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11 Comments on “More from Yesterday’s High School Senior”

1. PsychMom says:
   

   Ok, maybe I’m not the bright­est match in the box and.….…my aging, aver­age brain may be play­ing tricks on me but the first time I encoun­tered “basic sta­tis­tics” in my edu­ca­tion was in late high school, and the stuff I remem­ber was taught in sec­ond year uni­ver­sity. When did I truly under­stand any­thing about basic statistics?.…..By 4th year Uni­ver­sity when I was doing my own research stud­ies and had read over a 100 or so papers. Age 22.

   Why are we try­ing to teach stats to 11 year olds?

   May 7th, 2009 at 8:42 am
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2. K says:
   

   I am a col­lege pro­fes­sor. While some may argue that some of my assign­ments are overly chal­leng­ing… all of my assign­ments are designed to force stu­dents to con­sider com­plex issues inde­pen­dently. They are meant (usu­ally) to take lit­tle time, but be addressed seriously.

   It stuns me how much train­ing I have to com­mit to show­ing our incom­ing fresh­men how I intend their “home­work” to be used.

   For exam­ple:
    – Stu­dents have typ­i­cally been “trained” to rewrite all of my ques­tions prior to typ­ing their answers. What a gra­tu­itous waste of time — I should know what I asked.

   - Stu­dents typ­i­cally ask “how long it has to be”, where, to me, if you address the ques­tions as asked, the length is unim­por­tant (as short as pos­si­ble to answer the ques­tions). More meat, less filler.

   –Stu­dents have been taught to “read” the text­book. No one should lit­er­ally read a text — it is a ref­er­ence, use it to gain infor­ma­tion, not to fol­low word-for-word. Use it to glean key fea­tures, orga­nize mate­r­ial, iden­tify dif­fer­ences between sim­i­lar ideas, and so on.

   –Home­work is not an oppor­tu­nity to force stu­dents to teach them­selves some­thing that you don’t find inter­est­ing enough to cover.

   Now that my chil­dren are work­ing their way up this sys­tem, it is that much more infuriating.

   May 7th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
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3. PsychMom says:
   

   Yay, K!

   You prove the point in spades. We are lit­er­ally drilling the think­ing skills right out of chil­drens’ heads. They are trained to do so many mind­less things from the moment they pick up a pen­cil that by the time they reach col­lege 12 years later, there is no energy to think once they’ve cov­ered all the mind­less activ­ity. Read­ing logs are a good exam­ple. Require­ments like “Write three sen­tences” for answers, or write a page. What if the child has only one thing to say and can say it in a sen­tence and then spends the next hour try­ing to come up with the rest of the page. It’s mindless.

   What does it train? To me, one thing it does is let the child know that what they think (in one sen­tence) is not good enough. What they pro­duce is not good enough unless it fills a page. So they learn to BS to fill the page. Filler, as “K” put it. And it starts in kinder­garten. That’s the galling part.

   May 7th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
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4. Sarah says:
   

   I hear you, K! :) It’s enough to make me want to home­school my son…

   Home­work in col­lege is really part of the way col­lege pre­pares you to be a more inde­pen­dent learner. That’s part of the point of being in col­lege! Once you decide on what you want to *do* (or at least major in), you should really be at a point when you’re tak­ing charge of your own learn­ing. You won’t have teach­ers to hold your hand and explain things for­ever. Once, when I asked a pro­fes­sor if I could take yet another class on a sub­ject I felt shaky about (stats, actu­ally :P), his response was-‘what, can you not read a book?’

   Other teachers/professors com­plain that if you don’t spell out the instruc­tions in class to the last point (includ­ing word counts, for­mat­ting, etc.), you’ll have peo­ple that try to get by and b.s. or give you some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent than what you want. Has any­one else seen 20 page syl­labi? Yikes.

   Loose instruc­tions may make grad­ing harder a bit (in a 100+ per­son class with 0 – 1 TAs, that’s not triv­ial), but it makes for more inter­est­ing work! At least you won’t be read­ing iden­ti­cal answers all night :) I find that I get lots of great ideas for my own work from things stu­dents say too. Plus, when I have given explicit instruc­tions in the past, it’s that much more annoy­ing when stu­dents are obvi­ously not read­ing them… Do I really want to be deter­min­ing how many points some­one should lose for not fol­low­ing my instruc­tions pre­cisely? BORING.

   Of course, the real prob­lem is that stu­dents expect explicit instruc­tions on every­thing too. I *always* have 30 emails from stu­dents ask­ing for every­thing from ‘is 5.35 pages long enough?’ to ‘can you give me a list of 20 pos­si­ble top­ics to write on?’ despite my asser­tion that I want their ideas. Now, not all stu­dents are like this, and many of the ones that are have been trained that way, as K pointed out. It’s frus­trat­ing when I try to encour­age inde­pen­dence while other courses are encour­ag­ing them to fol­low instruc­tions. It’s con­fus­ing for stu­dents (and kids) who are try­ing to fig­ure out what the point of it all is. Is the point of life just to fol­low instruc­tions? Learn­ing is some­thing someone’s sup­posed to make me do and then I go and have my real life?

   I could go into a whole other rant on the prob­lems with the grad­ing sys­tem and how it’s related to the whole home­work and learn­ing issue, but I’ll spare you :P It’d be nice to see what the research has to say about it, though.

   Thanks for your website!

   Sarah

   May 7th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
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5. HomeworkBlues says:
   

   I should rename myself Mother’s Day Blues today. I was a pro­lific poster on this blog but stopped for a while because noth­ing has changed and a par­ent at this school who co-commiserates with me doesn’t think there’s much we can do. There prob­a­bly is but it’s like mov­ing moun­tains. I already tried writ­ing a care­fully crafted email in Novem­ber to the prin­ci­pal and so far I’m still in the batter’s box, either struck out or hit­ting foul balls..

   But I’m sin­gin’ the blues today and cast about , won­der­ing just who would really be able to “feel my pain.” This is the place to come and vent. My daugh­ter is a high school junior so it’s more than just vent­ing. It’s not just about being a chronic whiny com­plainer. I have bet­ter things to do.

   Last night, my daugh­ter took a break from a major pager she’s work­ing on and we took a moon­lit walk. We are doing this every night and it’s beau­ti­ful. Whether my daugh­ter can afford the time or not, I urge her to come and our fam­ily takes this lovely walk in the neigh­bor­hood. I pre­fer twi­light or sun­set but my daugh­ter is never ready, still work­ing hard so by 9pm I insist and off we go.We walk up the block and then it’s time to come home. That’s all the time we have and we can’t even spare that.

   It struck me yet again that the things I crave, that I am so sad we don’t have time for are sim­ple plea­sures. What I wanted to do today is com­pletely free and if we pack bag lunches, all we pay for is gas.

   But we can’t do any of them. It’s not about goof­ing off, it’s not about not meet­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties. If I had a major work project, I might find myself choos­ing to be shut in too. If I had to attend a con­fer­ence today and woke to a cool breezy gor­geous Mother’s Day, I’d suck it up and say, well, I have to go, respon­si­bil­i­ties come first.

   It’s not that way with our high school kids at the “bet­ter” schools.. It’s not the occa­sional week­end being shut in. It is chronic relent­less home­work that spills into every week­end. Week­ends are either the same old same old grind that maybe you could rush through to make time for a walk or two papers due that require every second.

   Even at the “best” schools, some­thing is ter­ri­bly wrong when my daugh­ter watches videos in his­tory and anthro­pol­ogy class but the papers are sent home. Why can’t it be in reverse? Do most of the hard stuff at school and assign the videos for home view­ing. Now that’s some­thing I can do with my daugh­ter! I know the answer to that, why not push it to the fam­ily if you can get away with it, but that just makes me madder.

   There were a num­ber of won­der­ful free things in my area I wanted to take our fam­ily too this week­end. The Lin­coln exhibit at the Library of Con­gress which closes today. The aza­leas at the arbore­tum which will be gone when we can next make the time. The free Mother’s Day con­cert at the Kennedy Cen­ter. I’m cursed with a kid who I just LOVE to be with, our excur­sions have always been enlight­en­ing, edu­ca­tional and so much darned fun. But I’m not allowed. I
   Two major papers due tomor­row. I’m so dis­ap­pointed that I wound up blurt­ing out to my hus­band, “why did I even bother mar­ry­ing and hav­ing a child if I just have to do every­thing by myself?” My daugh­ter over­heard it. Happy Mother’s Day. Now she feels guilty and it’s not her fault. Good going, mom.

   Do I sac­ri­fice my entire fam­ily on the alter of home­work? Hell, no! When she was in ele­men­tary, I took con­trol. Clearly not enough, but I did the best I could with what I had. My daugh­ter would walk through the door and I’d say, if you have this much work ________________________, and only this much time ________________, then you only do this much work ________________.

   But now she’s in high school and walk­ing this tightrope can be excru­ci­at­ing for parents.When I express dis­sat­is­fac­tion with home­work, I under­score my phi­los­o­phy. I’m not anti-education, quite the con­trary. I remind her how much time we spent on writ­ing in the home­school year, that I believe in hard work, pas­sion and tal­ent. But if you never have expe­ri­ences, if you never go any­where ‚or have time to read a book or visit a museum or take in a bal­let, your writ­ing goes flat because you have no per­son­al­ity or per­sonal sto­ries from which to draw inspi­ra­tion. One paper asks my daugh­ter to rec­ol­lect fam­ily vaca­tions. Hello, we rarely take any because of home­work. There is a dis­con­nect when the the teacher posts on Black­board, have a lovely Mother’s Day, don’t for­get the paper due tomorrow.

   So Mother’s Day is can­celed. I thought about all the things I wanted to do today and how my choices are to be either shut in with my daugh­ter or go off by myself. If some­one wishes me a Happy Mother’s Day, do I just grum­ble? I wres­tled with my approach. If I post on my Face­book page the list of activ­i­ties I wanted to do with my fam­ily but didn’t, no one would get it and think I just got busy or didn’t want to be with my daugh­ter. If I write, this is what I wanted to do but can’t because of home­work, I come off whiny. If some­one asks me what I did and I reply “noth­ing,” I come off bor­ing. It’s not about impress­ing peo­ple or wor­ry­ing what they think. It’s,who am I and why I am liv­ing this life? Why is this hap­pen­ing to all of us?

   So I devel­oped a new tac­tic. My Face­book sta­tus mes­sage con­tained all the things I wanted to do as if we were actu­ally doing them! A litany of cul­tural, edu­ca­tional and out­door events I will attend today! I couldn’t resist. My final event was, brunch in Paris. At least I still have a sense of humor.

   May 10th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
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6. HomeworkBlues says:
   

   Major PAPER, meant to write. Not pager. Typo. I don’t catch all my mis­takes because the draft is such light print.

   May 10th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
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7. FedUpMom says:
   

   Hi Home­work­Blues — happy Mother’s Day! I hope you have a chance to enjoy your daugh­ter. Hang in there, sum­mer is com­ing soon.

   Could your daugh­ter do some­thing dif­fer­ent next year? Could she take a “gap” year after high school? She really needs a break.

   Your posts, as well as my daughter’s expe­ri­ence, have made me very skep­ti­cal of the whole gifted-industrial com­plex. In our dis­trict, all they know how to do with a bright kid is put pres­sure on them to achieve more, faster.

   I’ve read a lot on the “gifted” issue and so many peo­ple rec­om­mend accel­er­a­tion, even skip­ping one or two grades. I know that wouldn’t help my daugh­ter and I won­der how many kids are really helped by that.

   I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that the prob­lem with the schools is not so much that the mate­r­ial is too easy, and she could do more dif­fi­cult work, although that’s often true. The real prob­lem is that the approach is too rigid and con­trol­ling, and she needs more free­dom. If she has more free­dom she can find the right degree of dif­fi­culty for herself.

   We don’t have any­thing planned for Mother’s Day — we’ll have a quiet day at home. I’ll play flute-viola duets with my older daugh­ter and take the younger one out for a walk/bike ride. It’s a gor­geous day, so we’ll spend some time in the gar­den. I hope you find some moments of leisure too. OK, enough time at the com­puter — I’m on my way outside!

   May 10th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
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8. HomeworkBlues says:
   

   Thanks so much, FedUp­Mom. I’d like to respond point by point because you made some com­pelling ones, but I’d bet­ter get off the com­puter and clean the house. That seems the best option today!

   I had such won­der­ful plans. I have such a won­der­ful kid. So it’s not for lack of imag­i­na­tion, ideas or desire. We have those three crit­i­cal ingre­di­ents already in place to make a dynamic inter­est­ing family.

   Regard­less, I’m bag­ging Mother’s Day, it’s fraught now with too much regret. How is it shap­ing up today? My daugh­ter did have some sched­uled events this week­end. She had a grad­u­a­tion at our place of wor­ship yes­ter­day, of course we weren’t going to miss that, she played a large role. Also at our place of wor­ship, she had com­mu­nity ser­vice this morn­ing (that she missed. I didn’t have the heart to wake her) and she attended her choir prac­tice there too. She howled she couldn’t make the time but I pushed her out the door, at least she’d get a few min­utes of social­iza­tion there. When it’s over, every­one absconds, rush­ing home to get projects done. lf she didn’t attend these week­end classes, she’d never see her friends.

   But half of Sat­ur­day and half of Sun­day are devoted to these papers and that’s not nearly enough time. When home­work pro­po­nents here espouse its per­ceived virtues, what is their take on week­end home­work? How much time exactly must a stu­dent put in? Our week­ends all year have taken on a drab monot­one. Fri­day night she’s usu­ally too fried from a week of sleep depri­va­tion to get any home­work done. This Fri­day after­noon we raced out to buy clothes for the grad­u­a­tion last minute because it was the only three hour block we had in weeks!

   So Mother’s Day is can­celed. I can’t recover it. My hus­band tried to make me feel bet­ter and we con­sid­ered tak­ing the lap­top to the arbore­tum so at least I could see the aza­leas, a spring trea­sure. But the bat­tery won’t last that long so we had to bag that idea. It comes to a point where it’s all a con­so­la­tion prize so why bother?

   To break the monot­ony, my hus­band walked with her to the library to get her papers done. She’s anx­ious because she still has vol­umes to write and it’s already 3pm. I love the library too but when it’s a con­so­la­tion prize and the best fam­ily time I can get is sit­ting next to her while she slaves away at this project, I’m start­ing to think I’ll pass.

   He’s with her and I’m home drown­ing my sor­rows at the com­puter. I’m los­ing my soul!

   FedUp, you make some good points about schools and gifted edu­ca­tion. I’ll explore those with you fur­ther. The short of it is this: my daugh­ter likes her school, she likes the kids, she fits in. If not for the home­work load, it wouldn’t be a bad place at all. That’s like say­ing if not for the tsunami, the beach is a mar­velous place to hang out.

   My child does not want the stress and pres­sure. Sadly, the chil­dren think it’s the price they must pay to go there. My daugh­ter had the oppor­tu­nity to leave for the last two years of school. She chose to remain where she is. My hus­band felt then we should let her. We don’t have many choices right now.

   Should I have con­tin­ued home­school­ing after that one year? Prob­a­bly. The thing about high school is, once you begin home­school­ing, you have to stay the course. You can always pull out to home­school but the reverse is much trick­ier. I could have done that, con­tin­ued home­school­ing. You know what a strong pro­po­nent of home­school­ing I am. I even pro­posed last year we skip high school and go straight to col­lege but my daugh­ter didn’t want to be with 19+ year olds as a fif­teen year old.

   Home­school­ing is heaven yet it still irks me that my tax dol­lars must go to edu­cate other people’s chil­dren while we are forced to bail.

   May 10th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
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9. stressed_out_student says:
   

   I would just like to com­ment that, as a stu­dent, home­work instruc­tions, includ­ing ‘write a page’ or hav­ing a set topic on a writ­ing tests, can be extremely restrict­ing and kill imag­i­na­tion. Can’t we come with our own ideas? Or are we too dumb for that? *sigh*
   stressed_out_student year 9, age 14

   June 6th, 2009 at 1:55 am
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10. stressed_out_student says:
    

    sorry, i meant ‘a writ­ing test’ not tests. And I want to be an author! *sigh* again.

    June 6th, 2009 at 1:56 am
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11. stressed_out_student says:
    

    OH! And you’re right about spe­cial days. It’s mum and dad’s 10th anniver­sary in a few days and I haven’t pre­pared any­thing because of 2 exams, maths revi­sion and 3 projects packed into one week. Thank good­ness it’s a 3 day week­end. :P

    June 6th, 2009 at 2:10 am
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