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Comment by MattGrommes | Hacker News Reader

I just had this discussion with my 3rd grader's teacher and have talked about it with all her previous teachers after reading that book. Her point is that the homework is just practice and only takes a few minutes which makes me dislike it just on the principle of wasting "just a few minutes" of my family's time for no benefit. I try to give teachers the benefit of the doubt on this and not argue too much but in the past I've sent a note to school saying she just won't be doing the homework and it's not her fault, it's my decision.

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The OP stated that homework makes success more strongly correlated with socioeconomic status. I would guess that this is because households with better socioeconomic status tend to give their children more attention and expose them to the correct ideas, sort of how the word-exposure studies showed that exposure to a large vocabulary in infancy swamps socio-economic status in terms of literacy, but it happens to be strongly correlated with socioeconomic status.

From this I would guess that if you want your child to really do well, you need to make sure they practice the right things. So make your 3rd grader to the homework and help them so that you know they're practicing the right thing. The studies cited by the grand-parent comment never say that practice of the right thing is bad.

That is basically right.

However in households with lower socioeconomic status the problem isn't lack of attention from the parents. The parents TRY to help. But they are less likely to succeed, because they lack the academic skills needed.

However in households with lower socioeconomic status the problem isn't lack of attention from the parents. The parents TRY to help.

This is the opposite of the educators in my family, my own experience as an educator, my book learning on pedagogy, and my experience as a student. It also runs screamingly against the difficulty that, in the United States, children with lower socioeconomic status are disproportionately unlikely to have parents.

I told my kids to do exactly as much homework as needed to get the idea; then stop.

Worse than weeknight homework: weekend homework. I absolutely reject this idea; I plan my family time, NOT the lazy teacher.

>I plan my family time, NOT the lazy teacher.

I don't understand your slight against teachers. Preparing homework takes time and effort if it's to be a proper part of the curriculum of learning to be set. Even if it's an afterthought it still has to be marked and assessed and recorded (in the UK it does).

Surely the lazy teacher would just say "for homework tonight watch TV" or some-such.

This is an honest question from a childless person: how much time does your 3rd grader spend doing math homework per night?

Naively, it seems reasonable to me that there is going to be a fraction of the necessary practice which must be done under the supervision of the teacher, and a fraction which can be done alone. Now, as people move up the academic ladder and, presumably, become better at teaching themselves, the amount of class time decreases and the amount of self-directed time increases.

At the 3rd grade level, where they spent 6-8 hours in class each day, it seems plausible that the correct amount of homework is roughly 30-60 minutes per night. It also seem plausible that the homework teaches a student not only the material, but also how to learn on their own.

I've seen the rule of thumb of 10 minutes of homework per grade in school. So, 1st graders would have 10 minutes of homework per night and 3rd graders would have 30m of homework per night.

In fourth grade I had 5 hours.

Wow. And there was no way out?

Fifth grade.

I didn't know what age "third grade" means. I'll assume you're USA-ian (other nationalities don't tend to think there's is the only one on the web!).

From Wikipedia: "In England, the year of school that is the same age as 3rd Grade is Year 4, which is the fifth year of school."

Classic.

Personally I don't think homework should be mandated for young children (< c.11 yo).

I personally don't see homework as a bad thing, depending on the topic. There's two types of homework that I think make sense: 1.) The school work that couldn't be finished in class due to time constraints, and 2.) Practicing learned concepts in class to internalize them.

The second type of homework doesn't apply to all classes, but a good candidate for this is math (spelling/grammar/reading is another). I'm a believer in children needing a good foundation in basic concepts before advancing to higher ones. If you can't do 14 - 9 in your head, instantly, then it's pointless to try multiplication or division. Directed practice can make children perform mathematics quickly and accurately. They don't come like that out of the box.

Did they let you get away with it? I've failed a college course based simply on the fact that I got As and Bs on tests but didn't do homework.

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