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Comment by clentaminator | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure the countless hours of homework in every subject that I was never interested in (of which that number was a majority) has helped me in my current career in not-any-of-those-subjects. /sarc

I feel like the most important things in school at that age are:

- Exposing people to a broad range of subjects that they might be interested in (and thus curious enough about such that they end up learning by themselves)

- Having teachers that can teach their subjects with enthusiasm, so that other people can see what the teacher finds exciting so that they too can (potentially) share in that enthusiasm and curiosity.

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Homework can be a good bridge to university studies imo. I would certainly have benefited from learning self-disciplined study earlier on rather than coasting through the Swedish equivalent of high school and then swapping straight into university.

For under 12s or so I dont see a reason for homework. For 12-18 year olds I think gradually moving to a more self-driven study environment would be a good thing given that most people will end up going to university by now where that is the norm.

Homework doesn't really teach self-discipline, because it is an external motivation. If anything, I think it can work against that goal, because once people finish their mandatory work, they have no energy or enthusiasm left to learn for their own sake.

Perhaps I'm projecting, but mostly homework taught me how to do the minimum possible so I could get back to playing video games.

All of highschool was just one big exercise in me doing the bare minimum in whatever subject bored me so I could get back to programming. I knew what I wanted to do and I'm sorry Shakespeare, but you and I both know Hamlet is of no relevance. My usual formula for a given class was skim the current chapter, maybe do a practice problem or two, then spend the actual class on my laptop doing something of value to me.

Homework taught me how do that boring thing faster so that I could do interesting thing.

I think I could have learned more if I spent more time talking and seeing my family doing things instead of having my mother in the kitchen, doing dinner, while I was in front of my notebook writing down again the things .

Learning a new trade here in my adult life and finding a tremendous amount of information I learned in school all coming back to me. It's allowing me to speed through learning what i need to know.

Good teachers teach, great teachers inspire.

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