<story><title>Parents in poorer countries devote more time to their kids&apos; homework</title><url>https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2018/04/daily-chart-11</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CannisterFlux</author><text>Ha, I think that argument is made by people who don&amp;#x27;t have kids (with homework). It&amp;#x27;s not leisure for me at all. While I worry about being branded a terrible father for this comment, I will admit that I am a terrible teacher. I have no patience for it.&lt;p&gt;My kids mess around, constantly want breaks (&amp;quot;Well I&amp;#x27;ve written a line! time for a 10 minute break!&amp;quot;), waste hours doing shit that should take them minutes... When they start &amp;quot;accidentally&amp;quot; dropping their pencils on the floor because they&amp;#x27;d rather be faffing around picking it up than working, I often just lose my temper. Man, I&amp;#x27;m getting slightly pissed off just thinking about it now! xD&lt;p&gt;There are brief moments of joy&amp;#x2F;relief where you can see they&amp;#x27;ve grasped a concept or improved and you can be proud of &amp;#x27;em. But most of the time it is a frustrating experience, slow going, and a slog to get them to do anything. The worst of learning, with the worst of kids messing around, with a massive feeling of wasting everone&amp;#x27;s time.</text></item><item><author>lighthazard</author><text>An argument can be made that doing homework with your child is the leisure.</text></item><item><author>westiseast</author><text>Very surprised the article doesn’t mention a few things:&lt;p&gt;1. Some places &lt;i&gt;just have more homework than others&lt;/i&gt;. Chinese kids have mountains of homework aged 7, vastly more than British kids. Chinese parents spend much more time either managing or literally doing their kids homework for them.&lt;p&gt;2. Efficiency&amp;#x2F;productivity - What are kids doing in school if their parents are still spending hours and hours after school helping them with homework? How is this a productive use of parents precious work&amp;#x2F;leisure time?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bunderbunder</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s really too bad the inverted classroom model hasn&amp;#x27;t become any more popular.&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, the idea is to take the traditional breakdown of what is done in class and what is done at home, and swap it: Kids do their readings and watch recorded lectures at home. And then they work on problem sets and projects in class, typically in groups.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a really clever idea. Compared to the traditional model, it has so many interesting advantages: It levels the playing field between kids whose parents have time and inclination to help them with homework and those who don&amp;#x27;t. 
It makes the teacher much more available for questions and any necessary 1:1 assistance. Having kids work together (even on math problem sets!) helps them to learn better, and has the side benefit of giving them more opportunity to develop social skills.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve heard it criticized for expecting students to have better access to technology at home than they necessarily do. In the case studies I&amp;#x27;ve read about, though, the schools supplied equipment to students who needed it, and the most dramatic relative improvements were seen among the kids from less wealthy families.</text></comment>
<story><title>Parents in poorer countries devote more time to their kids&apos; homework</title><url>https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2018/04/daily-chart-11</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CannisterFlux</author><text>Ha, I think that argument is made by people who don&amp;#x27;t have kids (with homework). It&amp;#x27;s not leisure for me at all. While I worry about being branded a terrible father for this comment, I will admit that I am a terrible teacher. I have no patience for it.&lt;p&gt;My kids mess around, constantly want breaks (&amp;quot;Well I&amp;#x27;ve written a line! time for a 10 minute break!&amp;quot;), waste hours doing shit that should take them minutes... When they start &amp;quot;accidentally&amp;quot; dropping their pencils on the floor because they&amp;#x27;d rather be faffing around picking it up than working, I often just lose my temper. Man, I&amp;#x27;m getting slightly pissed off just thinking about it now! xD&lt;p&gt;There are brief moments of joy&amp;#x2F;relief where you can see they&amp;#x27;ve grasped a concept or improved and you can be proud of &amp;#x27;em. But most of the time it is a frustrating experience, slow going, and a slog to get them to do anything. The worst of learning, with the worst of kids messing around, with a massive feeling of wasting everone&amp;#x27;s time.</text></item><item><author>lighthazard</author><text>An argument can be made that doing homework with your child is the leisure.</text></item><item><author>westiseast</author><text>Very surprised the article doesn’t mention a few things:&lt;p&gt;1. Some places &lt;i&gt;just have more homework than others&lt;/i&gt;. Chinese kids have mountains of homework aged 7, vastly more than British kids. Chinese parents spend much more time either managing or literally doing their kids homework for them.&lt;p&gt;2. Efficiency&amp;#x2F;productivity - What are kids doing in school if their parents are still spending hours and hours after school helping them with homework? How is this a productive use of parents precious work&amp;#x2F;leisure time?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>josephorjoe</author><text>Exactly.&lt;p&gt;And on top of all that, you&amp;#x27;re lucky if the teachers even look at the homework they assigned.&lt;p&gt;My kid&amp;#x27;s teacher doesn&amp;#x27;t bother -- she emails photos of the answer sheets to the parents because I guess we are supposed to review the homework too?&lt;p&gt;Maybe this isn&amp;#x27;t obvious... but if I wanted to homeschool my kid, I would homeschool my kid.</text></comment>