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<p>Why should those of us in the US care what types of universities “have stigma” or don’t in Asia? I realize we’re all supposed to care Passionately about What People in East Asia think about public colleges and private colleges and college A and college B and the Ivy League and non-HYPSM and this high school and that high school, but tell me again why I should care?</p>
<p>Upon placing this story on my FB feed, one HS classmate whose mother is from Trinidad stated the following which sums up reactions among most Americans I’ve known…especially recent immigrants:</p>
<p>“There’s no way in hell my mother would ever believe I had no homework from school.”</p>
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<p>This was in reply to Xiggi’s prior posts making insinuations about how foreign systems, especially East Asian ones which set higher academic standards/expectations encourage corruption when its corruptibility actually so exceedingly low most corrupt officials/wealthy businesspeople who don’t want their kids subjected to such standards overwhelmingly opt to send their kids to private US colleges as their admission systems is flexible and more amenable to political/social/monetary influence(i.e. legacy/developmental admits, current preferences for full-pay international undergrads, etc)*. </p>
<p>Much easier to accomplish without the risk of incurring not only severe culturally driven outrage, but also serious criminal penalties for corrupt activities. It’s also a lot less work/aggravation in comparison. </p>
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<li>Something which many non-US cultures would consider a form of corruption in itself.</li>
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<p>I haven’t read all the posts, but as a French teacher, I’d just like to clarify a few things. President Hollande is ONLY talking about elementary school (5 years in France rather than 6 in the US). The idea is to shorten the school day by one hour so that kids who don’t have parents able or willing to help/supervise homework can do it under the teacher’s supervision. The problem he is trying to address is the 50% (more, in the inner cities) of kids who start middle school with very subpar reading skills. Curiously, children from poor/immigrant families are lazy or stupid, whereas those from well-to-do families are dyslexic or suffer from ADD.</p>
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<p>It seems rather a no-brainer that of course a system or subculture in which It’s Of Such Utmost Importance to Attend Only One of Handful of Schools To Be Regarded as Worthwhile will breed more corruption than a system in which There Are Some Schools That Are Better Than Others But Nothing Precludes You From Becoming Successful From Any School. That seems a blinding flash of the obvious.</p>
<p>Lost in translat: …well. That’s different then. ;)</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the clarification! :)</p>
<p>I understand the logic behind getting rid of timed, multiple choice exams, since they don’t always do the best job at measuring actual knowledge or attainment. But homework is actually where students can learn the most, provided they offer kids a chance to practice relevant principles and comprehension. Quantity is probably the more relevant question for educators rather than whether or not homework is useful.</p>
<p>The fact that children have differing support at home is more an issue of ensuring that they have access to tutoring and other supplementary resources. Eliminating homework altogether is just a way of teaching to the lowest-common-denominator of students rather than giving at-risk students the help they need to succeed when parental intervention is lacking.</p>
<p>That’s not gonna help anything. Kids who don’t have invested parents aren’t going to suddenly do better because they don’t have homework. Even without homework kids still have differences in what kinds of books and other resources they have access to at home. Idk what elementary school is like in France, but here in the US we have some hw but I still think it’s way too easy. Seriously I feel like I could’ve learned like 3 times as much in elementary school as I did had I ever been challenged at all. I mostly just learned how to be really lazy and got the idea from an early age that school requires no real effort, which comes back to bite you later on when it actually does. I think this new initiative will just allow kids to coast through school and learn zero self discipline rather than actually helping. It’s my theory that if kids are challenged some in elementary school they will learn to try harder from an early age and later on it will come more naturally. Just my 2 cents.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, I didn’t label him a Socialist. He ran as a Socialist with a Socialist platform.</p>
<p>What’s the point in giving homework if the kid can’t do it? In France, elementary homework is learning by heart multiplication tables, verb conjugations, poems and history dates, preparing spelling tests and maths tests. When parents can’t read or speak French, don’t you find it more logical to change HOMEwork into SCHOOLwork? I can’t see how this is going to “learn zero discipline”. A child from a privileged background will always have more opportunities at home, even in socialist France.
One of my kids went to a state elementary school with virtually no homework. She would play or read and relax when she got home. The other one went to a strict private with a lot more homework than I think you should give a seven or eight-year old. As a result, we spent all evening trying to help her get it done, and of course the more exhausted and stressed she became, the worse it got. Music lessons went down the drain as she never had any time to practice, and the evenings were sheer hell for everyone.
Of course this is an extreme example, but I don’t believe you prepare for Harvard doing 3rd grade homework. On the contrary, a kid who goes to school every morning without dreading public humiliation because he didn’t/couldn’t do his homework, is far more likely to succeed.
PS: if any of you know of kids who went to a lyc</p>
<p>I’ve posted this before, but my S attended a private elementary school that did not allow homework until 4th grade, and then it was limited to 1/2 hour per night, increasing to 1 1/2 hours per night, max in 8th grade. Teachers worked together to meet these goals. Parents were specifically instructed NOT to help their kids with their homework, as reviewing mistakes made on homework was how the teachers learned whether they were properly teaching the concepts. Teachers were responsible for spending extra time (recess, lunch and after school) with students who didn’t understand the work. In other words, teachers were responsible for teaching the students. Homework was not graded, other than as to completeness. Students who did not complete homework with at least some indication of effort, were required to stay after school to do it. This seemed to work very well, and I don’t see why it couldn’t work in public schools, save for union rules that prevent it.</p>
<p>Bay, I couldn’t agree more.</p>
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<p>That argument is based on a misconception. And that misconception starts with the term “homework” … an issue President Hollande does not have as the French call homework “devoirs” just as the Spanish call it “tarea.”</p>
<p>Devoir or tarea is merely something a student should do after or before the organized classes. It does not mean it ought to do at home, and have to rely on parental help or guidance, The tasks given should offer a yardstick to measure a student’s comprehension of a subject, and noth his or her parents or tutors.</p>
<p>The alternative is so obvious that we ought to wonder why our system has resisted for so long to implement a bona fide after (classes) school program. I repeat that a program of TEACHER-led and collaborative studying and exercises should be optimal.</p>
<p>Actually, the WHY asked above has a very simple answer in the form of representing a drastic modification of the time spent by educators to … educate as opposed to pretend to do. The length of the afterschool program should be based on the results of the regular classes, giving an incentive to both teachers and students to actually perform as expected and predicted. The current incentive to stop short of a real education and rely on out of school programs and parental help to shore up the deficiencies should be abolished.</p>
<p>Problems? They are multiples and start with nice acronyms such as NEA, AFT, and mostly CBA.</p>
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<p>Yes, let’s continue to promote the “the soft bigotry of low expectations”…</p>
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<p>Agreed. One issue my HS classmates and I observed of college classmates who attended high schools with really easy or worse, practically non-existent homework requirements was that they didn’t get enough opportunities to practice the self-discipline while there was a home safety net and thus, ended up paying for it in college with mediocre/failing college exams/grades and penalties such as academic probation, suspension, or sometimes even being booted out. </p>
<p>Some of those college classmates also had trouble after graduation with things like holding a job or getting stuff like taxes done thoroughly and on-time because they lacked the training and refused to learn how to “get boring busywork stuff done”…even if it’s required by institutions like the IRS. :(</p>
<p>We also saw a similar pattern between those who attended academically rigorous elementary/middle schools where there was academically rigorous homework and not. The latter had a much harder time adjusting to the higher academic expectations and the quantity/rigor of exams and homework. Most of the ones who weren’t able to get their act together ended up allowing themselves to be “counseled” back to their neighborhood high schools within our first two years.</p>
<p>Apples and oranges!</p>
<p>Education should not be measured in terms of self-discipline. Basic education should be an interactive and collaborative effort, and be the product of a community effort. </p>
<p>While there is value in pursuing individual paths of self-learning, those should not be a proxy for a strong foundation based on collective efforts. </p>
<p>Again and again, the solution is to make our system of education stronger, and not push students to rely on outside sources and excessive self-studying to complement a failed system.</p>
<p>How is homework defined? It’s one thing to discourage busywork and cultivate a balance between work and play, but to categorically ban homework seems naive. I think a smarter approach would be to simply work to have better homework assignments. I remember a lot of BS growing up with “projects” which were more akin to art assignments than anything else (in academic classes, which was very backward). Lots of pasting junk to posterboards and building dioramas. Pedagogically worthless and incredibly time consuming. </p>
<p>Certain subjects require independent practice: languages and mathematics, for starters. How can a student possibly gain any proficiency in a language by doing an hour a day for four days per week? I recall doing extensive vocabulary and conjugation drills in my middle and high school Spanish classes: I hated doing them, but I would by lying if I said that they didn’t help me and give me a strong foundation that I draw from to this day.</p>
<p>I analogize it to learning a musical instrument: the most important work you do is by yourself and in between lessons, not in the lessons, essential as they are. I think school is the same way. How can a student engage with the great books without reading them (and instead reading excerpts in a class)? How could you teach music appreciation without having the students listen to the repertoire outside of class? </p>
<p>Again, I’m all for eliminating busywork and oppressively time consuming assignments, but a categorical ban seems idiotic to me, especially considering that it would leave you completely unprepared for homework assignments/term papers in college (to say nothing of graduate school).</p>
<p>Thank you Xiggi. It appears that most of the posters still haven’t grasped the fact that Hollande is talking about Elementary school. (grades 1-5 in France). That gives students another 7 years to master the concept of homework before they hit college. (Unless Wayward-Trojan is talking about the numerous kids who go straight from 5th grade to graduate school…)</p>
<p>I know Hollande is only talking about elementary school students but many habits, both good and bad are learned at an early age and having them set the time aside and learn self-discipline is not a bad thing. Think back several generations to this country when the immigrants from Eastern European countries came to our shores often without a knowledge of English. Their children went to school, did their homework and often became the translators for their parents. Those parents often could not help their children with the homework but they succeeded.</p>
<p>I agree with this idea…</p>
<p>“The proposal also recommends that there are no one-night assignments so that students who have school-night commitments, which are VERY common (sports games, play practices or performances, band concerts, etc.), aren’t up until the wee hours finishing a task that they were given only a single evening to complete.”</p>
<p>There is really no need for ‘must be done overnight’ assignments. If there is information to be studied, more time would be beneficial, and assigned today-due tomorrow assignments do not help to develop the time management skills that will become important in college and career, and as mentioned, just doesn’t allow for the realities of life…busy schedules, illnesses, etc.</p>
<p>Homework assigned should be work that most students can do independently, without requiring help from a parent. If some students struggle with parts of the homework, this can provide useful information to the parent and the teacher. Some students will always get more help than others at home, but as long as the teacher provides the appropriate tools and information (ex: a chart to study multiplication facts) all students can get something out of the homework assigned, including learning to be responsible for the work, working independently and developing basic study skills.</p>