I'm convinced that homework could be effectively removed from the American education system and children would not be any worse off.

All of my life, I'd learn something in class, and then be forced to go home and do the exact same thing over again. I don't see any reason why children should so readily forget information learned in school that they need this kind of extreme reinforcement unless they are lacking some fundamental understanding of the material. Which is attributable to either a lack of ability or poor teaching. So much time in schools is wasted on catching up the bottom third of students in any given class that I'm sure with some in-school tutoring programs and better teaching methods, any writing or creative assignments could be done in school. Whenever I felt I could get away with it I skipped doing my homework or did the bare minimum and I never felt like I was at a disadvantage compared with other students. I think all that's needed is some reorganization and students could start using their own time for important independent learning experiences instead of extraneous schoolwork.

Maybe in some classes this is the case. However, especially in your upper-level math classes, it's VERY hard to remember how to do stuff without repeatedly working problems. This is because, while the methods may seem straightforward, the application can be quite difficult, and unless the teacher uses the exact gives you the exact same problems on a test as he used for examples, it's hard to sometimes know even where to begin unless you've had a lot of practice.

It's kind of like sports. You can watch sports on TV, watch your school play, read all the books about it, and everything. But unless you actually take time to practice, you're not going to actually be able to PLAY the sport effectively.

It's not at all like sports. Once you know a mathematical method you can apply it to an infinite number of situations with ease. Sports require totally different physical abilities that necessitate practice. The concepts involved are minimal. I still don't see why all the learning and practice can't be done during school hours. There is certainly enough time. So much is typically wasted.

What is the highest level of math you've taken?

I'm with JJ here. It can be difficult to remember things, especially in more advanced classes. However, I don't think that teachers should give a lot of homework because that takes too much time out of the kids life. I have a bad memory, so I like homework.

I actually disagree with the math homework analogy...math isn't something that really needs as much doing to learn...most students can do three similar problems utalizing the same rule and have it downpat...thus rendering an entire page of problems useless. (For example, I'm currently taking calculus...we get no homework. I know my concepts and can apply them better than my friend who is taking the same course at a different school and has pages of homework a night - the teacher does little in-class demonstration of example problems and is simply not able to teach the concepts in a way the students can understand).
However, in more language-based activities (specifically improving writing and learning a foreign language), homework that couples reading and writing excersizes of increasing difficulty can greatly expand a student's capacity for vocabulary, comprehension, and expression in whichever language they happen to be studying.
Additionally, it depends on the teacher. Some teachers just give crappy homework excersizes. I have little respect for a teacher that expects me to go home and make a cutsey-looking report when a well-structured but plain one will suffice. I see no reason to waste my time playing Martha Stewart so that my teacher can have something frilly and pretty to put up when my words, ideas, and understanding of the material should shine brightly on it's own. Save the art for art class...biology homework should involve printer paper and staples, not paper mache and a gluestick.
And along that same line of thought, although it's cute to have little kids do art projects and it's developmentally benificial to have them work with their hands, I think by highschool most have definatly outgrown Crayola products.
That is all.

Actually, my math analogy was more for Calc III and beyond, where knowing the concepts doesn't necessarily mean you can effectively apply them to a problem.

Multivariable calculus/Differential equations but I have to learn new calculus concepts for my engineering courses all the time, so I don't know what the overlap is. But of course that's completely irrelevant to what I'm talking about...as usual.

I think it's relevant. The majority of kids in high school (i'm not talking about primary school, cause there's like, no homework) will want to go to uni or tafe (university or college in america i guess) so i think it's a good idea to get them into the practice of homework (which is basically just study), because if they get to these tertiary studies without much homework or practice at study, they'll be screwed. Hell, i wonder if they'll even get to university here...cause here we have the tertiary entrance examinations (the tee) which tests all of your relevant subjects to determine if you'll get into university or not...and that requires a lot of homework, or study if you will. Homework in the last couple of years of high school is just answering a bunch of questions relating to the course and that's very important.

Getting practice doing homework? How much practice does somebody need to read a sheet of paper and answer questions, especially when they're doing the same thing in school everyday? Sorry, I don't buy it.

If you have a decent math teacher, you're not "answering questions", you're solving problems. No, this is not semantics. To answer a question, yes, all you need is to remember a formula or whatnot. To solve a problem, you have to know HOW to apply a formula/idea/whatever. You also have to know WHEN to apply it. To be able to recognize the situations in which you apply your knowledge, and in what way, takes practice. Maybe, if you have a bad teacher, he (or she) isn't pushing you to solve problems. Maybe the teacher just wants you to learn a bunch of formulas and concepts. If this is the case, then no, you don't need homework. You'll probably also find it rather difficult to find a job upon graduating.

Another thing homework does is really drive the concepts into your memory. If you just listen in class, odds are you'll probably not remember things very well a year from now, unless you're repeatedly using it. If you do a lot of homework, though, your mind will remember the concepts VERY well. Not only can you use them more effectively, you'll be able to use them foro a longer period of time, too.

I don't think it's semantics, but I still think it boils down to answering questions. I can't really believe that a teacher would give you an assignment with no direction and frivolous information, and just see if you're able to improve it somehow.

The job statement is not worth responding to.

I did have a lot of bad teachers, and continue to have a lot of bad teachers. But I don't think that's the problem. I don't remember concepts any better from the courses that I did tons of work in compared with those in which I didn't. In fact, I feel I've learned most from economics, and retained the most useful information. Those courses barely had any out-of-class work whatsoever.

Besides, this is all missing the point as this sort of reinforcement and these activities could still be done, only in class instead of making students do it on their own time and ruining their lives.

I still think you're wrong. However, as you appear to be set in your beliefs, furthe discussion on the topic would be futile.

Just thought I'd point out that in that statment you also prove yourself set in your own beliefs, making further discussion on the topic futile.

To once more put in my two cents, I do think that theoretically homework can have serious value in regard to education. However, in practice this is not always the case. It is a tool teachers have at their disposal, and like all other tools (still sticking with school examples, text books, class time, handouts, etc.) the effectiveness of it is either compromised or utalized depending on the way it is implemented.
I think that what Danimal is focusing on are the busywork-type assignments that are sometimes delt with that have little value and simply eat up time. JJ seems to be seeing only ones that are "foundation builders" if you will. You're not looking at the same thing, so obviously your ideas on it are different.

And shame on you all for being so hung-up on math. The most homework I have this year comes from my drama class and my philosophy class (no lies)...I have to write papers for both, prepare monologues for drama, and annotate and digest nightly readings for philosophy. And guess what. Those are the classes that need the most out-of-school work due to the periods simply being too short to prepare/preform or read/discuss respectivly, as well as the ones I feel are challenging me to think in ways I hadn't before and to expand my views. However, were my civics teacher to suddenly decide to assign a similar volume of work, it would not be nearly as benificial. Why? Because laws are finite. I could read all the court cases there ever were and I woulldn't be any more knowedgable than if I had just learned the basics (although I might know a few more technicalities). Expression and abstract thought are infinate. Exploring myself could take a lifetime - exploring the thoughts of others even longer. But with each play or exerpt I read, I can feel some growth. That's the difference right there.

Well, I wasn't claiming that there's no such thing as busywork. I was simply saying that homework should not be done away with entirely, as Danimal claimed in his first post. Also, I'm not saying that I'm not set in my beliefs. I KNOW I'm set in my beliefs. I'm just saying that since Danimal is also set in his beliefs, and our beliefs do not coincide, then furthe discussion is futile.

And the reason I picked on math so much is that math is the subject I feel LEAST likely to be comprised entirely of busywork.

(Now ENGLISH, on the other hand, is a subject where the entire CLASS is busywork.)

Now that greatly depends on the person teaching it. I've had english classes that were excellent where I felt like what I was doing had real value and meaning. We'd read books that either had signifigant social value or were little known but well written with important themes discussed in them. We'd discuss them in ways that allowed for greater comprehension of the text and would further students' general knowledge. However, there are teachers out there who do not know how to properly teach literature and writing and who assign crappy busy-work assignments like text searches which some students feel are morally wrong and refuse to do them for ethical reasons...but I digress...
(although, while I'm on that thread...thank god for reading check quizzes...because even though they too are morally wrong due to their disgusting uselessness, they're more thought provoking than most other bs that I do in my english class, AND they saved my average from dipping down into a B)(what dissonance I feel to hate that class but adore the subject)

I couldn't care less about the assignments themselves, I just thought English was a busywork subject. I didn't appreciate being forced to read "Wuthering Heights" and other such "classics" purely in the interest of having a "well-rounded education". Yet USEFUL parts of English, such as the different tenses of verbs (imperfect, gerund, etc.), I didn't even HEAR about until I took Spanish, and we had to learn all that stuff, and I could retrospectly apply it to English.

Now, I have no objection to reading, it's just that usually, I like to pick my reading material out for myself. Or if I'm going to be required to read somehing, I'd like it to be something that can spark a good discussion, or something (like The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Crucible, or Lord of the Flies). But in general, which is going to be more useful to me, as an engineer, in ten years: being able to communicate properly through writing, or being able to quote Macbeth's "Dagger Speech" (interesting though it may be)?

Bah....engineers. You guys are just different kinds of people. I myself was mildly seduced my the prospect of neuroscience till I discovered a burning passion for journalism. Even though I like reading about new advances made with SSRIs or explaning how cocaine influences brain chemistry to others, I've always had a love for words that has not only endured, but increased over the years. Math and science were good, but words were intoxicating.
Thus, I doubt we'll ever see eye to eye in that respect.

I hate engineering. I only do it because I can fairly well, and want to be able to provide for myself and possibly a family later on.

A lot of the time people tell me that understanding is more important than knowing facts, imagination is more important than rote, creativitiy is more important than memorization...it comes in many different forms. The engineers and tech people at my school seem to follow this logic to an extreme. They know all about math and science. That is "important" and "relevant". Literature, sciences, history, and all the other random bits of information and trivia are either less important, or totally useless. What good does it do for an engineer to be familiar with the classics? We'll assume that the engineer is already proficient in writing and communication to remove that aspect of it, but of course you know that most college engineers, in practice, have the writing ability of the average 12-year-old.

That deeper understanding and methodology is important, sure. But I think it's just as important to know lots of random facts and trivia, to the extent that I study it in my spare time. There is a shared culture of experience and information that allow higher levels of understanding and communication to take place. Most of the engineers here are very smart, but know very little about literature, very little about history, and very few outside facts in general. They can only relate with their fellow man on a single level. They are culturally illiterate. If you don't know what happened when, and what quotes come from what book, you'll be confused or not even notice references that culturally literate people use all the time in writing and conversation to convey points on a deeper level. A lot of the time I'll be speaking with an obviously intelligent person and I'll make a reference to something I feel is common knowledge, and then we have to stop because it becomes apparent that they have too many gaps in their cultural database to take part.

When somebody starts speaking about something they learned, or something that is important to them, and you tell them that you're familiar with it and understand, they get all excited because they're used to having to just explain it to everyone and have it be a one-sided conversation.

I always get annoyed when somebody smugly says that while they have little information, they have some deeper (mystical) ability or understanding, so they are superior, because what good are facts and memorization anyway? I think they're one of the most important assets in any person's arsenal, and understanding will always be severely limited without a strong base of general cultural knowledge. It doesn't surprise me that so many Jeopardy contestants and winners are extremely intelligent people in general.

I see where Danimal is coming from, i agree that homework seems to be a waste of time to the some of us who are gifted with talent, and intelligence. But to the rest of the world, those not talented with our talent, need focus. These people are not the bottom third in the school i come from. Given its highschool, but still, it is a glimpse into the rest of the public school system. Somehow repeating the same thing continuously in every class seems to help the slower students (unfortunately about oh... say 2/3 of my school) helps the students pass, not do well, just pass.

I never had any problems with homework..... then agian like Phoenix said... im in the top 5% of my class so i guess i would be considered talented... pluse i never have homework becuz its like childs play and i do it in the last 5 minutes of class..... but i do belive it can be very helpfull to alot of people....

I kind of take offence to this. I have several friends who learn better through doing homework, and they are hardly what anyone would consider "slower". In fact, most of them are probably what would be called "academically talented". It has nothing to do with "slower" versus "talented"; it's just two different learning styles. You may as well say visual learners are "slower" than auditory learners, or that left-brained people are "slower" than right-brained people. Just because someone processes thoughts differently doesn't mean they have a harder time with it.

yes, no one brain works alike.... some people learn by listing, some by seeing, and some by repetition..... so homework is a good thing for many...

And some not at all!

:lol: .... that was a good one ......

but yeah.... homework is good for some people... to me its just annoying

for me, yes h/w is useless but for those who don't get it, find it useful!

but i do wish i come to school to learn (so far i only learned about maticies in Algebra 2 in the past 3 months! the rest is crap i aleady know!)

same goes for german! i remember MOST of the stuff from last year (its review time in the advance german classes)
and the ONLY class i have learned something USEFUL to my education (because reading crap in english doesnt count) is American Goverment i have learned a crap load in that class


actuly the way my crapy goverment teacher does h/w...we learn the material half from our teacher and half from h/w



so come here and have my goverment teacher :D

so for me, h/w and school period is uselsss since i am learning things i already learned (well...4th and 5th hour are just "fun" classes, theres only skill involved)