does anyone here like home work

What you should get is not always the same as what you want to get. Now, get busy, Bec.

I agree that children should not get home work. Rather, children should be kept at school for 8 hours to do their work at school.

The reason we have home work is that we give kids too short a school day.

Of course, doing education right would cost more.

Bec-21 wrote:


Yes. I love it. Don't get enough of it these days, though.

i think i would've tolerated it with computer and internet at my disposal...

I would have made straight a's if I had internet handy.
Talk about not having to study . sheesh.

Well, if you take into account the kids are at school from 8:00 until 3:00 in the afternoon - 7 hours is more than enough time for them to learn adequately and not have to bring home homework. There are so many fillers at school...lots of piddling going on...but - when you have 23 kids and in some cases 30 - I don't see that can be helped.

I believe ebrown is right when he says it would cost more to run it as it should be run...so I guess homework is a necessary evil.

sorry bec

I always liked and disliked homework, from elementary school through university and the many classes I took after that. First of all, the child in me, often doesn't like "having to" do anything - a primitive reaction, I'll admit, that is still kicking after all these years. But as an adult, one mostly chooses one's own "self-assignments", if not always.

On the other hand, a lot of my understanding has come from the process of hearing something at school, understanding it or not, then thinking about it at home later by means of some assignment (or, as an adult, going over my notes) -
this is a way of secondary processing for me so that the information gets deeper than short term memory. Not everyone learns something forever instantly. Sometimes new knowledge fits into old patterns in the mind, and is just added data. Sometimes it is largely new learning - and to me that takes some processing.

Then there's the matter of reading. I don't know how much reading goes on now at whatever level of school, but I read vast amounts of material by the time I was going through university, and in my later studies in landscape architecture, and in that field's study, I had huge hours of design assignments. One builds up to that kind of effort by starting however lightly as a child, I think. It has to do with increasing concentration over time, so that with practice at concentration, one gets more efficient.

I have read articles against homework and can understand the point of view; I find that I still come down on the other side.

I guess I'll add that I do understand that learning varies - I've been interested in the a2k discussion about how some learn so much better with movement as a variable. And I understand that not all children in a class will be aiming at hoofing it through academia. In any case, I think homework in the younger years should be relatively light, even way light. It's just that I still favor "some".

I think the positives is that homework teaches you more than the subject itself. And I believe in the earlier years that is more important than the subject matter.

It teaches to organize your time and to learn how to keep track of what you need to do especially as you begin to work on reports and projects. My ten year old doesn't like some of her homework - like math problems and things like that - but she does love her projects and reports. Most of these things within a broad subject like endanaged species - she gets to pick her own subject. It makes it more interesting as she chooses her own project.

Do you have any sort of homework that you enjoy doing?

I need to qualify this - I feel it is more important for the younger children - elementary especially - to be able to come home and play after such a structured day. But it is no longer like that. They have to come home and knuckle down some more. 7 hours is more than enough time to cover what they need to ages 5-10, in my opinion anyway.

I see what Linkat is saying and feel she is right once a child is in highschool and beyond. And some homework is amazingly fun while the rest is just busy work if you ask me. No point in some of it.

Yes, mismi, I see what you mean re younger. I'm not meaning five days a week of homework, but that the concept should be worked into. I remember that in the fourth grade I 'had' to go to the library and write a book report on one of the presidents. (They had a set of children's books on the presidents, plus encyclopedias). That was probably a one page report. It forced me to use the school library, which I think I remember being afraid to enter all by myself, to check the book out, to read the book, and think about a subject on my own time, even if it was for just a couple of paragraphs. It was also a beginning to writing on one's own, and penmanship practice. (Heh, that used to be a subject). That might have been the only assignment like that in the whole semester, but it was an eye opener.

My daughter in kindergarten got homework. I didn't see it as a problem because it was 10 minutes of homework on Monday and Wednesday nights (she went to school - Monday, Wednesday and Friday). It was more to get them in role of learning to plan and doing a little bit more.

I don't have an issue if it is a reasonable amount. I do think that my soon to be 5th grader gets too much. Although the projects are great and they do give them some time in school to work on them. Alot of there homework is studying for tests too - I think they should have no written homework on the nights before a test (which often times they do)

As I recall, my homework never took more than an hour. After which I could frolic and play. Today I'm an actor and have to memorize scripts and that takes a helluva lot of work.