I know this is typical for the US so this is more for US people to respond to. I wouldn’t say that it is the best system for work, just wondering about the disconnect.
My kids school in Sweden, at least age 6 to 12 have a school day from 8 till 13, or 14 for the older kids, and still no homework.
But long days would be counterproductive. Learning is hard work, that’s part of the reason a new job is so exhausting. Doing that long hours for years would only burn kids out even more.
They don’t even have enough money to properly pay their teachers for the mornings in school. Where would they get the people and money to pay them to supervise the kids in the afternoon?
I’m from Morocco, and school usually goes from 8 to 12, then again from 2 to 6, sometimes 3 to 7. Yes, we can leave school as late as 7 in the evening sometimes. During the winter, that’s exactly when the sun sets. Also, you have lunch at home. Every. Single. Time. Also, only Wednesdays are exempt from afternoon school, but only if you’re in primary school, because as soon as you enter secondary school, the whole week is filled up to the brim. And add homework on top of all this. And usually we get that from every single subject (yes, even PE). In many ways, this is worse than what you Muricans are doing. If you guys are being tortured, we’re being sent to hell and back 5 days a week every single week for the most part. Also, 1 week holidays every 6 weeks. That’s it. And since we’re Muslims, we don’t even get the 2-3 week “Christmas break”. You stay home on January 1st, and go to school the very next day if it’s not a weekend. We even study during Ramadan. It sucks less because we leave earlier, but it still sucks. Also, we don’t have snow days. Only a super small part of the country gets snow, and you still have to go to school even if that happens. And during the final years of high school, you have a final exam that contains EVERY SINGLE LESSON IN THE YEAR. All of them. Both semesters. And you bet that I hated this when I had to go through it.
damn bruh
That just sounds like we all need school reform. Poor kids having to struggle through that.
The homework aspect in theory helps with the University structure.
Cynicism: also primes for the need to bring work home and be available off the clock.
Yes, but also: In a lot of professions you have a lot of freedom regarding when you work. I’m browsing lemmy now, and getting to work at around 10, but I worked late on Friday, and I’m probably going to be answering some mails after dinner today.
I think this is just going to become more common: Not paying people for for the time they are at work, but rather for the job they do. That means that if you prefer to work 9-5, thats fine, but if you prefer to leave earlier or start later, and get some of your work done in the afternoon/weekends, thats also fine, as long as you get the job done.
I very much enjoy having that freedom. Even though it means I may be expected to pull longer days every now and then, it also means nobody questions me for leaving early when the weather is nice.
This exactly demonstrates my mindset.
As someone who is getting ready to work at 9pm on a Sunday night…what’s this clock you speak of?
I guess that’s another suspect of eating away people’s time. If university takes more than 8 hours then it is also in question. If people want to be subjected to work outside of their 8 hour window, they should be allowed. Forcing this is crazy.
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The thing about university “requiring” people to work more than 8 hours is this: It’s not a human right to become a system architect, physicist or engineer. Universities typically don’t require more than 8 hours per day, but a lot of studies in practice require more than 8 hours if you want to be able to get through them. Relaxing the requirements for passing a degree would mean less competent professionals leaving the universities, and I don’t think anyone getting on a plane or going into surgery wants that.
Perhaps. But only the last 2-4 years. No student below high school should have homework (there is research to back this up). And they can do it in study hall, not necessarily at home. College courses have like half the class time, so professors hit the hard parts and expect students to read and get the rest on their own.
No student below high school should have homework (there is research to back this up).
Might I ask what research? Could you give me a source or two? I’m rather intrigued by this
I found a summary, but the link to the research is broken:
A lot of schools are going to this model now, at least in Texas around me. Texas requires interventions if kids fail the STAAR (the statewide test they take that shows they know the material they’ve learned during the school year) so a lot of schools have built in an intervention period (or whatever the campus calls it) to give those kids the intervention time. My kid doesn’t need intervention so they just do their homework during that time. They can sign up to go to certain teachers to get help, too. And a lot of schools/teachers have gotten away from assigning homework, since it just punishes the kids who don’t have support st home.
It’s interesting how different the quality of schooltime can be, and how perception of said time can differ for school kids as well. I was in a “full day” school starting from age 9 in a country where regular schools end at lunch time. Our school had the same curriculum to go through as every other, but lots more time to do it. The extra time was filled with dedicated self-learn time ( basically to do homework, but you have your classmates around to talk and help each other and can reach out to teachers if you really struggle with something) and elective extracurricular activities. It was mandatory, but you had free choice between all the offers. Teachers had to offer something, and usually offered their personal passion activities/hobbies. This led to these activities being the highlight of every kid’s week, because there was enough variety to choose from to find something you liked. Kinda like club activities in US schools, but much less codified and without competitive objectives. Some examples are photography, pottery, soap box car building, school beautification ( we literally were allowed and encouraged to graffiti/mural the school walls :D ), gardening, natural science ( basically constantly doing fun physics and chemistry experiments without boring theory), electronics etc. . This was intentionally kept separate from sports or music, which also were partially elective: you had to do sports and music, and some basics were mandatory for all, but you could opt for specializations. All this semi-forced mingling served well to prevent the formation of strong clique boundaries, without inhibiting kids from pursuing their talents and passions.
All that had huge advantages. Kids from troubled families had a much easier time of keeping up with everyone else, as help from home was hardly necessary. Lunch was provided by the school. Wasn’t stellar, wasn’t horrible. But it was available to all students for free, and that can be very important to some as well. It took me a long time, often only after visiting school friends for the first time or even after schooltime was over entirely, to realize how crazy rich or poor some of my friends’ families actually were, or what difficulties they sometimes faced at home and that there was a reason we never were invited to visit them. At school, it simply didn’t matter to us. Sure, some wore more brand clothes than others, but nobody thought of using this as a measure of personal quality. Class cohesion also was usually strong. Sure, kids still were assholes and bullies like everywhere else, but it usually got solved internally quickly, because it was harder to keep it up for full days with plenty of “forced” social time, and you ended up being more confronted with the damage and hurt you caused. And in really bad cases the proximity to school made it much easier for teachers to pick up on any developments in their students and classes and react quickly. There also were some mandatory “social skill” classes to teach everyone basic conflict solving and mediating. It was only one or two sessions per year, but I think it actually helped, even if we kids usually scoffed at it at the time. It was very clear the school philosophy was not to push through a curriculum, but to use the extra time to help explore and form personalities that later will hopefully enmesh well in society. And yes, our school had a bit more teaching personnel than other schools to fill all the time slots and extra activities, but we still had 25-35 students per class, it was not some utopian dream.
We kids loved the full day spent at school as well. No homework, and what’s better than spending the entire day with your friends? The school was far from my home, so I left the house at 6:30 and usually got back around 18:00, with about 40min of train commute plus 30min of walking (one way). Only Friday ended at lunch. Still never felt that I was lacking “me” time.
Tl;Dr : It matters a lot how the time at school is used.
A lot of the school system is set on many of the people in the country being farmers so you do a lot of scheduling to allow them to work on the farm. This is why do you get the summers off and some other vacations that fit with other major times for growing crops?
I’m pretty familiar with the farming aspect of all of this, but clearly we are way beyond needing children for farming (except for some child labor law changes that I’d like to ignore in this case). To me, it sounds like a legacy issue that was never changed with the times. Just my observation
And there’s no reason urban and rural schools need to run on exactly the same schedule. Urban districts have been experimenting with things like year-round school for decades.
Now I have been outa school since 2008, but back then, in public school, they didn’t teach us shit. Like actual useful things. How to deal with emotions, personal finance, How to deal with police, mindfulness, critical thinking…nothing. all busy work and history through the American lense (propaganda). I even had a science teacher who was super religious and said earth was created 6000 years ago…it was geology ffs. Math was the worst imo. Solve for X, zero context. The only reasoning they gave to learn it was “to get in to college”.
Safe to say I didn’t go to college.
If you didn’t learn that stuff, that’s on your parents, not your teachers. They’re not there to raise you.
Yeah, it’s not like they are part of an institution designed to ensure a baseline level of education within society. Oh, wait.
That’s right, to educate you, not to raise you.
A basic level of education to function at work. That’s literally why modern schooling was created during the industrial revolution.
What the fuck do you think parents are supposed to do? Just pop you out of a vagina, feed you, and leave everything else to other people?
I’m sorry your parents were so shit, anon.
How to deal with emotions, personal finance, How to deal with police, mindfulness, critical thinking…nothing.
All of that seems fairly important for continued success at work.
What the fuck do you think parents are supposed to do? Just pop you out of a vagina, feed you, and leave everything else to other people?
Unfortunately, much to my dismay, being a parent has no requirements or standards. As such, in order to ensure a baseline, that should be available in school. In addition, how are those parents supposed to learn how to parent… if that isn’t taught in school?
Fuck orphans?
Cute, but complete crap.
Ah yes, I can’t believe I didn’t look at it that way. What wonderous intelligence you have been blessed with.
It means that you’re being deliberately obtuse in order to pretend that you don’t understand that you’re wrong. If you don’t understand how to admit that, it’s nobody else’s problem.
Not all parents are equal. It’d be cool if we valued our young, regardless of from whom they came from. Nobody gets to decide whether to be born or not, but they’re still forced to accept the terms of service.
Maybe we should try to value… people?.. in general? But who honestly gives a fuck, I got too much on my own plate to really think about it anyway
That’s why they’re all entitled to a free education in most modern democracies.
Unfortunately not all parents are equal, that’s true. But there’s not much that can be done about that which child protection agencies don’t already cover.
Teachers can’t raise their students.
I agree that teachers can’t/shouldn’t have to raise students, and I believe most teachers would agree. But it ends up happening all of the time because a lot of people want to help as best they can. The teachers who do go the extra mile(s) shouldn’t have to be put in that situation to begin with. And the teachers who do their job well and nothing else, shouldn’t be shamed. It’s a societal problem that doesn’t have to be… but we’d rather blame “work ethic” and “this new generation”, than invest in the underlying issues. And that same rhetoric has been happening for probably over a century (at the very least)
Saying “CPS already covers what we can’t really change” is a farcry from actuality. Do you think social work is a prestigious position? If you do, are they funded and compensated appropriately? If people are just “popping babies out of their vagina” and expecting help to raise them; why do we work so hard to undermine the autonomy of a woman’s choice to give birth in the first place? And if “every life matters” (so very much) to those who oppose choice… why aren’t we helping the families who aren’t allowed to choose because of some bullshit beliefs/laws that have nothing to do with an observed reality? Hypocrisy all over the damn place.
It’s a control and power struggle that has been going on for longer than we’ve been alive. We can have rational thought AND compassion at the same time; but many of those who influence our “laws” don’t give a damn about what happens to poeple after their own ends or objectives have been met.
If we don’t believe teachers are responsible for raising kids, than we better damn-well make sure we are providing our own with the resources they need. Or fuck it, let’s keep passing the blame in order to make ourselves feel righteous and forget about the very complex issues. Complexities are hard anyway, why bother when I’m already comfortable?
Those are US problems. I don’t live in the US
Those are absolutely not problems specific to the US. But it looks like you’re not trying to understand any viewpoint other than your own. Good day sir
Lol your world view is so American that you can’t see the forest for the trees. Indeed it seems you’re the one who doesn’t understand any other viewpoint, because you don’t even understand that there are other viewpoints to be had.
Some people don’t have parents. But I generally agree with you.
If you have to deal with police you SHUT THE FUCK UP. You can’t beat them at their own game
Which should be taught, imo. police are not your friends. They arrest you for profit. I learned how to deal the hard way. But least I know now. I guess teaching it would be counter to the whole reason of policing so yea. 🤷
You had me until math. I used algebra every day of my blue collar life. Fun fact, the more math that you know directly correlates to your income more than any other subject.
Friendly reminder that correlation does not equal causation.
Intelligence is the most likely mediator between those two variables. Intelligent people can grasp mathematical concepts easier and are more likely to use it, and intelligent people tend to shoot for higher paying jobs that challenge them.
I use math everyday as well in the trades. Not too complex math, but my point was not the math itself, rather the way it was taught to me and the context given, which was none. I’m definitely not saying don’t teach math, quite the opposite. I’m a hands on learner. Math for the sake of math to 15 yr old me seemed like an empty exercise. If I could do it again, I’d probably be good at it. But that’s life.
Pure math is just too abstract to make sense. When a teacher says the only reason to learn it is to get in a college, yeah, that’s terrible teaching. A halfway decent teacher would at least orally give some RL examples people might need to use mental math, like calculating whether the 300g or the 500g packet is cheaper per gram
They did that a tiny bit in early math classes. In high school, none. I failed every year cause I didn’t care about what X is. I erased the problem. No more problem. I was a dumb kid with shit teachers. And here I am using math everyday and finding I’m fairly decent at mental math and weird fractions. Guess I’m a hand on learner. I dunno. I agree with you.
I think it’s because there’s some unwritten rule about not inducing children to commit suicide. I don’t think a little kid could handle such a curriculum without getting severely depressed and offing themselves. Adult survival of this is much higher, mostly thanks to access to sex, drugs, and rock and roll, something children are not allowed to have access to, given local laws and their status as legal minors. It is correct to lie to them and make them think that if they are good students now they will be successful as adults because they are too young to be exposed to night clubs where 9 to fivers tend to find refuge and a drug dealer at the end of a tough shift to survive and avoid suicide.
I don’t think school should emulate work.
Learning (well) isn’t easy, attention spans are limited and after some time you get rapidly diminishing results.
I personally like the sound of inverting the structure we use for learning, meaning assigning the “theory” as homework and using class time to discuss or apply it afterwards.
At least that has the benefit of letting every student manage their time, spending more time on harder (for them) subjects.
I personally like the sound of inverting the structure we use for learning, meaning assigning the “theory” as homework and using class time to discuss or apply it afterwards.
I like the idea, too. It has not been shown to have a meaningful positive effect up to now, as far as I know.
So what do you do when the kids don’t learn the theory for homework and so can’t do any of the work in class?
That’s where the discussion comes in. With an instructor to moderate and a class working together who will overall have grasped it. Those who didn’t pick it up reading learn by doing.
But personally, I don’t like the idea of kids doing schoolwork outside school hours. I went to a trade-school college and we would do trimesters with 9 weeks for a single class. Spent the whole day just in that class, six hours. First half learning theory then putting it into practice in the second half. By nine weeks, you’d know that subject pretty well. But that was complicated stuff, and honestly, probably didn’t even require 9 weeks. But it’s a good starting model. Fully immerse kids in a subject for weeks where they don’t have to mix in other subjects to muddy their forming brains. Homework won’t be needed and they’ll have a much better grasp on the subject at the end. You could do 6 classes for 6 weeks each a school year.
And I feel like early education kind of already does this. They typically will focus on a subject for weeks instead of trying to fit in 5 a day. It’s just the upper levels we’ve decided to shuffle kids around multiple times a day.
I like your enthusiasm and your heart is in the right place but it doesn’t translate on a practical level. I’m a teacher and an independant school in my town tried this, unfortunately didn’t work.
attention spans are limited and after some time you get rapidly diminishing results
Same is true in work, and why work weeks should be limited to 40 hours max. Americans work too much, and this is based on what Harvard says after studying it.
Some districts have high school start early, so that they can work in the afternoon. They also have to stagger school start times for the bus schedule to work. Without enough drivers, the bus has to pick up and drop off HS students and then go pick up other students.
I can understand the homework, as there has been some research suggesting that it isn’t as beneficial as we believe.
There would need to be a different schedule for students in many school activities, like sports, music, and theater among others that need some before or after school practice.
I can understand the homework, as there has been some research suggesting that it isn’t as beneficial as we believe.
I was pleasantly surprised to find my kid hasn’t had hours of homework after school like I did. I’m sure she will eventually end up with some teacher who thinks it’s Very Important^TM but it hasn’t happened yet.
In my school career a legitimately only ever remember doing one piece of homework. I’m sure we did others but they can’t have been particularly relevant to my education because I’ve forgotten them.
Anyway everybody knows that homework only exists to embarrass parents who can’t remember any of their math education.
How do you reduce fractions.
No, homework doesn’t exist to embarass parents. Learners need to actually use a skill in order to learn it. Homework gives them that opportunity.
With the pressures of the state standardized tests that keep cranking up and taking up more class time, there isn’t time for students to practice every skill during class. It’s a Republican tactic to bring back segregation. They work to pull money from pu lic schools with vouchers and don’t require private schools to uphold the same standards as public ones. It funnels the rich into separate private schools away from those that aren’t in the upper class. If we could get rid of the ridiculous amount of testing and regain the ~5 weeks of school taken up by state testing, there would be more time in class to get the practice that all students need. Until that time, students need the homework to practice the skill and learn it.
Are you actually asking whether I can reduce fractions?
If so, you can simplify by figuring out how many times the denominator (the bottom number) into the numerator (the top number) and write that number next to what remains. Take 16/3 for example, 3 goes into 16 5 times, so you would write a number 5 and then, since 16-15=1, you would write 1/3. This makes the answer 5 1/3.
Another example is 8/64. This fraction will not pull a number to the side, given that the numerator is less than the demonization. As you may realize, 64 is a multiple of 8, so we can divide both numbers by 8. 8 divided by 8 is 1 and 64 divided by 8 is 8, so 8/64 simplifies down to 1/8.
Sometimes you can’t divide both numbers in the fraction by the numerator, such as with 9/24. I’d you want to do this the long way, find the greatest common factor between the numbers which is 3. Divide both the numerator and denominator by 3 and you will simplify the fraction and get 3/8. If you realize that the fraction can be reduced further, find the greatest common factor between the numerator and denominator and divide them again.
In the USA, work doesn’t end at 5, and there’s always homework. That’s where your proposal goes wrong.
I’m off the clock when I leave my place of business. Unless you own your own, or you’re a creative, stop doing free work at home.
It does if you don’t let your boss control every waking minute
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I’ve never understood homework. I didn’t have any resonance with school work either. The whole endeavour seemed pointless until I needed to calculate the volume of loudspeaker cabinet or determine the voltage in a circuit. Only then the activity had any meaning and hence I was motivated to learn trigonometry or electromagnetic field theory. It wasn’t even work because I love to learn. I failed almost every exam I ever attempted and yet meanwhile, back in reality, I was perfectly able to function and thrive in the technical world that we inhabit. Homework can eat my refuse.
the premise is that most people learn by doing, so if you set the class up right you introduce a topic in a lecture and then reinforce the learning by the application in work either at school (if there is time) or at home. Students can then get feedback on how they did before an actual test on the material
In your case it seems there was a disconnect between the intent and the application, which unfortunately is a sign of poor teaching
Agree. Looking back, my school was horrible. The worst aspect of it all was that, by some bizarre turn of events, I eventually became a teacher myself and made many of the same mistakes. Being a teacher is difficult and it takes a special type of person that our Anglophone society ought to hold in higher esteem.
You want us to exalt you knowing that all you did was turn around and become the person you hated? 🤔
Yes please. Also, donations.
To simulate modern work it should either be 8-6 with 30 minutes for lunch or a 0 hour contract where a different school calls you every day so you know which one to go to the next day, sometimes it’s 4am-12midday and sometimes 6pm-4am.
Also you would have to turn up and then sit around twiddling your thumbs for 45 minutes before being given a 15-minute task and then going on lunch.
While were at it, let’s just remove school entirely. Children could compete in the free market of unpaid internships and develop skills that will be useful for their working life. I feel like government has had a monopoly on education for too long, let’s let the free market do it’s thing and save the day.
Not that I think this is the way, I don’t, but…
With the amount of time it takes to train a completely green person off the street, even at seemingly menial tasks, im not sure corporations would actually allow this.
Although, they arent paying a wage, this plan would eat into real production time and materials, and with this “just in time,” software oriented, prefab mindset they have, overall i think they would still lose money.
Sure they don’t have to train people to think anymore, but even operating machinery correctly or following a preset design, is rough for alot of people.
The struggle to find knowledgeable, skilled labor is real, but unless paid people are taking time out of thier day to teach these interns the ins and outs of a machine or how to read plans, said intern wouldn’t learn jack squat. Unless the company has time and money to kill, at the very least, trade school is still required.
Nah, corporations would never go for it.
Many companies view teaching employees as an investment. Sure, someone with skill will have to work with them for a time but then they create enough value to pay that back and more as his or her life unfolds.
Save money on funding schools! Send children to mines and lumber mills! A bandsaw can teach life lessons and costs less than a year of a teacher’s salary!
Oh god please let this be sarcasm, it’s so hard to tell nowadays.
Corporations don’t think so. “you need experience to get unpaid internship”
Their Lemmy instance provider:
Our mission is to provide remotely accessible computing facilities for the advancement of public education, cultural enrichment, scientific research and recreation.
A couple reasons off the top of my head, 1.) You can’t let 20-30 kids loose without it ending in pandemonium, but you need kids to practice time management skills before college. Homework is a time where kids can learn to manage a workload, outside of the controlled environment of school. 2) Kids can’t candle a 9 to 5, they need recess and art, and music, and gym to give their brains a break. In the 7.5ish hours that kids go to school, there’s probably only 4 hours of work done. (but Bob, I only work like 30 minutes of any given day, and I’m an adult…)
A 9-5 would include time for self-study such as “homeroom” or whatever they want to call it. It’s not like they are going to be in lecture the entire day.
