Homeowork: Anything your school assigns you to do after school hours.
Specifics: Marching band, homework. And I have no clue where this will go.
In my opinion, practice can be good. If you apply yourself, you can get better with practice. For example, if you do your math homework, you will better understand what you are/were learning in class, allowing you to succeed in the class. Another example would be band. You can practice your music and get better at it. You can go to rehearsals and practice your marching, helping you remember what to do where and when while you march.
However, when you're part of a large group, practice can only go so far. My math teacher understands this; some people need to do their homework to keep up with the class, some simply don't have to do it. Thus, she makes the homework optional for people getting good grades. If the "group" were smaller and/or more select, then more people (who wouldn't have had to do homework in the larger class) would likely have to do homework. If you eliminate everyone but yourself, essentially having a 1 on 1 learning experience, you would have to do homework every day, since your lessons would be taught at your own pace. One of the TED videos talks about this (the one with the pirate shop.) A good example of having a 1 on 1 learning experience and needing to do "homework" every day would be taking private lessons in piano. If you don't practice, your teacher will notice because you are the only one your teacher is teaching while you're in your "class". As such, you pretty much need to practice every day to get better. However, school does not give students the 1 on 1 experience in class (you can go to a tutor for that, though). Thus, some people will be ahead and some people will be behind in the class. Those who are behind will definitely need to practice; according to most teachers, those who are ahead will also need to practice... Why? In my opinion, in many cases, once you fully understand the material being taught in class, any practice after that is just repetitive work. It's not helpful (and can be hurtful in different ways). Of course, I'm not saying that I don't need to do homework in most of my classes; there are only three or four classes that I feel I wouldn't need to do homework in because I'm ahead of my classmates, those being math (which, luckily, I don't actually have to do any homework in), physics, band, and occasionally chemistry. Honestly, if I didn't have to do homework in these classes, I feel as if I could actually get a lot more done. Especially band.
In all honesty, I don't like to work. There aren't that many people that do. But man, marching band does have a ton of work. And for me, only about 1/3 to 1/2 of that work is actually helpful. We spend 50 minutes in class each day learning music. Now, I can't really complain about that, since it's in class work. Although we aren't really learning anything new most of the time and are just practicing, it really isn't that bad. What I do dislike is the 3 hours we spend Tuesdays and Thursdays (and the 4-5 hours we spend during football games) standing outside in the cold, causing damage to our instruments, doing repetitive work, and essentially accomplishing... (a lot for some people, but little to nothing for people who either work hard and already know everything they have to do or for those who don't work hard and don't care, making any work they do useless anyway.) As our teacher says, if one person is out of step or is in the wrong place, everything looks bad. So why not make that one person get in the right place, as opposed to making everyone else do nothing different. I feel as if the people who need to practice marching (in the eyes of the band directors, that is) should practice marching, and those who don't need to should have to option not to go. I feel like that time could go to a lot better use. Of course, it's not as if this practice goes to waste; we got second place at a competition yesterday. Horray. But I feel as if the marching band system could be much more efficient.
In the end, I just want to see less homework for those who don't need to do it. Or perhaps less homework in general, and more tests so that those who don't understand the matieral without doing the homework have to go ahead and do homework of some sort to understand the material anyway.
I'm also curious as to why teachers assign so much homework and make it worth as much of our grades as they do. Our grades should reflect how much we learned/understand, not how much busywork we can do. The incentive to do homework shouldn't be to get a grade, it should be to learn.
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4 comments:
Hey Albert!
I totally agree with you. Even though I am not one of the people that can get away without doing any homework, I do agree that teachers can give to much homework and don’t personalize the work load as much as it would be ideal. I mean the teachers don’t have enough time to personally talk with each student about how much homework they need, but it would be nice if they did.
Relating to your band experience, I know exactly what you mean! In basketball, we have to learn different offensive plays, like you have to learn band formations. However, I pick up the plays a lot quicker than my do teammates most of the times, and it is boring standing around wasting time on certain things that you already know. Especially when your teammates or band mates aren’t applying themselves as avidly as you are. Even though this is annoying and time consuming, the extra practice is very helpful most of the times.
Lastly, I agree with you on your point, “The incentive to do homework shouldn't be to get a grade, it should be to learn.” I feel like that not only applies to homework, it applies to school in general. A lot of students only remember things long enough to get a good grade on a test, but after the test is completed they lose most of the information that they were supposed to learn.
Albert-
I agree with you that the amount of homework teachers assign isn't necessarily best for learning and can often become busy work. I am in the same math class as you and have the option of whether or not to do my homework because I have maintained an A or B average in the class, but I choose to do my homework anyway because I think that practicing what you have learned in class on your own is an important part of actually learning how to do something. But, I believe that some students can pick up on things more easily than others, and if they can maintain a good grade without doing homework, good for them. I am curious about what type of problems could occur from repetitive work, though. I know that it is annoying and unnecessary if you already understand the material, but I am not sure what harm could come from it. I would be interested to elaborate on that.
Albert,
I could not agree with you more on this subject. I think that if your getting an A or a B in a class homework should definitely be opitional (Math class policy). Why waste time when you understand the concept of something. I usually do the homework in my classes and even if it was optional I think I would do it because, like you said, it is good practice. But, when I'm up at 12:00 at night doing busy work (ex. SS explorers map), it's safe to say I'd rather not do it. If this optional homework policy was employed, I could pick and choose which assignments to do. The helpful ones. The amount of time it would save, at least for me, would be amazing. My stress levels would plummet.
All in all, a sweet blog. I thought you did a nice job examining why teachers assign the amount of homework they do. Then, rebuking that with your own arguements. Great Job!
Well...
First off, I agree with you at a fundamental level. The way classes are now, more intelligent people have to suffer and plow through busy work and don't receive any benefits. In math and most of our classes in general, once you understand a concept, no amount of practice will help you. In fact, I wish you would extrapolate this further and talk about how teaching in the Math, History and
Health areas esp. have essentially become a agenda advocated by the government to decrease unemployment rates by paying people to dig holes in the ground.
Now, I'm not necessarily saying this is true, I'm merely pointing out that with the combination of simply reading from the textbook in class and students that get things more quickly, some teachers seem to be useless in the learning enviroment. Why not just buy a textbook? Why have a teacher? This of course isn't always true, as one can see in areas that requires critical thinking (i.e. English, foreign languages and more experimental and groundbreaking sciences) rather than mechanic understanding, a teacher for guidance and to start discussion is necessary. In other words, meaning of life as opposed to simple arithmatic requires instruction.
I feel that too much help from a teacher can stunt a student's learning ability in order to jam a few facts into their head. For instance, it is shown that potential ESL students end up doing better in all areas of learning when not receiving support from an ESL teacher.
Of course, not discussing all of this is not your fault, as I have simply strayed from the topic at hand: homework.
Let me say that, in some places, I feel you did not do the topic justice.
The way I see it, your blog post isn't quite a 360. It is rather similar to mine in that it is largely a critique. While you do occasionally indicate that requiring homework is good, you always either define the instance when homework is good to fit your view, or just return and counter the point. For example, if you say that homework is good, you will turn around and say that homework is only good when it is necessary for learning (i.e. for those behind in class). In this way, you serve to only push forward your own viewpoint by the end of your post. While I agree with most of your points, I feel that this is not a 360. However, it is a good exploration of your opinion and how you came to believe it.
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