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 sebster wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
An issue with that is when you also have a teacher that isn't worth their paycheck, and you have to help tutor your child with the homework yourself, and you can't explain basic concepts to them because the way they're doing it is pants-on-head stupid.

Not really. Most parents will have to refresh their memory and give the text a read in order to help their kids even the material is identical to what they learned. And if the parent can't figure out common core, which ultimately is still just schoolwork for kids, well then there's probably issues there beyond common core not being immediately intuitive.

Might be different there, but have you seen adults (especially those in a non-STEM field) try to do math?

Also, it might have been misrepresented, but when we had the common core thread a year or so ago, with the homework example posted in it, I had a difficult time wrapping my head around what was going on in it. I don't think I could explain it to someone else with little to no understanding of math in the 5 minutes I spent staring at the problem. At least, not explained in their terms, and I'm not exactly a slouch at math.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
As I got older I definitely had less and less homework, and I always found it odd. Many teachers gave me no homework at all. I remember in elementary I'd come home with a stack of hand outs for everything.

Its definitely true in college. Maybe one small assignment a week, an in-class quiz every 1-2 weeks, and 3-5 midterms+Final.

The closest thing to any real homework would be in-class work you just do in class and turn in immediately.

I want to go to an American school!
Though hearing this, it is no wonder people always complain about the American education system.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
As I got older I definitely had less and less homework, and I always found it odd. Many teachers gave me no homework at all. I remember in elementary I'd come home with a stack of hand outs for everything.

Its definitely true in college. Maybe one small assignment a week, an in-class quiz every 1-2 weeks, and 3-5 midterms+Final.

The closest thing to any real homework would be in-class work you just do in class and turn in immediately.

I want to go to an American school!
Though hearing this, it is no wonder people always complain about the American education system.

College is actually the exception. We have excellent colleges. Its primary schools that suck.

Some of the best colleges in the world are in the US. MIT, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Berkley are just a few of some two dozen world class schools we have. Even our most low brow universities and party schools can rival those in other countries.

High education in the US is the one part of our education system that actually works the way I think schools should work (more or less).

 Sigvatr wrote:
Are you a farmer / craftsmen / etc.? Do you want your children to do the same? If yes, go for it.

If not, send them to school.

What's surprising to me, is the number of farmers that I've talked to who have 4+ year degrees in agriculture.... Farming is no longer a family business of putting seeds in the ground, add water, watch it grow, and harvest when it's time.



As to the OP, I didn't read the whole article, but I can definitely see the value in spending time "unschooling" kids. By this I mean of course, you send your kids to private/public/home school where they learn the GED required stuff (algebra, history, english/language, etc) but that is only for 8-9 months out of the year... Rather than letting them sit on the couch and play games, or spend a whole summer at an arcade, or amusement park, etc. why not have them "learn" something? Particularly if they are interested in a subject that is appropriate for them to explore?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 daedalus wrote:

 sebster wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
An issue with that is when you also have a teacher that isn't worth their paycheck, and you have to help tutor your child with the homework yourself, and you can't explain basic concepts to them because the way they're doing it is pants-on-head stupid.

Not really. Most parents will have to refresh their memory and give the text a read in order to help their kids even the material is identical to what they learned. And if the parent can't figure out common core, which ultimately is still just schoolwork for kids, well then there's probably issues there beyond common core not being immediately intuitive.

Might be different there, but have you seen adults (especially those in a non-STEM field) try to do math?

Also, it might have been misrepresented, but when we had the common core thread a year or so ago, with the homework example posted in it, I had a difficult time wrapping my head around what was going on in it. I don't think I could explain it to someone else with little to no understanding of math in the 5 minutes I spent staring at the problem. At least, not explained in their terms, and I'm not exactly a slouch at math.

I agree... My daughter just started Kindergarten, and thus far, I "get" her CC math homework. But then right now, it's been "find two things that are the same, and color them so they are the same, and explain why" A buddy of mine (an engineer of some kind) was trying to help his third grader with her math homework, and quite literally couldn't do it. The reason was, he couldn't figure out what the feth a bunch of sticks and shapes had to do with a "simple" math problem like x+y=z (hers had actual numbers, as she wasn't doing algebra yet, but illustrates the simple formula she was doing in school)

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
As I got older I definitely had less and less homework, and I always found it odd. Many teachers gave me no homework at all. I remember in elementary I'd come home with a stack of hand outs for everything.

Its definitely true in college. Maybe one small assignment a week, an in-class quiz every 1-2 weeks, and 3-5 midterms+Final.

The closest thing to any real homework would be in-class work you just do in class and turn in immediately.

I want to go to an American school!
Though hearing this, it is no wonder people always complain about the American education system.

College is actually the exception. We have excellent colleges. Its primary schools that suck.

Yeah not really. Our primary schools are really good at wht they were designed for. Pumping out a ton of people to work on mid-20th century factories.

 Easy E wrote:


Yeah not really. Our primary schools are really good at wht they were designed for. Pumping out a ton of people to work on mid-20th century factories.

Agreed. And while there's a ton of finger pointing for who to "blame" on the "problem" not being "fixed", I kind of do agree with Mike Rowe in that, somewhere along the lines we royally fethed up with this mantra of "you MUST graduate college to be worth anything of any value... if you don't graduate college, you are automatically a failure at life" And that simply isn't true, because there are people who enjoy certain lines of work where having a college degree is about as useful as the paper it's printed on.

Well, we can blame employers constantly claiming that their are no qualified candidates when it is really a cover for the following:

1. Training costs too much, can the state do it for us?

2. We really want a conveneient smoke screen to use those funny Visas to import workers.

3. What we really mean is that we can't ge the right candidates with the right skills for third world wages here.

4. Everyone is over-qualified and will leave right away if we hire them.

5. I'm afraid to make a decision to hire because I might screw it up so I will claim no one can do the job.