<story><title>My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/my-daughters-homework-is-killing-me/309514/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Some quick thoughts, as the parent of a high school freshman:&lt;p&gt;* If you anticipate your child being assigned 3 hours of homework in a typical evening, it is negligent to allow them to start that work at 8:00PM. Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon, he could consider a rule suggesting homework gets completed before electronic entertainment; that&amp;#x27;s our rule this year (for the first time) and it&amp;#x27;s working better than I thought it would. Another rule we have: complete or not, homework is done at 9:30PM.&lt;p&gt;* Japan (a) does not outperform the US (at least on PISA) when normalized for income, which normalization &lt;i&gt;also normalizes for homework load&lt;/i&gt;, and (b) has the some of the longest school days in the world, with an abbreviated, homework-encumbered summer break to boot. Japanese students probably do not work less hard than US students, or to greater effect.&lt;p&gt;* If your daughter answers &amp;quot;Texas City&amp;quot; as the state capital of Texas, the discussion of how she&amp;#x27;s struggling academically might range farther than homework load, eh? Neither my son in high school nor my daughter in middle school has ever to my knowledge had state capitals homework, and neither would give that answer.&lt;p&gt;* If your daughter has spent middle school staying up until 1:00AM completing homework†, so much so that you are in open conflict with the school over that load, why oh why would you go out of your way to enroll the kid in a highly selective public school that is virtually assured to maintain or increase that load? We had homework-intensive school options for the boy, too, and (sanely) decided not to avail ourselves of them. Is this a status obsession thing? Because if the end goal is a push to get your kid into an Ivy, stop bitching about workload. You&amp;#x27;re choosing to make your kid compete.&lt;p&gt;Minus the cannabis (I substituted Unix exploit development), I had a similar high school experience to this author. I&amp;#x27;m not generally in favor of homework and would if asked by any of my kid&amp;#x27;s teachers --- who do actually coordinate to even out the workload --- vote for less of it. But I think the parent in this article is suffering from a couple problems of his own creation, and has probably not come up with an indictment of the US school system.&lt;p&gt;† &lt;i&gt;Never once has either of my kids had a middle school workload that kept them up late at night.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>patio11</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Japanese students probably do not work less hard than US students, or to greater effect.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wait wait, people really think American students do more work than Japanese kids?&lt;p&gt;HAH.  HAH.  HAH.  HAH.  That&amp;#x27;s a good one.&lt;p&gt;Seriously: Japanese &lt;i&gt;schools&lt;/i&gt; don&amp;#x27;t assign 3 hours of homework because that would conflict with the 3 hours of &amp;quot;not required but it will ruin your life if you don&amp;#x27;t do it and then fail your next admissions exam&amp;quot; cram school that the top 30% of Japanese kids&amp;#x2F;parents assume is inevitable.&lt;p&gt;If you want I can run down to the train station and take a photo of one of our local cram schools.  It&amp;#x27;s 8:45 PM right now so the middle schoolers should be just about &lt;i&gt;halfway finished&lt;/i&gt; for the evening.</text></comment>
<story><title>My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/my-daughters-homework-is-killing-me/309514/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Some quick thoughts, as the parent of a high school freshman:&lt;p&gt;* If you anticipate your child being assigned 3 hours of homework in a typical evening, it is negligent to allow them to start that work at 8:00PM. Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon, he could consider a rule suggesting homework gets completed before electronic entertainment; that&amp;#x27;s our rule this year (for the first time) and it&amp;#x27;s working better than I thought it would. Another rule we have: complete or not, homework is done at 9:30PM.&lt;p&gt;* Japan (a) does not outperform the US (at least on PISA) when normalized for income, which normalization &lt;i&gt;also normalizes for homework load&lt;/i&gt;, and (b) has the some of the longest school days in the world, with an abbreviated, homework-encumbered summer break to boot. Japanese students probably do not work less hard than US students, or to greater effect.&lt;p&gt;* If your daughter answers &amp;quot;Texas City&amp;quot; as the state capital of Texas, the discussion of how she&amp;#x27;s struggling academically might range farther than homework load, eh? Neither my son in high school nor my daughter in middle school has ever to my knowledge had state capitals homework, and neither would give that answer.&lt;p&gt;* If your daughter has spent middle school staying up until 1:00AM completing homework†, so much so that you are in open conflict with the school over that load, why oh why would you go out of your way to enroll the kid in a highly selective public school that is virtually assured to maintain or increase that load? We had homework-intensive school options for the boy, too, and (sanely) decided not to avail ourselves of them. Is this a status obsession thing? Because if the end goal is a push to get your kid into an Ivy, stop bitching about workload. You&amp;#x27;re choosing to make your kid compete.&lt;p&gt;Minus the cannabis (I substituted Unix exploit development), I had a similar high school experience to this author. I&amp;#x27;m not generally in favor of homework and would if asked by any of my kid&amp;#x27;s teachers --- who do actually coordinate to even out the workload --- vote for less of it. But I think the parent in this article is suffering from a couple problems of his own creation, and has probably not come up with an indictment of the US school system.&lt;p&gt;† &lt;i&gt;Never once has either of my kids had a middle school workload that kept them up late at night.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jtheory</author><text>&amp;gt; Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a bit unfair -- that was Friday afternoon only.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have any kids in school yet, and I&amp;#x27;m not in the US anymore anyway; but I do remember from my HS experience it would have been unkind to force me to complete all homework before &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; entertainment.  School ended at 2:15 (because it started at 7am... ugh), but that&amp;#x27;s when after school activities started -- and who could have a decent college app without extracurriculars?  I worked on the literary magazine, ran track&amp;#x2F;cross-country, was in a few plays&amp;#x2F;musicals, and got home either at 4:30 (early bus) or a bit before 6pm (late bus), usually the latter.  In theory I could sometimes get some work done during the school day, but when would I hang out with friends, then?&lt;p&gt;I agree about limits on homework time, and entertainment time; but I think I&amp;#x27;d be inclined to make sure they had both downtime and homework time, and if the homework couldn&amp;#x27;t be completed, so be it.</text></comment>