For yucks, I just checked a few courses my kids took in HS. Homework counted for 5% of their grade…which isn’t much. One could easily get an A in a course without getting every homework problem correct.
Some teachers didn’t include homework in their grading at all as it was considered reinforcement of skills taught.
Give it a break @MiamiDAP
I think instilling a desire to learn comes from a parent’ influence. Stressing the importance of knowledge is key.
The studies done have found that homework assigned in grade school doesn’t improve scores at all, in middle school it does help a little, and in high school those who complete homework seem to raise scores about 10%. Where it does help is in establishing study habits.
My oldest never read for fun, and finally developed a “secret” reading habit in late HS.
I do think that parental support helps, but it is almost binary - either you care about how your kid does in school or you don’t. There are cases where parents don’t seem to care, and kids are smart and end up fine.
Whoa on the “homework must be done”. The purpose of homework is to learn the material or how to write in the case of writing assignments. The smartest kids do not need homework to practice concepts/problem solving because they “get it in one”. Why waste time doing problems when one already understands how to solve them? Smart people learn how to think outside the box early on- compliance isn’t always needed (or desirable). Smart people understand more about rules and why they exist- often declining to follow ones they determine to be “stupid”.
Example re homework. Son’s AP calculus did not grade homework- students were supposed to do it to possibly be collected. AP statistics required handed in homework. Kid chose not to do the homework- got A’s in calc but B’s in stats (100’s on tests/quizzes did not make up for zeroes on homework). Who knew more statistics- those with A’s or my son? Likely my son. One could say it wasn’t smart to disregard the homework rule, but getting A’s wasn’t that important to him. 5’s on the AP exams- and on the chemistry one he got the C in.
Who is smarter? The college kid with all A’s or the kid with some B’s but courses that are much more challenging?
My H is an immigrant and highly intelligent (needed someone smarter than I was). However, he claims to be lazy and I believe him. He did very well without needing to study hard- the tales of how he spent his time in medical school in India are interesting. He did learn the material very well.
Smart people make choices about how much time to spend on academics. Smart people do not always have the most education- sometimes due to family circumstances and sometimes due to how much they want. You can tell someone is smart by how quickly they grasp things and can innovate. This may mean changing a recipe or resizing knitting instructions or trouble shooting equipment at work. I have run into many people over the years in non highly educated jobs although the majority are average. You can tell how smart a person is by striking up a conversation. Choose a subject they can discuss and it is evident who thinks fast and who thinks slowly.
At least no one in this thread is proposing that being happy is more important than being smart. One can be both.
Then there’s verbal and math intelligence- the smartest people have both. I personally dislike Gardner’s multiple intelligences- his elementary teacher liked them but they fell out of vogue shortly thereafter. Abilities may be okay- but his thinking seemed to try to include everyone.
Anyone else who has forgotten more than their kids have learned so far? I wonder if our kids seem so smart now because the material is fresh in their brains? Or that we have had so many adult decades that we forget we once had to figure out new things- by now we have seen so much there isn’t as much thinking required to problem solve.
@wis75 - I would disagree on one point. I think that for scholastic success in the real world, a kid needs to learn to get along (and do homework, and even things they might think privately are “stupid”). It’s not smart if you end up alienating the people in charge.
It’s definitely gene. I think it’s Lucky jean.
I believe an an environment that fosters a love for learning trumps genetics by a mile.
I gotten been tested to have an IQ score of 148 and I’ve only done decently in highshcool.
I have a 3.3 GPA and a 30 ACT.
Success is determined more by your willingness to seek knowledge than the innateness of an IQ score.
Drgoogle,
I think its also the absence of the stupid gene.
3 times out of 10 times, I was always surprised how some of my students are just plain…rockhead. It just seems like their brains just can’t do it.
I want to disagree with the income part, by the way. Knowing lots of knowledge may mean that person is smart, but the opposite isn’t true always. There are smart people out there who don’t seem so due to not having formal education.
Listen to Mozart during pregnancy, no kidding lol.
*I’ve been tested
My heads just like this. Always writing this so oddly.
"I think instilling a desire to learn comes from a parent’ influence. Stressing the importance of knowledge is key. "
But did it make her “smart” (the topic here) or just a top student in what you repeatedly call a poor school, easy to master, just by doing homework? Is that what you consider “smart?”
Since you always describe your local schools as crap, sounds like you set a low bar. Do you realize that?
I think it could be different if you described a highly competitive k-12, teachers with high expectations of learning and a kid who knocked herself out to master those. Then we could talk larger “drives.” Many parents her are talking about their kids’ drives to more than get good grades. Simply going after A’s is often mocked on CC as grade grubbing. Few call that a marker for “smart” and not on the level this thread is discussing.
This is not true. There are high schools and high school specialty programs that are so high level that students are not only well prepared for college but may feel that college is actually easy by comparison.
Ask anyone here whose child graduated from a well-run International Baccalaureate diploma program, for example, or those whose children attended any of the distinguished selective-entry math/science magnet high schools such as TJ in Virginia or Stuyvesant in New York City.
My kids’ K-12 schools, and their high school program in particular, prepared them extremely well for college.
So, therefore, all American public schools prepare their kids well for college. Right? Right?
“But did it make her “smart”” - I do not know, she never had an IQ test. Her comments has always been: “I am not smart, I am hard working”. How you can tell if one is smart? If I go with my own perception of “smart”, I have to answer “yes”. My own definition is that the “smart” adapts to environment the fastest in order to achieve their ultimate goal. Based on this definition and D’s comments, when she started the college, she realized very quickly that her academic efforts at college had to be adjusted considerably upwards in order to achieve all As (which is practically a must for pre-med). Since she was in Honors at college that consisted primarily of valedictorians (200 top applicants) and many of them got derailed from pre-med track in the first semester, I have to say that being a top kid in HS class does not guarantee that you are smart enough to be successful in college. However, this analysis is also flowed as some may have simply realized that medicine in not for them. But D. has commented that for many top HS kids the fact that they had to adjust efforts up considerably at college was a shocking news.
To answer your other question, D’s k -12 was highly competitive, her private HS is #2 private HS in our state.
I did NOT describe our LOCAL schools as crap, I am familiar with others, including some very top HSs in the USA like test-in’s in the NYC with 30 applicants to one spot. I described ALL k - 12 in the USA as a very low in academics in comparison to schools abroad. Even privates have to adhere to certain academic program, they will not be certified otherwise. The academic program in USA k -12 is wrong, it does not teach critical thinking, it starts some kind of real education only in 9th grade, too little, too late. Cannot teach physics in one year, simply not possible, (as one example). I can go on and on with the details in each subject, this post will be few pages long then. And it is not just my opinion. I never used “crap” though. I apologize if that is how it came across.
Re: post 257
Sorry…same story from this poster worded differently.
We “get it”. You don’t like the U.S. public school system, and feel it is inferior. And you have made that clear in every post you have posted about this subject.
That doesn’t make it uniformly true.
Your daughter and grandchildren are a small sample of the general population…a VERY small sample.
So I say again…give it a break.
Maybe American kids can learn physics in one year because they are inherently smarter.