The Glade 4.0

for not turning it in.



I find it amusing that she's so concerned over the "award" (which does have a little potential as bully-bait) but apparently isn't concerned with making her kid do homework. I love the last line.. she wasn't aware of a problem, but enrolled her in a homework-assistance program anyhow? I wonder if the award had anything to do with that realization.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Obviously the after-school homework program is a huge success.

Where was this when I was growing up and needed it? I'd have been a shoe in.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I didn't make up excuses. I just told them I knew the material and tests and quizzes would prove it so why should I waste my time when I can do something else that teaches me new things?

They never had an answer just dutifully gave me zero's for not doing busy work. **** assholes.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I was never that forthright.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

No answer is needed. You didn't do the assignment, so what grade should you have gotten? Zero sounds right to me. Maybe negative points for smugness.

Homework is more about "fairness" now than it is about learning material. All the other students had to spend two hours on homework, so you have to as well. This doesn't stop in high school either. You can't use the same source for more than one college paper, even in completely different classes. That's "self-plagiarism" and we can't have people taking shortcuts, everyone has to spend X hours doing this paper.

In high school and middle school that's completely reasonable. Just because a kid claims they "know the material" and don't need to do the homework doesn't make it so. If regular kids see high achievers getting away with this, they'll do the same thing and likely parents will too, followed by lawyers.

The way around this is to have better gifted programs (and gifted programs, not special help for kids with problems should be the priority) where the best performers and the large bulk of the regular students aren't being directly compared.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Homework is an asinine solution in search of a problem. If a child doesn't understand the material, it's their responsibility to fill in the gaps. If that level of responsibility is "too much," then there needs to be a separate period of the school day for "homework."

My father had a professor at Yale that graded in an interesting manner.

On an assignment or test if you answered a question correctly, you got positive point for however much it was worth. If you left it blank, you got zero points. If you answered it incorrectly, you got negative points that varied depending on how stupid your answer was.

"Average after first test, negative 52!" (spoken with a heavy asian accent)

I just never bothered much with homework, didn't give excuses other than "I didn't get it done." Then I would ace the tests. Usually I ended up with a B or C+ for the semester or quarter and a warning that I couldn't keep this up.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Hey going to hold me hostage I'm going be as **** smug as I want - the least they can do with the people they kidnap is to let them live their own lives once they are free ranged.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I claimed and then I backed it up with 98%+ quiz and test scores done in half the time than the rest of the class. I knew more about physics than my physics teacher!

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

1) You were never kidnapped. If you're over 16 (or whatever in your state) you're there by choice. If you're under 16, you're there by your parent's choice.
2) The teacher's requirements were clear. You chose not to follow them. Whether you like the instructions or not is irrelevant.
3) If you chose not to follow clear requirements, you need to deal with your chosen consequences. You don't "deserve" a different grade on a required assignment because you did well on another assignment. This sort of behavior always bugs me. It's like a speeder that gets pulled over and then goes to court to explain why the posted speed limit should have been higher. You knew what it was, and chose not to follow it. Pay your ticket like a man. If you're going to break the rules, at least be man enough to own it.
4) Yes, you can be as smug as you want. How far did it get you in class?

Awesome. Now imagine how good your overall grade would have been if you fulfilled your requirements.

All of this.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

That view, combined with public school systems being either unwilling or unable to allocate significant resources towards exceptional and gifted students, instead of holding them back at the mercy of the more average student's ability to learn comprises about 3/5 of what is wrong with our system.

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Tangu Matraa

Homework doesn't hold anybody back. It doesn't matter if you "know the material." Homework teaches you how to focus and buckle down and do your freakin' job. If you can't do it in gradeschool, you're certainly not going to be able to do it in University when you don't have a professor breathing down your neck and can do whatever you want. But then you're going to need it. Homework teaches good habits early. It's not something new, and it's not something that the best schools (public or private) avoid. It encourages people to learn personal responsibility, and I would think that's something someone like Elmarnieh would appreciate.

As for the rest, yes, an adequate "gifted program" is a very good idea, but it certainly wouldn't lighten their work load, if done right. They'd still have homework, but they'd need it to learn the more difficult subject material.

And yes, schools can go overboard with homework. They forget kids need to also be kids, they're not full time students at all hours of the day.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I have no inherent problem with homework. I have major issues with homework that serves as nothing more than busy work for a gifted student who learned and comprehended everything (s)he is being asked to waste time on, at home, in the first ten minutes of class. This is how you teach very bright people to hate learning.

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Tangu Matraa

I wish I had learned good at-home study and homework habits. I excelled much the same as Elmo did. I did not set aside time at home, ever, to study or complete homework. My test and quiz grades stayed high, but when the work started getting harder, I bailed rather than try to learn it better and overcome.

I would do Highschool all over again if I could with what knowledge I have gained. It is a time in my life that has shaped me into what I am today and I could be so much better.

H8 for my parents not being parents at a time I needed them the most. Instead they were focused on hating each other and ignoring their kids.

Homework teaches good habits, it's not just about learning the material. I lack the habits that homework and study should have taught me. Rather I learned: "When the going gets tough, quit."

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Siting down and doing something you already know how to do to perfection doesn't teach good habits. Sitting down and doing something challenging does.

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Tangu Matraa

I usually learned what was being taught in the classroom setting, therefore I never developed good homework or study habits.

When the material got to the point where I was no longer learning it in class, I didn't have the proper homework/study habits to challenge myself to learn it on my own (at home).

I never learned how to approach a challenge and just learned to put it aside and hope for the best on the tests/quizzes and such. This method failed me greatly.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

If the homework is paced appropriately it is always challenging. But since classes are paced to the lowest common denominator (aka the dumbest kid in class) it is almost always a light review of what you've learned.

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You're wrong.

It teaches you, if nothing else, how to buckle down and complete something that needs to be done, but that you don't like doing or find boring. And that is an amazingly valuable skill for the workplace.

Homework teaches children that talent and skill don't matter, only "hard work." The culture of homework directly led to the Occupy protests, whereby we have a pool of young people who feel they are entitled to certain things simply because they did their homework and got college degrees.

Homework teaches children that competence is inconsequential. The only thing that must be done is enough work to keep the boss off their back. Having correct solutions is secondary to having something to turn in. Children are looking for answers they can put on their paper, without any thought as to what it means or how it was obtained. Children are copying with their brains disengaged. They are not learning any material, nor are they learning any valuable lessons about how to buckle down and do the work. That is a lie we tell ourselves as adults once we've decided to embrace the status quo.

Homework exists as a Cover Your *** policy for teachers and administrators. Without homework, there is a perception that nothing is being done in the classroom. Parents expect to see homework, because they had to do it when they were children. Homework is assigned, collected, and graded so that teachers can show parents their child's "improvement" - a dubious notion at best, since homework assignments tend to cover different topics. People need to dispense with the foolish notion that homework exists in the primary and secondary school systems to the benefit of their child. It does not, and more importantly, it never has.

Homework is practice. Homework is standing on the free-throw line shooting baskets. Homework is spending three hours in the batting cages. Homework is taking a bucket of balls out to the driving range. If you're not engaged, and actually trying to improve, all you're doing is throwing a ball or swinging a stick. Do you need to practice? Yes you do, but do not make the mistake of conflating practice with the tournament itself. Homework is not "the game." It needs to be approached as the practice it is. As long as a child is doing homework because it's what's expected of them and they'll get in trouble if they don't, the homework isn't going to help them.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.