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.
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.
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!
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
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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.
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Busses/kids on the road before rush hour
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Extra-curricular activities are better off earlier than later, don’t want clubs running into diner time.
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better chance of getting home before dark in winter at Northern latitudes
- We shouldn’t be forcing our children to spend the majority of their waking lives chained to a desk doing menial work mixed with some valuable education and instead allow them to actually be kids and be outside doing kid things.
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.
Better chance of getting home before dark in winter at Northern latitudes.
Cries in living at 62o north
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.
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 with 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 does classes were solely presented as a video feeds. At any point you can raise your hand It would stop the video feed You ask the AI question. A 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 make 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 low as they need to. What happens when you can just walk away from a lesson and come back later?
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.
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.
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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.
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Unfortunately, nowadays, the schools fail at both
America moment
Because kids are too young to drink.
And the teachers aren’t supposed to.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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True. Sadly, many don’t get that time after they’ve done glues off homework and mandatory extracurriculars every day and twice on Saturday.
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I tend to ignore people dunking on Americans because, let’s face it, a lot of the criticism is warranted. But this seems completely out of left field. I’ve never heard this stereotype before.
We don’t infantilize people in their early 20’s. American’s don’t view 23 year olds as “naive kids.” We tend to view 18 and year olds that way but by the time you hit 22 you are definitely an adult. A lot of us move away from home for college, spend a year or two in the dorms and then get a private apartment. Finances permitting, people tend to choose not moving back in with their parents after graduation. Also keep in mind that a significant chunk of Americans don’t go to college and enter the workforce/military/whatever at 18.
What kind of dorms are you talking about? That sounds more like a boarding school than a college dorm. The only rules involved fire hazards (no candles) and no illegal substances. I don’t know anyone who has had a dorm experience even remotely like that. Maybe at extremely religious private colleges? But those would be an exception to the rule.
I know the drinking age being 21 is seen as dumb by most of the world, and a lot of Americans feel that way too. Most Americans drink before 21 anyway.
I don’t agree necessarily with arbitrary maturity lines like drinking at 18/21, but suggesting people might be thought of as adults at 14 is madness. Most kids aren’t finished going through puberty at that age and it’s different for everyone (by like 5-6 years potentially). I think 18 is the “arbitrary” age for most things because 99% of kids have finished puberty at that age and we aren’t in a rush to get those 14-18 year old working in factories.
The whole “capitalism delayed adulthood to 18” arguement doesn’t make sense to me considering very capitalist mills and sweatshops have historically used child labour throughout history.
Also, very important point most people ignore, the human brain doesn’t finish developing until around 25.
I agree with you, but isn’t the whole “the brain doesn’t finish developing until around 25” claim bogus?
Yes, your brain develops and changes throughout your life. It’s just anti-child bigotry bullshit from millennials who of all people should know better.
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So…you’re against this proposal?
School is more than a work prep
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.
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.
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
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.
As a university academic, part of the issue is precisely that university students, at least young ones, have no idea that they are supposed to treat it as a full time job. Most university students have no idea how to maintain a good working schedule, schedule work time, schedule time to do problem sets, etc. This js often a shock to the system in first year.
The successful university students are often those who come back from job placements and then actually understand what it means to work.
Anyways coming to the original question of homework in school, in principle I don’t see an issue with it. Learning takes time to absorb and students must learn how to reflect and study outside of the classroom.
In practice this rarely works because teachers treat it as a dumping ground for rote learning that they didn’t/couldn’t implement in the classroom.
I agree that from what I’ve heard, the sort of “homework” kids are assigned with aren’t fit for purpose.
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.
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.
