Calgary dad wins no-homework lawsuit for his kids

[rootX]

Do you mean have the kids benefited and graduated with overall higher GPA's? Did they score higher on national scholastic tests? Yes.

I meant performing that kind of experiments only on gifted kids does not tell anything how well it would work on regular students.

 

[turbo]

Our little 2-grades-per-classroom elementary school was a good enough example of getting good performance with minimal staff and resources. There were only a couple of children in town that were considered mentally retarded (not PC these days, but that's what it was called) enough to warrant special classes in a regional school. Every other kid from bright to dull was sitting in the same classroom. Gee, we had a 1/2-day K teacher, 3 full-time teachers, a janitor, and two part-time lunch ladies. When I drive past the K-5 elementary school in our little town, there are at least 20 cars in the parking lot every day. Somehow, I get the feeling that we are throwing money at education without regard for cost/benefit, and there are way too many teacher's aides, etc than necessary.

 

[Galteeth]

Before I did homeschooling, I attended both private and public school. The private school had shorter days, less days all together, and probably a slightly lower homework load. All in all, I learned far more at private school then I did a public school. The nature of the assignments is far more significant then the time.
For example, in eight grade science class, we had no homework for an entire semester. The trade-off was that we had to do a large project, including summary of topic, background research, summation of findings, experiment proposal, final experiment plan, execute the experiment, collect data, summarize findings, draw conclusions, and present a final paper including a critique of our own possible methodological shortcomings and comparisons to conclusions of other experiments.
Contrast this with 9th grade (public school) AP bio class, where we had to read a chapter every two days and were graded on tests of what we had memorized. While I certainly learned a lot, since it was learning in the "cramming" style, I would say my retention rate was only around 50 percent. I winded up getting an A in the class, but the lesson most of the students learned was to cheat. Rather then actually read the chapters, they would work in teams, each person coming up with definitions for a few pages of terms and short summary of important concepts and sharing them with their teammates. I would work by myself, but I eventually found to keep up, I had to just review the terms and concepts, memorize, and not actually read the chapter.

As time went on, the teacher found about the team method, and actually said this was the way to do it. The whole thing winded up falling apart when we realized he didn't even bother grading the tests and just gave generic grades based on how smart he thought individual kids were (really, we did an experiment, and realized he would only actually look at the first few and last few questions.) I fondly recall a friend of mine who had answers marked correct such as "Mr. ____ will not read this", "this class is a joke", and MOO!
He was eventually fired for sexual harassment anyway. But in all honesty, he was one of the better teachers I had that year.

 

[daveg360]

I think he taught a vital lesson - who needs employees that can regurgitate reams of text from a book? versus who needs employees who can find the most efficient effective way of solving a problem and then work as a team to implement it?!

I had the same arguments with teachers when I was in school. If you actually lay the high-school curriculum out it isn't a great deal to teach in 5 years. The fact that they can't fit it into 6 hours means there's something wrong. I spent most of my school life listening to the teacher scream at naughty kids :( and then at me when I told them I was wasting my life there! Schooling needs to come up with better ways to cater for the wide range of abilities that children have. A lot of the 'naughty' kids in my school have gone on to have good, practical jobs. They tend to be plumbers and car mechanics etc - and make good money doing it. Schools should have facilities to teach more practical abilities too.

Oh and I don't remember ever handing in much homework! I even remember getting given religious Education homework! which was a class where we spent our time cutting out cardboard Jesus's and Mohammed's (blessings and peace be upon them both) and pretending that the teacher wasn't a Christian zealot.

 

[rootX]

but the lesson most of the students learned was to cheat. Rather then actually read the chapters, they would work in teams, each person coming up with definitions for a few pages of terms and short summary of important concepts and sharing them with their teammates. I would work by myself, but I eventually found to keep up, I had to just review the terms and concepts, memorize, and not actually read the chapter.

How come that is cheating?

 

[Sorry!]

How come that is cheating?

I agree I don't think this is cheating it's just being smart. They probably took in the exact same amount of knowledge as you but did 1/10th the work. (Assuming they review the notes and trust that everyone has well written informed notes). You're decision might have best suited you but not everyone wants to waste their time doing that when their are much simpler ways. (It's like going to a lecture and you miss a few key points that the prof. or TA makes. So in the study hall you ask someone to look over their notes for things you might have missed... this isn't cheating)

 

[Moonbear]

I agree I don't think this is cheating it's just being smart. They probably took in the exact same amount of knowledge as you but did 1/10th the work.

Actually, they might have learned even more by working in teams. The educational literature has included benefits of team learning for a long time.

I'm also curious about the "no homework" but "big project" approach. Was that big project done in class time, or did you do it on your own time? Because if you did it outside school, it WAS homework, just a different type of assignment. We had those when I was in school too, and they are a good thing for honors students to do. It's not such a great assignment for the more average students, though, because they aren't yet ready for such independent work, and still need to build the basics through rote memorization.

 

[Sorry!]

Actually, they might have learned even more by working in teams. The educational literature has included benefits of team learning for a long time.

I'm also curious about the "no homework" but "big project" approach. Was that big project done in class time, or did you do it on your own time? Because if you did it outside school, it WAS homework, just a different type of assignment. We had those when I was in school too, and they are a good thing for honors students to do. It's not such a great assignment for the more average students, though, because they aren't yet ready for such independent work, and still need to build the basics through rote memorization.

Hmm, schools in Ontario, at least in my region, it's mandatory that you do big projects like this for every course all through high school.

Mark break down was normally:
15% for the assignment
15% for exam
70% for term work.

Some courses changed this up at the senior level though for instance my philosophy class had the break down of:
30% assignment
30% exam (2 part exam which took one full class and then 2 hours during exam week)
40% term

The assignments were normally essays which you had to conduct your own research, experiments, collect data etc. on your own. They were always the most challenging part of the course and if you picked the right topic to study it was going to be the most interesting and fun part.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I agree I don't think this is cheating it's just being smart. They probably took in the exact same amount of knowledge as you but did 1/10th the work.

Not reading the material but only the notes on definitions of key terms taken down by other students? As far as public school usually goes that's probably about all you really need in order to pass the class but you are generally supposed to read the actual material and the testing on terms is only a gauge of whether or not you seem to have understood and retained some of that knowledge. Essentially they are doing what they need to do to pass a quiz and not actually learning the material.

 

[Galteeth]

Not reading the material but only the notes on definitions of key terms taken down by other students? As far as public school usually goes that's probably about all you really need in order to pass the class but you are generally supposed to read the actual material and the testing on terms is only a gauge of whether or not you seem to have understood and retained some of that knowledge. Essentially they are doing what they need to do to pass a quiz and not actually learning the material.

This was the way I saw it at the time. Sure, you can memorize the terms and pass the test, but to really understand things you need to read the chapter. I understand the other point of view.

And yes, the project was homework.

 

[JasonRox]

"Hours of homework" for a 4th grader on a daily basis is too much, and I think every decent school district knows that.

A common rule of thumb is "grade times ten-minutes" through elementary school.

So you're admitting to giving too much homework. Honours physics is I assume Grade 12, which means 120 minutes of homework.

But you give 60 minutes. If every teacher did what you did, the students are DOOMED.

 

[ibnsos]

I plan my assignments to take, on average, 1 hour to complete (that's high school Honors Physics). Every now and then I get the student who says "I spent over three hours on that homework last night." I say, "let me see what you did." If they actually can show me anything, I find aimless scribbles and half-hearted attempts. My next question would be something like "What were you watching?"

I think that may be part of the problem. You give 1 hour, their math teacher gives 1 hour, their english teacher gives 1 hour, etc. If everyones giving an hour of homework per class wheres the time for sports, clubs, work and fun coming from? Only a very small portion of students are going to thrive in such an environment, most will be completely turned off to school and stop carring. I understand your class is honors, but each teacher feels their material is just as important, if not more so, than the next and forget this isn't college and most of their students won't be going into that specific field after school anyway.

I rarely had more than a half hour of homework, I did it all during lunch and breaks during class time. I didn't have a choice in HS since after school I had 3-4 hours of practice or a competition and then work.

 

[jtbell]

So you're admitting to giving too much homework. Honours physics is I assume Grade 12, which means 120 minutes of homework.

But you give 60 minutes. If every teacher did what you did, the students are DOOMED.

He said "through elementary school." Unless elementary school has changed a lot since I was in one, you have only one teacher per year through elementary school (sixth grade). Except (in my case) for the music teacher who came in only once a week or so.

When I was in high school nearly forty years ago, I regularly walked home with an armload of books for homework. Two miles. Uphill. In a blizzard.

 

[Snoogans]

I flat out refused to do any homework in High School because I felt I understood the underlying method they were teaching. That said I also refused to do practice problems in class or take any form of notes while the teacher was speaking.

The difference was I paid attention to what they were saying and made sure I understood it. I knew how I learned and enjoyed it. I did not benefit from the 'busy work' that was handed out. In fact I think a lot of people suffered for it, spending their time and energy getting it done instead of understanding what they were doing.

I did however do work when it was challenging, teaching yourself a knew topic, or applying things we learned in a new or difficult situation. In the end, all students are different, a one size fits all approach does not work.

 

[Evo]

He said "through elementary school." Unless elementary school has changed a lot since I was in one, you have only one teacher per year through elementary school (sixth grade). Except (in my case) for the music teacher who came in only once a week or so.

That's how it was when I was in elementary school too. But even back when the Evo Child was in elemntary school, I think she had 5 teachers, they changed classes, I was shocked. Supposedly they think it's better to have different teachers for different subjects.

I don't know if that's a good thing for such young children. But maybe it's just because I had one main teacher, then one for music and one for Spanish. That's theree. I guess one for math and one for science can't hurt. The main teacher would do English, history, geography, social sciences/health.

I remember my "health" book was from the 1920's and it talked about getting bobs and pin curls for girls. It was 40 years old.

 

[Sorry!]

That's how it was when I was in elementary school too. But even back when the Evo Child was in elemntary school, I think she had 5 teachers, they changed classes, I was shocked. Supposedly they think it's better to have different teachers for different subjects.

Which level of elementary school? I know for k-5 we start out with one teacher and then in grade 1 we get a gym teacher and grade 4 you have to take french and that's a separate teacher.

Grade 6-8 is also elementary school around here though (like junior high I suppose I'm not sure how it works in America) and at these grade levels you normally have a homeroom teacher that teaches sex-ed(when it came time to)/math/science a social sciences teacher for georgaphy/history/english a gym teacher and a french teacher.
So I suppose we had a maximum of 4 different teachers in elementary school.

Then high-school you had a differen teacher for mostly every course (unless they taught two courses).

 

[Evo]

Which level of elementary school? I know for k-5 we start out with one teacher and then in grade 1 we get a gym teacher and grade 4 you have to take french and that's a separate teacher.

Grade 6-8 is also elementary school around here though (like junior high I suppose I'm not sure how it works in America) and at these grade levels you normally have a homeroom teacher that teaches sex-ed(when it came time to)/math/science a social sciences teacher for georgaphy/history/english a gym teacher and a french teacher.
So I suppose we had a maximum of 4 different teachers in elementary school.

Then high-school you had a differen teacher for mostly every course (unless they taught two courses).

Elementary school here, they had a homeroom teacher, then they changed classes. I personally think they were too young for that, but that's what the local school district decided. Parent/teacher conferences in grade school meant meeting with several teachers. But I guess it was only odd from my perspective, not having gone through that. My daughters knew no different and they were fine.

 

[magpies]

I wish someone would have explained to me when I was a kid that school wasn't about learning but instead about getting a paper that says I am smart so I can impress other people with papers that say they are smart. If I had understood that understanding the material isn't as important as getting credit for understanding it I might have tryed harder in school.

 

[JasonRox]

I wish someone would have explained to me when I was a kid that school wasn't about learning but instead about getting a paper that says I am smart so I can impress other people with papers that say they are smart. If I had understood that understanding the material isn't as important as getting credit for understanding it I might have tryed harder in school.

I think you also need someone to tell you that having a degree doesn't mean you're smart.

You made progress though. Just hope that person comes around.

 

[Chi Meson]

So you're admitting to giving too much homework. Honours physics is I assume Grade 12, which means 120 minutes of homework.

But you give 60 minutes. If every teacher did what you did, the students are DOOMED.

REad the end of that sentence you quoted.

"...through the end of elementary school." That's 6th grade.

High School is a different matter. We currently are on the "Block Schedule," where students will have 3 "core classes" a day. Some have four, but usually not all four will have too much homework.

Most other classes have very little homework actually. Those are the joke classes that people are laughing at, constantly.

And the students are not DOOMED. In fact, my good students to very well, and repeatedly call back to thank me for preparing them well for college.

Those who choose not to expend the effort required are able to take the less demanding physics class.

 

[Chi Meson]

I think that may be part of the problem. You give 1 hour, their math teacher gives 1 hour, their english teacher gives 1 hour, etc. If everyones giving an hour of homework per class wheres the time for sports, clubs, work and fun coming from? Only a very small portion of students are going to thrive in such an environment, most will be completely turned off to school and stop carring. I understand your class is honors, but each teacher feels their material is just as important, if not more so, than the next and forget this isn't college and most of their students won't be going into that specific field after school anyway.

I rarely had more than a half hour of homework, I did it all during lunch and breaks during class time. I didn't have a choice in HS since after school I had 3-4 hours of practice or a competition and then work.

Sorry to hear that. Why do you feel that it was necessary to spend 3-4 hours of practice at a sport, but 1 hour of practice at physics is not worth the while?

Anyway, if Trent Cleverpants find that homework is not necessary and chooses to not practice problem solving, or if Sally Highmind feels that reading through a chapter on circular motion is beneath her dignity, they may choose to not do it. If they can still find the ability to write decent answers to conceptual questions and solve a challenging problem, then fine. I don't grade the Homework that heavily. If on lab reports and on tests, they can show they understand concepts, analyze data, and solve problems, then they get good grades.

Those that choose to regularly not do homework generally do not do well on any form of assessment.

 

[rootX]

I think that may be part of the problem. You give 1 hour, their math teacher gives 1 hour, their english teacher gives 1 hour, etc. If everyones giving an hour of homework per class wheres the time for sports, clubs, work and fun coming from? Only a very small portion of students are going to thrive in such an environment, most will be completely turned off to school and stop carring. I understand your class is honors, but each teacher feels their material is just as important, if not more so, than the next and forget this isn't college and most of their students won't be going into that specific field after school anyway.

I rarely had more than a half hour of homework, I did it all during lunch and breaks during class time. I didn't have a choice in HS since after school I had 3-4 hours of practice or a competition and then work.

Whatever prevents the idiots/unmotivated people from going into the work ...

We had an awesome math professor in our first year who would give us really hard quizzes every week. He finished the material before any other class. All engineering classes had that course with different professor. Most students did not like him and tried to stop the quizzes many times and kept on whining to the department etc... But in the end, our class average was way better than any other class. And lots of people from our class aced the final exam.