<p>I did not say my parents never helped with homework. We used to practice the multiplication tables and division while doing the dishes. Over the summer we were expected to read a book a week we would get from the bookmobile. But calling the teacher–no.</p>
<p>My mistake. My parents did take us to the library and bookmobile, too. There were expectations and encouragement, but I do not recall them ever reviewing my actual daily homework assignments or quizzing us before a test or editing our papers. They were both college educated, too. It was a different type of parenting than I see around me today.</p>
<p>I don’t even actually understand why this is a headline. What else should be the largest source of teacher stress? Traffic?</p>
<p>I’m baffled. That would be like, “Largest source of chef’s stress: customer satisfaction.”</p>
<p>“Largest source of dentist’s stress: patients.”</p>
<p>Is this considered to be controversial?</p>
<p>I think teachers should teach and parents should parent, and I think the mission creep of public schools getting into the business of social work and whatnot has caused this scrutiny of family life which causes teachers to lose focus on their job. Parents’ jobs are much wider and do INCLUDE schoolwork, but there’s a whole bunch of other things they are busy teaching at home, and that is why schools even exist and why they even have a career to start. If they want parents to do all the teaching? They should look into a new career, like, say, what? “Largest form of ex-teacher’s stress: unemployment lines.”</p>
<p>ETA: my experience with teachers who have had kids the age of the students they teach vs. teachers who have not had kids that age as parents is night and day. Seriously, so different.</p>
<p>I can attest to the comments regarding perspective out side of the USA. I coordinate our foreign exchnge program & have had a lot of contact with our foreign students over the years. A consistent theme they convey is that in their countries the parent holds the student responsible for work completion, etc. & never acts as a go-between with the teacher. They give their children more liberties, but hold them responsible as oppossed to blaming others. Approximately 8 years ago I had a conversation with a girl from Spain regarding underage drinking. She said that the drinking age in Spain was 18 but that typically a 16 or 17 year old could buy alcohol. I said that wouldn’t happen here because a store owner would be sued by the parent if the child was hurt while being under the influence. She gave me a puzzlwed look and replied “in my country the parent would say it was the child’s choice to buy the alcohol, not the fault of the store owner”. Kind of drastic, but still points to the difference in perspective of children’s responsibility.</p>
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<p>There is an elegant solution to this problem. Limit the homework to a bare minimum and replace with … schoolwork. The biggest excuse for the abysmal state of our education is the lack of involvement of parents. An excuse that works pretty well for students at risk. In other words, the school can teach and educate the students who have a supportive family, but the others … not so well. </p>
<p>Tne reality is that the public school system bargained to educate everyone in exchange of a funding monopoly. Yet, they mostly fail the large numbers of students who are at risk. They somehow explain and justify this by pointing the finger to outside problems. </p>
<p>The solution? Make the school centric to the life of the students at risk and do not expect positive changes by pretending to deliver an education in 5-6 hours a day (if that much) 5 days a week. Make the student come in early and release them only when all homework and studying is done AT THE SCHOOL. This, however, would require extended workdays by teachers … and also the end of pretending that they do ALL that work at night and at home. And that is the biggest hurdle for all the lovers of the academic sinecure. </p>
<p>Let’s stop pretending that this really happens, and make sure that all academic activities are part of a school day. At the end of the day, teachers and students can go home knowing they did their part in a CONTROLLED and SAFE environment. </p>
<p>Factories do not expect their workers to take parts home to assemble at night!</p>
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<p>An overly romantic view, perhaps? </p>
<p>[Spain</a> moves on youth binge drinking](<a href=“http://www.ias.org.uk/resources/publications/theglobe/globe200202/gl200202_p22.html]Spain”>http://www.ias.org.uk/resources/publications/theglobe/globe200202/gl200202_p22.html)</p>
<p>And years later"</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_27883.shtml[/url]”>http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_27883.shtml</a></p>
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<p>I think class size factors into the discussion. I am philosophically committed to public education, and everyone in my immediate family went to public school, including QMP. On the other hand, Bay’s description that the students were expected to ask the teacher for help if they did not understand–that would have been unworkable with the class sizes that we experienced.</p>
<p>I don’t understand the “totally hands off when it comes to school” viewpoint. My spouse and I have more concern for QMP’s education, spirit, and welfare than any of the teachers, however good. We believe that developing a thinker is important. Why wouldn’t we be involved in education?</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that we contacted the teachers. Aside from once a year or so volunteering for events, and the parent-teacher conferences, we hardly ever did that.</p>
<p>I like UrbanGardener’s description of his/her mother’s approach. The teachers in a typical public school class do not have the time for the kind of detailed review that the parent offered. I think that “transitional” is the key word here. With this approach, the student ideally internalizes the basics of good writing, and then later has the ability to go beyond the parent’s teaching–and in our case, in some areas beyond the parents’ ability, which is a great thing to see!</p>
<p>Some good points. I too struggle with the whole home work issue. At the high school level, the majority of our kids are participating in an extra curricular activity. They are typically at school 50+ hours per week. How percentage of adult jobs require their workers to put in this many hours AND complete an hour or more of work at home each night? We are asking 14-18 year olds to have more self discpline thn the majority of adults have to. However on the other hand, studies show a 10-20% increase in attainment and retention of information if homework is assigned and completed. Extending the school day would take care of this. Two major hurdles that the masses would propose: 1) Cuts into extra curricular time (especuially outside sports where there is limited day light time) 2) Teacher contracts would have to be renegotiated which would result in more pay.</p>
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<p>Class sizes are yet another excuse. While common sense would dictate that a larger class size is harder to teach than a smaller one, there is little evidence that reducing the size of the classes resulted in improvements. The issue is mostly a problem that has resulted from a labor union poisoned system that attempts to facilitate the life of the teachers as opposed to the students. It is also a matter of organization. Large classes can be divided in smaller groups to attend students with different advancement and abilities. This however requires more work and a better organization.</p>
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<p>This can be changed by reorienting the EC activities and refocus on the academic part of education. We cannot have it all … strong academics and the life at a glorified country club. The extra activities could be balanced between extra ACADEMICS and others for the students who are not needing the extra academics. </p>
<p>We do not have to turn into a system comparable to the worst Asian academic activities, but our schools are in a dire need of refocusing on what is important.</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. The system already uses different classes of teachers with some more protected than others. The payscale of pilots were reworked with some grandfathering. A step in the right direction is the current drive to eliminate the CBA. All that is needed is to replace the current contracts with a lot fewer limitations. The current annual salary would simply cover a different (and drastically expanded) presence at school. In this economy, there are plenty of people who would accept to work all year long for the type of salaries paid to teachers. We just pretend that this is not the case.</p>
<p>I don’t really think that the class-size issue is an “excuse,” xiggi. It’s a question of arithmetic: how much time does a teacher have available to devote to answering individual questions, depending on how many students are in the class? At the local public school, the twice-yearly parent-teacher conferences were scheduled for 20 minutes each, which seemed really paltry to me, until I worked out how many hours the teachers were spending in the conferences.</p>
<p>I don’t think you have children yet, xiggi? When you do, you will probably find that your children have many questions that the teachers have neither the time nor the inclination to handle.</p>
<p>Also, for anyone advocating the longer school days or school years: What did you observe about your own children’s intellectual growth during the summer vs. the school year? On the one hand, I really liked many of the public school teachers. On the other hand, there is no question that QMP developed much faster intellectually during the summers. This was particularly evident in early elementary school, but continued throughout.</p>
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<p>…actually some research (read 'Outliers") concludes that this is where students whose parents are not actively involved in their development (more hand-off parenting style), fall behind. Kids are learning at approximately the same rate when in school, but much more significant differences when they are out of school.</p>
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<p>I do not have children. But I believe I can see the result of teachers have neither the time nor the inclination to handle. This is especially dangerous during the formative years when building the right blocks of knowledge are important. Students who are left behind rarely catch up and are simply passed up as “problem students.”</p>
<p>We know that our students do well through elementary school, and start to lose steam in middle school all the way to the abysmal state of most high schools. Obviously, one can correlate those results to the diminishing abilities of parents to complement the lacking education received at school. The expectation that parents are also responsible for the academic progress of their children does not diminish the direct responsibility of a system that bargained for the monopoly and having free reins.</p>
<p>It is pretty clear that the teachers and their unions would love a system that is void of parental interferences, all the while having convenient scapegoats to bury their failures. Are parents really thrilled with the conferences and reports? Aren’t the parents who do NOT really need to attend conferences the ones who show up, while the ones who cannot because of economic or language issues stay away? </p>
<p>Again I do not have children, but I have heard plenty of discontent voices about the system. A system where few people seem to be happy!</p>
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<p>… one of the problems is that dysfunctional inner city high school are the ones who prodominately receive the publicity. I have been in education for 27 years, working for 3 different school districts in 2 states. The majority of my collegues are quite happy. The ones who aren’t I fear would be unhappy in any profession. 'i’ve heard" isn’t nearly as convincing as some of the links you provide in other posts:)</p>
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<p>Of course parents should be involved in their children’s educations.</p>
<p>My son’s school did not want parents to be involved in homework, because the purpose of the homework was to gauge the students’ grasp of the material learned during the day. If every student turned in perfect homework because the parents <em>helped,</em> then the teacher could only assume that the students understood the material perfectly, and s/he is free to move ahead. </p>
<p>The homework was not graded, other than as to its completeness. There was no penalty for getting the answers wrong, but every question was required to be answered as best as possible. This is how the teacher knew if she was teaching the material properly. This makes perfect sense to me.</p>
<p>It will not work, however, if the teachers are not willing to use the information gleaned from homework to follow up with the struggling students. If they can’t or won’t provide extra help, then there is no point.</p>
<p>In other news, the leading cause of stress for active-duty soldiers is the enemy, and for police officers it’s criminals.</p>
<p>This is a prime example of a scientific survey that states the obvious. However there do need to be changes. Namely, paying teachers a decent wage for the amount of work they do and their importance to society.</p>
<p>How much time did your children’s homework generally take them, Bay? I think that’s a pertinent issue. Also, how many projects did they have, as opposed to straightforward assignments of the one-night category?</p>
<p>I can see the point of not obscuring the things the students did not understand. On the other hand, when it comes to writing assignments, I can see some advantage in having parents look over the work, and comment about things that may not come into the syllabus for that particular year, but are connected with good writing practice.</p>
<p>In terms of writing content, to give a concrete example, when QMP was in 4th grade, I read a book report that stated, “Character A was an X, but he was also a Y,” where X and Y were not incompatible or contradictory. I asked, “What do you mean by that?” The result was two or three really well-developed sentences that illustrated why QMP thought the combination was unusual.</p>
<p>Don’t get me started on teachers who could not recognize the proper use of the subjunctive!</p>
<p>^The school assigned no homework until 4th grade. The amount progressed from about 1/2 hour per night to about 1 1/2 hours by 8th grade - but of course the length of time it took depended on the student. If it was taking more than 1 1/2 hours, the teacher was to be notified.</p>
<p>The beauty of the private schools is that the teachers tend to work together when it comes to assigning homework and projects, so that they do not become too onerous. This was not our experience in public schools, where each teacher seemed to work autonomously, so the amount of work could become unreasonable at times.</p>
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<p>CSDad, my “heard of” was a direct rebuttal to the question of not having children, and the possible implication that I am not in a good position to comment on such issues. Inasmuch as I do not discount the direct (and vast) experience of a parent dealing with the academic issues of their children, I also think that someone who just spent more than 20 years in the “system” might be able to have “some opinion.” And, of course, both are equally valid, me thinks. </p>
<p>Also, you are right that opinion and personal experiences are not necessarily convincing in the way that a controlled study might. While I could easily quote from studies and come up with arguments (that fit my pov) I also think that, at times, a discussion forum such as this is a good place to mix facts and opinions. </p>
<p>As far as being happy, I also think that the studies show that parents, when polled, are sharing that they are usually happy to very happy with the education their children receive. Since most of the education is provided by government schools, one could conclude that, in general, the population is quite happy. I also have no doubts that most of the teaching profession is happy, although I have no doubt that many are looking at the good old days with a healthy dosis of nostalgia. </p>
<p>Yet, this general perception does not translate well in … private sessions. Regardless of the schools I attended, I have great recollection of the enormous number of hours my parents spent with many friends discussing what was wrong in the school. It seemed that it was impossible to be in a restaurant after a soccer or lacrosse game without the parents “getting into it.” Perhaps it was due to the environment where I grew up (Dallas, TX) but it did not change much when we moved. And it did not change much when I moved from one of those glorified country club schools in Dallas to a much more modest urban school in a much smaller city. And there perhaps, this was due to the private school environment! </p>
<p>Last but not least, it is not an issue from which I can move away easily; at best, I can freeze it for a few years while concentrating on more pressing issues such as staying employed. So, my times is still to come. Perhaps for the CC class of 2037!</p>
<p>Re post #38: That’s an entirely different system from our public school, Bay. I recall QMP staying up until 10:30 pm working on a project in 2nd grade–assigned overnight, so there was no question of planning ahead. (Assignment: Prepare a booklet with drawings and captions, showing what you are doing at about 8 different times of the day. I think this was supposed to teach reading an analog clock.) If the homework had only taken half an hour in 4th grade, I would have been seriously tempted to sign QMP up for homework assignments given in code!</p>
<p>As it was, there were projects that took a long time, and allowed little leeway for other family plans. I can recall a number of nights when QMP was in elementary school, where we had to order pizza in, to minimize the length of time that dinner took, in order to accommodate the homework load. </p>
<p>I also recall a time when the printer broke just before a big project was due (also elementary school), when QMP’s dad disassembled the printer, practically down to the last screw, and put it back together again, working. I doubted that the school would have accommodated a printer break-down. Yet, ironically, report cards that semester were about five days late, because the school’s printer had broken.</p>
<p>Not exaggerating. In retrospect, it’s lunacy, of course, but it’s surprisingly easy to fall into, around here.</p>