Why don't schools simulate a typical 9 to 5 work week for students and remove homework entirely?
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.
Because even I don't want to work 9-5.
(Also, when are teachers supposed to do things like grade work, or kids to have extracurricular activities, 9-5 is draining, add in music or sports and there's nothing left)
This was my first thought. Teachers definitely need time to assess outside of class time. I would think that assessment or grading would happen while they aren't teaching. There should be a system where teachers grade outside of teaching time or during "homework/study hall" time. You would teach math for 6 hours and grade math for 2 or some breakdown that makes sense. I don't want to make teachers work anymore than they already do. The current system doesn't seem to respect them either way.
Also, why do teacher need to do all the grading?
Who do you propose else does it? Teachers know their students and can learn from tests etc and help them do better. additionally to the original argument, it’s not just grading that teachers have to do as well, also lesson/course planning, setup for lessons (eg slideshow/lab/printing). There’s just a lot for teachers to do outside of the classroom.
Well most universities have TAs that either just do all grading, assist with grading, or help with lesson plans and it seems to work okay.
In an ideal system, there isn't a reason that grade school teacher couldn't have a TA that is also present in the class and familiar with the students.
Well you would have to hire someone to do that, and it’s my understanding that teachers are mostly underpaid and understaffed, so to at a minimum double the number of teachers would be excessively costly, to the point where even imagining it is laughable.
Not that I don’t like the idea, it’s just not feasible.
See: "In an ideal system"
This whole discussion is complete fantasy to begin with since changing the fundamental scheduling of the public education system would require a complete overhaul anyway.
Well, you assess knowledge by using simplified electronic quizzes to take the busy work out of it, then dive into the "show your work" for those students who are struggling. And students who have mastered the material can work with those who are struggling and serve as a force multiplier. Tutoring others makes them even better students, and those tutored will have more 1:1 time than they could possibly get with a teacher.
Khan Academy has been working with schools in the Bay Area for more than a decade and the results are pretty astounding. Salman Khan's TED Talk in 2011 is an exciting glimpse of the possible, and by all accounts those who use Khan Academy software and methods are reaping the benefits.
Can you tell me more about how Khan Academy have worked with schools in the Bay Area? I just finished uni and now have my teaching degree. I work in Sweden but I would like to read more about this.
I just know what Salman Khan has said about it -- watch his videos for more.
It isn't even just grading work. In my high school classroom I have students ranging from a second grade reading level to post grad. Every reading, worksheet, science lab, project needs to have accommodations and modifications written in to encompass that. That takes time.
Or creating a new lesson. Making a new lesson for a 50 minute period takes at least an hour.
Clearly you and I participated in very different school experiences. In highschool, I got on my bus each day at 7:30 and got back off the bus at 16:00. If you subtract the 30 minute lunch period, that adds up to almost exactly 8 hours each day.
Factoring in the 2 hours of homework that was regularly assigned, I actually have substantially more free-time as a working 9-5 adult (my school did not have "study hall" time). A young me would have done unspeakable things for a chance at abolishing homework!
Just because students are at school does not mean they are in a typical class. Our school has athletics right after classes. We got out about 5. Just make other options, perhaps skills, clubs, study hall, etc.
Some of it can be done during study hall, while kids are doing their work.
There are compelling reasons send them 9-5
There are also compelling reasons not to
Teachers spend a non-trivial amount of time post class working on previous assignments, future assignments, setting up tests coordinating with other teachers and staff. If they start all this at 5, they're stuck at the office until very late.
Busses/kids on the road before rush hour
Extra-curricular activities are better off earlier than later, don't want clubs running into diner time.
better chance of getting home before dark in winter at Northern latitudes
Cries in living at 62^o^ north
I'm a private teacher and I see so many kids who are like, I am in school from 8-3:30, then from 3:50-5 I'm in softball, then I'm in a study group from 5:30-7. I go to bed at 9.
Kids aren't allowed to be kids much of the time anymore. Most everything seems to be in the duality of either "Glued to their devices" or "Endless cycle of extracurricular and studying"
I absolutely refused to do homework back in the day. I had one math teacher that took your median grade and used that as the final grade. I would calculate to the assignment what it took to get an a, and do that much homework between arriving to class and the time she checked homework in.
I would always rush to complete my assignments early in other classes do any homework that I could get done before class change. I always aced my tests.
I think the worst was when the teacher would assign us to read ahead of chapter for the next days lesson. Yeah so you want me to be miserable tonight, and double bored tomorrow.
I also hated that the teachers never communicated. They would unintentionally group-assign hours of workload in non-GT classes.
For #4, with current school hours, you either go to school in darkness or you go home in darkness. That's just reality for those who live further north.
This is true, I would argue that it's relatively better have the darkness be early in the morning less mischief happens.
In the winter, even at the most southern point (Windsor, ON) Canada gets dark around 4pm.
What if all the honework in the future is done online and multiple choice... if its a written asignment it can be graded by an AI. Bada bing teachers have not much more to complain about. If you are a teacher and are still complaining about having to grade homework, its probably because your administration is stuck in 2007.
A better argument would be, is homework worth it? Once AI has significantly advanced to be trustworthy enough to grade, it will be trustworthy enough to do the homework.
Want to be forward facing? How long before AI replaces teachers? What if classes were solely presented as video feeds. At any point you can raise your hand, It would stop the video feed. You ask the AI question. It formulates a response and then tests you to make sure that you understand the answer before moving on.
Imagine getting the equivalent of one-on-one tutoring in every subject.
What if instead of milestone tests the AI just follows along and makes sure you understand what's going on? What if the next day it does a quick recap on the previous days lesson and asks you a couple of questions to make sure you get it?
What happens when each individual learns at their own pace and goes as fast or as slow as they need to. What happens when you can just walk away from a lesson and come back later?
Edit: I just cleaned up some text from voice dictation.
There are a couple of flaws with this. I spend a great deal of time structuring lessons to get students working with each other. I have met, and taught, too many people who have said that the only reason they stuck out through high school was the relationships they developed with thier peers and staff. We've seen what happens when students only do solo computer work, and it isn't pretty.
There's no requirement to be socially ostracized. You can still have groups, clubs, online and offline connections.
I suspect most students will likely find they have more spare/social time. When they can learn at their own pace with individual attention.
You may find that less kids feel like they are toughing it out, under these scenarios.
I use the Modern Classroom Model for my classroom for the last couple of years which is a self-paced system. In 2020 during our zoom school year I was also fully self paced. Here are a few things I've found.
A handful of students will shut down with self-paced learning. They have low self-efficacy and are failure avoidant.
Another handful of students will hand off their chromebook to "the smart kid" in a different class and have them take the mastery checks for them. They will end up bombing the mastery assessment, but teenagers are not known for their executive function.
A different handful have limited capacity for additional cognitive load. It is hard to do school when you don't know where you are sleeping that night or some other chronic trauma. They thrive when being told explicitly what to do, how to do it.
Yet another handful will fly through the curriculum because they long ago figured out the game of school. Yet when I check in and ask deep, meaningful questions to see if they really understand the topic, they can't.
Young gen Z and gen alpha really need to work on social skills and work ethic. Solo-self-paced experiences don't cover it.
I disagree on the work ethic point, but that could be its own whole rant about how the concept of "work ethic" is fundamentally flawed in a society where many jobs simply aren't fulfilling and are only done for the carrot on a stick of being able to buy food and a roof over your head.
But on everything else, I wholeheartedly agree as somebody who came to hate the school system but loves to learn. It's not just a Gen Z and younger issue, though I imagine they have it even worse considering the pandemic. I think it's a flaw in how the school system is designed. School focuses on solo work almost to the exclusion of collaboration, and life just doesn't work that way. Society is a collaborative effort, and even working at a cubicle farm on a solo project, it's not like you can't talk to your fellow workers to help solve problems. Plus, the pass or fail mechanism of the grading system ends up punishing mistakes and either creates risk aversion outright, kids who don't bother because they've failed so many times that they believe it's not worth even trying, or those kids who do well without trying until they get to later grades and have no study habits, who then learn that if they're not instantly good at something, then it's not worth putting effort into because they don't know how to be bad at something long enough to get good.
I'm certainly no teacher, but I think the issue is that the foundational framework of our current school system was designed to create workers who could be expected to work on a factory line. People who could be given a short and simple list of repetitive tasks to follow, without the need for collaboration or anything more mentally demanding. Add in that many school subjects (at least when I was in school 15-20 years ago) lack any real-world context to their purpose, just "learn this because you have to," and I'm not surprised that kids also have no drive to dig deeper than a surface level understanding. I remember the mentality of "just remember it long enough to do the test, and then dump it for the next set of things you have to learn." It got me through high school.
AI doesn't know what it doesn't know, let alone what somebody else doesn't know.
"Understanding" is just something that AI can't do. It doesn't know what your words mean, or what it's own word mean.
The advantage of curriculum is that you could feed it a textbook or a dozen and have that be the only information it knows. It doesn't need to know everything, just the specific criteria that a government sets as baseline knowledge for specific tiers.
The science will improve with time.
AI isn't good enough to grade written responses. If your referring to chat gtp and the like, they meant to be factual. Also online multiple choice homework can suck awfully depending on the course; physics comes to mind in this scenario since it requires an answer with precision and matching units to mark the homework as correct and that can make it really difficult to resolve and even if the teacher sets it up for partial credit if you get it right after attempts, if you can't figure it out it is a 0. That physics homeaork destroyed and consumed my entire life lol
God I hope not I can't stand ai grading an answer can be partially right or even wrong but cause interesting discussion from a human while badly implemented AI (which is what schools likily would have access to) will just give a percentage failure rate and move on.
AI is nowhere near good enough to be trusted with grading written assignments, and won't be for a very long time.
Schools don't exist solely to prepare you for soul crushing work. It is supposed to actually educate you.
Unfortunately, nowadays, the schools fail at both
America moment
Working 9-to-5 is miserable. It only helps if the wolk you're doing is interesting.
For a child, school is usually not 'interesting'. Children shouldn't be subjected to misery.
P.s. Props to you for saying you're in the US, not just assuming it.
Because kids are too young to drink.
And the teachers aren't supposed to.
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.
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.
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.
I like the idea, too. It has not been shown to have a meaningful positive effect up to now, as far as I know.
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?
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.
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:
research summary
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Instead of adopting the archaic 9-5, how about just eliminate homework?
How about we eliminate homework and switch to a 32 hour (or whatever) work week...
A lot of rural districts are going down to 4 day school days (although some are 10 hour days) in an attempt to attract teachers.
Not sure how well that is going for families, given that it's difficult to have one parent at home when the kids are home an extra day.
As a teacher I 100% support this, it would be much better for teachers and students. It won't happen though unless parents are also given a 4 day work week so they can look after their kids.
Ontario, Canada has all but eliminated homework entirely until high school. There is absolutely no good data saying it helps in acquisition or retention of skills over the long term. Completion of homework is also strongly correlated along class lines. If Suzy has a stable home, is fed well, and gets good sleep, she will likely have time and resources to complete homework. If Todd doesn’t, he likely won’t. We should focus on the in-school instruction. As far as the length of day? If you keep the kids longer it will cost more so it’s unlikely many jurisdictions will raise taxes for that expenditure.
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.
When would the teachers have time to lesson plan or grade if they're teaching kids 8 hours a day?
Just because students are at school from 9 to 5 doesn't mean every single teacher has to be in front of a class from 9 to 5.
I mean, nationwide teacher shortage, overfilled classrooms.... If the kids are there then all the teachers are working the whole time.
While the kids are doing whatever they used to call homework in class. Split classes between teachers: one supervises while one works.
You don't manage a lot of kids, do you?
If they did, we wouldn't have had to read that.
Or If they do... they absolutely shouldn't
It's literally what they do in my wife's class where they have 24 each but hey what would I know
"My wife's a primary school teacher so I know enough to solve education issues"
Here is a functional solution you want to ignore because you look down on primary school teachers
"Functional" does not equal "practical", nor does it even remotely equate to "looking down on primary school teachers"
Let's go ahead and ignore every other "functional solution" because it's too (insert excuse) to work.
What we're currently doing in the US works so well, it's why we lead the world in education... I think. Idk, I never learned any nuance besides standardized tests. But I'm ok, teachers and kids are just lazy
You might want to look up the educational standards for lower grades to HS.
It is better at the college level, though.
No its because I am a teacher and you have no idea what you're talking about
18 hours to think that up? Yeah, you're not a teacher.
I'm in a different country, dipshit. And I'm not a slave to my phone, like you.
One of the biggest lessons I've learned since teaching is that the less someone knows about education, the more certain they are that they're the only one smart enough to fix it.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mount%20stupid%20xkcd&iax=images&ia=images&iai=http://theengineeringmanager.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/20111228.gif
"B-b-but my wife/mother/husband is a teacher and they agree!!!!!!!"
No. They just want you to shut the fuck up.
"I went to school! I know how it works!"
You were born. That doesn't mean you know how to give birth.
Uh, have you met any animals? Childbirth is pretty instinctual. Where are you on that mount stupid? I suggested an option, I didn't anywhere say it was the only one. The fact that I haven't sat through a credential program doesn't mean I'm summarily dismissed from the conversation. I'd wager your entire annual salary that my degrees are better than yours.
The more you talk, the stupider you sound. Quit while you're behind.
All the money in my teachers pay teachers account says I'm ahead, but sure.
The fact that you don't have the relevent degrees, experience or knowledge means you are summarily dismissed from the conversation. You obviously have nothing of value to contribute, yet you insist that you should be listened to. That makes you either an idiot, or a troll. Or both.
Oh, I do have the relevant experience. I'm just getting you to admit you disdain your loved ones. It's really quite fun.
Edit: wait, faulty assumption. You're one of those people who doesn't have loved ones, aren't ya
Shit or get off the pot coward
Wat
So are you asking for twice as many teachers or twice as many kids per teacher?
The struggle to hire teachers is already high and the GOP is trying to put as many obstacles as possible to slowly strangle public schools and shift to charter/private schools.
The same time they use now?... in their free time. But like, still for free.
Because they care so much, time/money means nothing to them. Otherwise, they shouldn't be educators to begin with, because they obviously don't care about the children. Who here is even thinking about the children?!
People on the internet have gotten so stupid, I'm not entirely sure whether this was meant as /s or not. Really an indictment on the internet as a whole.
I feel that viscerally, so I wanted to confirm that I was being sarcastic. The, "Who here is even thinking about the children?!" was my attempt at /s without actually putting it. But I don't blame you for having doubts lol
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
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.
Schools in the US were designed to prepare kids for factory jobs initially. A lot of the structure related to that has changed but the amount of time you spend at school hasn't. Realistically you'd want a kid to spend less time at school. But schools are now used to prepare kids for working all day and then giving up their free time to their employer. That may be a little tin hat-ie, but it's at least partially true. However as a kid a few extra hours at school wouldn't have cut it for me. I preferred to do my work at home, I was also super distractible because I had adhd. Additionally as others have said that just wouldn't be feasible for a lot of kids/families.
I knew a professional anthropologist that raised a couple of kids while doing extended field work in the Amazon basin. They got maybe an hour or two a day of formal instruction during their grade school years. When they returned to the US, they tested at well above grade level and had no trouble adjusting.
I’m sure there was a big emotional adjustment to the endless hours in a classroom after being able to play in the trees most of the day, but they grew up and got established in their professions unusually quickly. I suspect it was due to the enriched social environment provided by having cool ass parents.
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'm not sure if adding more time in school would be helpful even if there's no homework. I have a 9-5 job, and by 3:30 I'm already mentally checked out for the day, just watching the ole clock tick slowly to five. Not to mention that kids aren't paid to go to school, so the kids wouldn't see any tangible benefits of a longer day. In theory they would learn more, but most kids aren't thinking that way and there's only so much a kid can learn in one day anyway.
When I was in high school, they added 25 minutes to every day to build in snow days. If we did not use them, school just ended earlier than scheduled. This could serve basically the same function, to shorten the school year.
However, that's not even necessarily a good thing for learning... I think year-round school is generally accepted to be the best way to learn having many shorter gaps rather than one long summer. I suppose it could build in an extra week or two of breaks normally not present in a year-round school schedule.
If they had school until 5, when will the football team practice?
Bonus, let’s nix the football team too. We don’t need the traumatic brain injuries.
I very much enjoy sports but I don't think education and preparation should be displaced by playing a game for entertainment. School is for learning. Maybe there should be a trade school for sports that happens later or is auxillary to normal education.
Exercise/sports have so many positive benefits in the context of education. The benefits toward discipline and physical health are obvious, but they also promote greater mental sharpness and spiritual well-being.
Anecdotally, most of my mathematics professors were big on exercise in one form or another. I had a older professor who could easily sprint up the six flights of stairs to his office, and I had another professor who was into running marathons. I even heard that at one point, all the logicians at Cornell became very into weightlifting.
Anyways, my point is that any well-rounded education should involve sports (though, maybe not necessarily American football; I can agree with the other user on that front).
I fully disagree on the "sports" aspect in its entirety. Exercise, yes, obvious benefits, and there's such a great variety than you definitely can find something you enjoy.
But some people simply don't like team sports or competitions.
I will always prefer to ride my bike, lift weights, etc. than EVER play baseball, tennis, football, or soccer ever again.
Football should not be a disproportionately large portion of a school's budget when they could also be offering things like group classes, or funding for other clubs which hold functions for non-sports athletics.
The thing is this: You wouldn't have known what kind of activities you enjoy unless you had been exposed to a variety of them at some point. I absolutely think part of the education system's job is to expose kids to a wide variety of activities, help them push their boundaries regarding what they think is fun, and experience mastering different things.
I don't know about your education system, but it seems like there may be a too one-sided focus on some sports. I remember from my time in grade school that we were exposed to pretty much everything from hockey/football (the kind you play with your feet)/basketball to dance/gymnastics/weight lifting/track and field, etc.
During the 9-5.
I think we have homework because it’s cheap.
It would benefit the kids much more if they had extracurricular activities, clubs, and workshops after lecture classes, where they could actually apply what they learn during lectures.
But that would be expensive & hurt businesses bottom lines via increased taxation.
I spent about 2 decades as a teacher. I felt pretty strongly that kids needed unstructured time outside of school to reflect on things, observe the world, whatever. I rarely gave homework, yet my students did about the same as the students who had different teachers (yeah, they use those standardized tests to judge teachers. Well, technically it was supposed to be to learn new skills in how to teach from teachers who excelled on certain topics.).
I got so many freaking complaints and questions about my policy. The parents just could not deal with their kids not having homework. I always thought that, for parents, homework demands were a lazy way to feel involved in what their kids were doing at school as well as sidestep having actual conversation and bonding with their kids.
Yeah, that’s kind of what I mean. I remember my shop class in middle school was one of my favorites, and I would have loved to just be able to stay there after school with someone making sure we were being safe, but otherwise letting us experiment & invent.
Thank you for caring
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.
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.
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. 🤷
If you didn't learn that stuff, that's on your parents, not your teachers. They're not there to raise you.
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.
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.
All of that seems fairly important for continued success at work.
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.
Some people don't have parents. But I generally agree with you.
I think there is some nefarious reasons for the current setup but here's a point I didn't see. People and children especially can't learn for 8 hours straight learning needs to be broken up with play time or eating or socializing. Then reinforcement of what you learned earlier before you go to sleep can be helpful. Ideally I don't think homework should be learning new subjects or really hard at all it should be a cake walk of whatever was learned during that day.
My high-school biology teacher suggested that we study during commercials with whatever our favorite 30 minute show is. She claimed it helps retention set in, and you will even link concepts to the show further assisting in information retention.
Sounds like a good teacher.
"Ideally I don't think homework should be learning new subjects or really hard at all it should be a cake walk of whatever was learned during that day."
As professional educators, that's what many of us intend. In my case, many kids just don't really practice the new stuff in class, so when they get home they think it's new. I fixed that issue a few years ago, but it's crazy what a hard time some kids have with pretty basic self-regulation. I don't blame anyone in particular, it's just tough.
My daughter has ADHD and sitting through six hours of school is hard enough of her. Eight would give her ridiculous amounts of stress and anxiety. Sure, one day she'll have to build up to 8 hours when she gets a job, but she's got to build up to it. Now eliminating homework (except maybe reading literature), I'm all for that.
At least with a job there is potential to find work that is mentally stimulating.
And working a job typically isn't the same as school. School is for learning. That 6 hours where you need to be actively aware and absorbing information. Learning new things. Figuring out how those things fit into the real world. Recalling that information in stressful environments for tests. It's mentally taxing for a lot of kids as is. When I was in school, most days I was mostly checked out by the end of that 6 hours. I can't imagine adding a couple more hours in there. And then have to ride the bus home in rush hour traffic!
But now that I have that baseline education I can check out all day at work and still be more productive than a lot of those around me who stay engaged the full day. Give me eight hours. The most mentally taxing thing I have to do now is pretend to like some of my coworkers during meetings.
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 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.
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.
In the USA, work doesn't end at 5, and there's always homework. That's where your proposal goes wrong.
It does if you don't let your boss control every waking minute
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.
Because Christ almighty do you want schools to be nothing but factories that churn out adults ready to go to the office mines
I'm just thinking of the many students I taught who worked full time jobs after school to help support their families.
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.
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:
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!
Not that I think this is the way, I don't, but...
Im in construction. 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.
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?
That wouldn't change the length of the school day, just shift it (from 7 to 3), so I don't know why you would eliminate homework for that. The big problem would be for after-school activities, especially outdoor activities that need daylight.
School is 7-3 where you are? It's more like 8:30-3:30 here
8:10-3:10 here. And they do not want students there before 7:50. That makes it impossible to get to work on time. Luckily my boss lets me shift my day somewhat.
I was "homeschooled" in someone else's home with thier family. The dad hired his elementary school teacher to teach us. We went to school from 8-12 with a 30 min break in between. I left public school the middle of 1st grade and went to "homeschool" for two years. When it came time for me to transfer back (we moved) I tested into 5th grade, although that's not where I was placed. I never had any homework.
The family of five that I was schooled with, all finished the curriculum at the age of 16.
There is absolutely no reason us public schools should function the way they do. The only positive I saw, was that I was more active and socialized. A few decades later, and its not like any of that made much of a difference. People are more to themselves than ever, not to mention overweight...
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.
School in the US is designed to indoctrinate kids to be slaves.
It's too early for this
"Why no 9 to 5 school week simulation for students"
My first guess is: because kids are much more likely to rebel and destroy stuff than adults whose income depend entirely on them keeping their heads down. But what Senshi posted earlier in this topic is crucial, too, it is possible to keep kids inside schools for longer times without them wanting to destroy everything.
Not even just income, health insurance and future job prospects as well 🙃
I have the money to quit and wander the world for a year or two, but I would be abandoning my health insurance and it would be a huge black mark on my resume assuming I didn't concoct some lie to cover it.
If you work a 9-5 in America like I do, you are tied to your labor in much the same way serfs were, you are just better compensated and can switch masters if you find someone to take you on
Because most young people require more instruction than simply hearing the lesson taught once and never actually applying the knowledge to the assigned homework. Repetition is what creates neural pathways, and eliminating homework would be disastrous for any school board. But yeah, the day itself should probably reflect times people are generally expected to be working. It would condition students to expect those kinds of working hours as they get older, and it would help families synchronize their schedules.
Homework for elementary schoolers has been proven to have very minimal effects
If you just sit a kid down with a textbook and a notebook to do math problems, they don't have any feedback whether what they're doing is correct. So in that capacity, I can see why it wouldn't be a great use of time. However, if there is an actual guided methodology to homework, I think you'll find that students reviewing lessons taught to them will perform far better than students who do not. What society needs to reconcile is why we send kids to school in the first place. Is it to learn? Or is it because adults HAVE to be at work and we need some kind of babysitter? It seems like the latter in North America.
I always thought the reason school days go from 7-3 or 8-4 (or whatever) is usually more about bus scheduling and logistics. And high schools historically start earliest (despite it being worse for teens) so older siblings will be home and can watch younger siblings after school.
Maybe that’s just what I was told growing up but if every school did 9-5, they would need more bus drivers.
Yup, we can't get bus drivers so they stagger schedules. One local district had the secondary campuses start later, and the parents have complained precisely because the younger kids have no one to watch them in the afternoon. Plus 5 year-olds aren't really at their best learning at 7:30 in the morning. When I taught at a high school we moved our start time feom 8 to 8:30. The kids were still tired because they just stayed up later. Most of my tired kids were up working or caring for siblings - or their own children. Starting later didn't really make a difference.
In Germany some schools offer exactly that in day schoolGanztagsschule.
In theory students get time to do homework in a dedicated hour and the last hours are filled with extracurricular activities.
But often times teachers assign too much homework and there‘s always at least one day when you have maths other sth else in the late afternoon, what‘s hell for everyone involved.
I wouldn‘t send my children there, but there are families who are thankful for this system and children who are capable to live an 8-4 day.
In theory, the reasons for work and school are different. Homework is given out as it is thought to help the student learn more.
You can get into some issues with being expected to perform some work training off the clock, but this is usually a lot more frowned upon.
Its 9-3 or 3.30 in Australia (at least my part of aus)
Oh, hell no.
I would recommend 7 to 11
7am always felt a bit too early for me. I would say that 9 to 1 is a lot better. It's still exactly the same period, it just happens later in the day, two hours later to be exact.
But I guess some people enjoy waking at dawn. And to those people, I say "good for you".
IIRC there's research saying 9 or even 10 is a better start time for learning for young people
My high school worked like that. It was great. Got all their shit done on their time using their resources. Almost never had to take anything home outside of big projects.
My high school worked like that. It was great. Got all their shit done on their time using their resources. Almost never had to take anything home outside of big projects.
I tried that in the university. It was a terrible idea and had to fail a couple of matters. Having exams at the same time and date didn't help, either.
I strongly agree. It would make commutes easier for everyone, cut down on daycare and latchkey children as well. There also shouldn’t be extracurricular “practices” where a parent has to get their child back to the school campus for some sort of rehearsal or game practice. This should be part of the 9-5 schedule. Add a study period for any “homework” where students can also get help.