Requiring homework on a consistent basis is not an evidence-based practice and actually introduces worse outcomes for kids whose parents/guardians are less present, which disproportionately affects poor kids and kids of color.

Why do we do it? Because there are some parents (you know the ones) who will pester the school and lobby for dropping their funding if they don’t see consistent tangible output from their students. If the kids aren’t coming home with half a dozen papers each day and a bag of books, how can we verify that the teachers aren’t just sitting around on their phones all day not doing shit and collecting a paycheck WITH OUR TAX DOLLARSSSSS?!!!?!?!

So, homework largely serves as busy work to signal to parents that teachers are doing things. And the system is designed for parents to actively encourage and participate in the development of the skills required to regularly complete homework independently by high school. Kids whose parents have less free time are inherently disadvantaged, often labeled as bad kids or lazy early on, and can have a seat on the prison train before they’ve entered middle school. It also harms kids’ self esteem and sets an unhealthy precedent for expectations around work-life balance.

There isn’t a single thing that homework accomplishes by accident which couldn’t be accomplished better on purpose via other methods. Fuck homework.

  • silent_water [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    10 months ago

    sorry, meant that as presently constituted, homework is coercive and that there’s no clear relationship between grades and understanding because of that fact.

    The story of the student who refuses to do homework because they ace their tests isn’t an ADHD thing, it’s a story as old as time.

    didn’t mean to suggest that it was an exclusive relationship, I was just sharing my personal circumstances. is infuriating to realize how much more I would have gotten out of school with medication and training on the aspects of learning that have very little to do with the specific material and more to do with “how to study”.

    If they continue rising in that discipline every student eventually reaches a point where they can’t ace their tests without studying. It’s usually a harsh awakening for them.

    do most subjects continue with testing past the first year or two of undergrad? the math-oriented curricula drop exams at some point, presumably because you can’t really test understanding via exams once the subject matter gets abstract. what got me to start doing the homework was 1. it was actually interesting/enjoyable, 2. I couldn’t follow the lectures while skipping the assignments and 3. I couldn’t make heads or tails of other classes I’d ostensibly completed the prereqs for. the switch from “do the same thing over and over” to “prove X” and eventually to “either prove X or surface a counterexample” helped immeasurably.

    more than a decade later, I can’t remember how to compute anything but I’ve never forgotten how to prove the unsolvability of fifth-degree polynomials, despite the fact that I’ve done way more of the former than the latter. the school system does such a shit job at separating things that require drilling from things that require a toolbox of skills - the way homework is constructed until late in undergrad doesn’t differentiate these two very different classes of learning.