not necessarily brought home. The problem with homework is that by and large it is done via run of the mill basic pop quiz style questions and work, and from my students I have seen packets of worksheets brought home in their backpacks. No kid needs to do 16 sheets of writing and letter practice at 7 yrs old to prove they know the material. I don't know about your district, but at least in ours, homework is being treated as a way to teach kids what they couldn't get to in class. From the perspective of a literature student and English teacher, homework should primarily be reading with perhaps some writing questions to guide the student in their understanding of what they read. Every discipline has activities that are better suited to the individual in their own time rather than the limited amount of time available in class. Edit: I've been in schools where the majority of in-class teaching was packets of worksheets with run of the mill basic pop quiz style questions and work. The idea that this is acceptable as a means of education has no bearing on the validity of working outside of class. These are separate issues, and allowing one to poison the other is a detriment to everyone.
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May 2, 2017 04:20
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Hastings posted:The problem however, is that homework is almost never anything other than worksheets. I'm glad you would take the time to think through writing portions and questions, but when educators have limited time to prep and grade as it is, homework tends to take the easy way out and is done in a way to quickly review and grade. It's designed to fit a perceived requirement, not for what is actually best for the students learning and retention style. Also, child development theory and psychology have had numerous studies show that children 13 and under learn through play. Giving kids outside of secondary education any homework quite frankly, seems ineffective when you consider that at that age range children need to fully interact with learning material. Time with family and playing might actually help them intentionally retain more effectively. Let me start by saying - thank you. This thread from inception has been nothing but a poison cesspool of moronic and transparent trolls, with anyone that has any actual experience or understanding of anything basically just nodding at each other while the garbage try to provoke completely valueless arguments. I agree with you on this. Mandating set amounts of homework per night is completely ridiculous. The profession itself is stretched thin enough that taking the time to create thoughtful or relevant homework assignments can be a challenge. Frankly, I think that everyone of any age learns best while in a playful sort of mood. My most influential professor argued that play and fear were the best mental modes for learning. There are deep and serious flaws in the way we are doing things. Cutting out all homework, though, because most people gently caress it up? There are frankly just some things that should be done outside of class. If I'm teaching AP Language and have my students only read in-class, they're not getting what other students are getting. At that point, I'm sacrificing valuable class time to a dogmatic ban on homework. Is that the right way to teach? I don't think anyone would agree, any more than anyone here believes that 3rd graders should be doing hours of homework. These blanket statements serve no purpose and advance no real understanding of what it means to educate or how to best do it. You can't dismiss homework entirely, and everyone involved in this argument should recognize that - I suspect we all have been to college and know what is required.
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May 2, 2017 04:40
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Hawkgirl posted:I'm sure there is plenty of evidence that homework is almost never anything other than worksheets/problem sets in math, for example. What is your basis for saying that educators try to take the easy way out with homework? We discuss in our teacher thread a lot of alternate ways to handle workload and none of them are ever "just give them dumbass busywork worksheets so that you can grade them real quick and be done." Mostly because that actually creates more work for us. Even in a math class, is it inherently problematic to practice doing similar types of problems outside of class? How much of math mastery is pattern recognition? If you understand the principle and can solve problems of that pattern, the homework shouldn't be a serious burden. If you failed to grasp it from in-class instruction, then maybe some independent struggle will be beneficial. I don't even really assign much homework at all (as noted before, most of my students have jobs), but the complete dismissal of it seems indefensible at every level.
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May 2, 2017 04:45
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Right. Sacrificing class time for stuff that could be done independently honestly only hurts the weakest among us, I would argue. If I can tell my kids to read lines X-XX of Beowulf at home and write a response interpreting the social context of the time based on the reading, in class I can discuss that social context and they'll have had a genuine moment to think independently about it. Then they can compare their conclusion to other students' ideas or my own. If that reading is done in class, it's a lot of dead time. Sure, I'm an easier to use encyclopedia than Google. That isn't ultimately what I'm there for, though. In a math class, maybe the teacher being able to see how you struggled with the homework problems and the pattern of your results is more valuable than them watching you struggle in real time. Maybe in your struggles you finally understood how it all worked, without someone spoon feeding you answers. Learning is complicated. There's an individual portion to it, and that individual portion may be the most important portion. If we cut that out of the educational system because it hasn't been implemented well, but the most highly educated of us get that aspect anyway from our parents and upbringing (who understand the system), then who are we really destroying by doing this?
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May 2, 2017 05:00
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And you know, the rich white private school next door - their teachers have 3 periods off out of 7 each day, and their kids have study hall/free periods during the day. There are 15 kids per class. Perhaps because a teacher with time off during the day to complete the grading and planning and calling parents and tutoring is a better teacher, and perhaps because the student that can complete their independent work during the day outside of regular class time is a better student. You have to pay some 8 thousand dollars a semester for that, though. The regular kids get teachers with no breaks, three times as many students total, and the students themselves don't get a break during the day - to the point where it's tough to go to the bathroom and still get to class on time. The idea that we even have a coherent education system is a joke. We have multiple systems, depending on how much money you have. The ones with money get the closest thing to a collegiate experience, while everyone else gets a seriously watered down version of what should be. No wonder the regular kids suffer culture shock and drop out when they face the actual college system. No wonder good teachers don't want to work in public schools.
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May 2, 2017 05:09
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Hawkgirl posted:Yes, this is the basis of a lot of research in education right now. We are strongly discouraged from lecture-style classes. Jacques Barzun, writing in the 40s: "If some few years ago I had listed lectures as a legitimate mode of teaching, I should have been set down by my progressive friends as an old mossback corrupted by university practice. But now several of the progressive colleges have officially restored lecturing - Bennington notably - and I suspect that unofficially they were unable at any time to do altogether without it. Lecturing comes so natural to mankind that it is hard to stop it by edict. It simply turns into bootleg form." He goes on speak about the advantages and disadvantages of lecture and how it has be to varied with other strategies, but he quotes a student at one school who said: "At F_____ (a progressive school) the teachers die young; at J______ (a nonprogressive one) the students hang themselves; that seems to be the basic difference between old-fashioned and Progressive Education."
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May 3, 2017 00:40
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Hastings posted:Just want to say I would actually be willing to meet halfway and be okay with one assignment a week. If that is your protocol, that is awesome and shows just how different school systems are because IL and MN still adhere to daily work in virtually all schooling options. It's really to see a lack of motivation in your students though, because children really need to be learning self motivation. Having an intrinsic understanding of rewards is vital. "You know, I don't believe in homework because teachers are lovely, and I accept that you students will just work 20% of the time. I don't really understand why anyone would expect you to work every day while you're at work. Kind of surprised that these kids don't understand motivation, though. It should be something internal that they have." -Insert Signature Noun Here
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May 3, 2017 03:01
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Timeless Appeal posted:It depends. I honestly don't think anyone can stick with teaching without learning to not take work home with you. Part of the problem with teaching, a problem heightened with charters and TFA, is that it gets a lot of kids right out of college. When I first started, I was fine doing deep dives into kids writing with a glass of bourbon, staying up to 1 AM, lesson planning at bars with friends. I was basically treating teaching like college. It's more complicated than this, though, isn't it? There are some grade levels where I don't have to prep much at all, because I've done it before. But I don't like staying in the same place, and that complicates things. I have a dozen resources and readings and plans for the British Industrial Revolution. I hit a stumbling block when approaching it from the American perspective. It's the same thing, the questions and presentations aren't much different, but a new perspective is a complication and adds planning time. I'm experienced enough that with no preparation I can execute a reasonable enough lesson. I say no preparation, but I find the readings and think about the arc of the lesson in advance. I prep it all in the morning. It's more complicated than that, though. If I'm teaching AP Literature, these are 18 year old kids about to go on to college. I can't have them grade each other. They need individual feedback. I have 120 essays of 3-5 pages each, and I may have a bunch of those. It's complicated. I can build a solid lesson in 30-45 minutes. I have a tremendous amount of background knowledge and context and experience. I know how to ask the right questions. I know how to present the right texts. I know how to balance lecture and independent and group work. Next year I'll have 4 preps, as I understand it. I'll have one period off every other day. I'll have nearly 200 students. It's complicated. There's no escaping some of those basic facts, no strategy or work-hack or whatever that turns them into a non-issue. I'm not fresh off of the assembly line. litany of gulps fucked around with this message at 03:38 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 03:28
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Hastings posted:I don't think teachers are lovely, if that is what you think. What I think is that educators need to stop buying in to the idea that they are the ones that need to be propping up the education system all by themselves. I understand that education and poverty are intertwined, and that educators are doing all they can to help kids, I get it. But speaking as someone in child development, kids do need to learn about intrinsic motivation. It's a necessary human skill that creates stability in sense of self and identity. Having a inner motivation or purpose minimizes things like anxiety and behaviors. This is mealy-mouthed platitude. You yourself are selling the idea that homework is worthless because teachers do it wrong, and you yourself are selling the idea that one day of work is enough for a student. In the next breath you mouth this nonsense about intrinsic motivation. What are you? How do you build intrinsic motivation in a young person if you don't require them to do anything? "Having a inner motivation or purpose minimizes things like anxiety and behaviors." Seriously, read this sentence that you just typed out. We provide inner motivation by not requiring anything difficult of a person in order to minimize their anxiety and behavior? That's your philosophy? litany of gulps fucked around with this message at 03:35 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 03:30
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Hastings posted:Exactly why do you believe homework is the only way to teach motivation or hard work? Note that at no point have I ever said I don't want to require kids to do anything or at least nothing difficult. And I never said homework is worthless because teachers do it wrong. Look at my response to Oracle, my complaint against homework is that it is not beneficial for young kids and goes against their neurological development and processing abilities. I absolutely believe we should require students to do things, I just don't agree that regular homework is the way to go about it. Then explain what is the way to go about it. Nobody anywhere is arguing for homework for really young kids, but you are vehemently attacking the concept as a whole without much context, while attempting to sell a philosophy that does not at all align with the ideas you are attacking. What do you think a student should do? You certainly can talk about what teachers shouldn't do and what students shouldn't do, can you do the same for what they should?
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May 3, 2017 04:20
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Hawkgirl posted:Honestly I'd fully support cutting all "intervention" classes that replace a kid's elective. But then, of course I would, so no one wants to listen about it. :/ Intervention classes are pretty hosed up, from my experience. If they aren't very thoughtfully made, they just end up as a mess. "Yeah kid, you get an extra English class, with all the dumb kids. You know, the dumb kid class, where you belong. Welcome home." Then you get a lovely blend of ESL kids, kids with behavior problems due to poverty and home life, and burnouts - all lumped together and implicitly told that they're stupid as a premise for being there. The ESL kids are usually sort of upset about the injustice of it all, the kids with behavior problems feed off of a desire to show how much of a gently caress up they can be to the other gently caress ups, and the burnouts use the distraction caused by the behavior problem kids to take a nap.
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May 4, 2017 01:26
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