Kids in Spain's primary schools get three hours of homework?

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Isn't this rather excessive?

 

Personally, I don't believe in homework at the primary level.  The material is such that one wonders what kind of a goof-off teachers are doing instead of completing the curriculum.

 

The only kind of homework for secondary school students should be things that can't be completed in class such as essays, and papers for grading.  Pages of mathematical exercises are for classrooms and study halls, and should not be a home burden.  The same applies to anything where serious research or effort is not required outside of class time.

[_Michael 2,681]

I completely agree. I think homework should only be long tasks, and maybe only 2-3 a week. These should be things that can not be completed in lessons, or even at lunchtime. Small exercises should be planned into the lessons, rather than taking up free time.

[hym 358]

Research on this has actually found the ideal amount of homework is 2-3 hours of homework a night. More than this and you burn the students out early. Less than this causes student comprehension of the material to slip.

[Sabretooth78 808]

Just another way of robbing kids of their childhood, to go along with the increase in meaningless structure wrought by many parents.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

I'd like to suggest that three hours a night should not be needed to reinforce the didactic material in primary schools.  If it is, the teacher is a flop and should be replaced.  Elementary school curricula don't need many of the frills that have been stuffed into them.  The purpose of a primary school is to teach kids to read, write and do elementary arithmetic up to long division without machinery.  The other purpose is socialization, not educational slavery after hours.  No theft of the childhood should be allowed.

 

In my experience, the number of students reaching the post-secondary level who are both illiterate and innumerate is truly appalling.  This is a failure of the primary school system.

[Kiiroitori 55]

Interesting, as a high school student my self (currently at my final year). I currently aim to do atleast two hours of study a night. However, I read that if want a very high exit score (atleast a high ATAR (I'm talking 99.95 here) in Australia - don't know about OP in Queensland, probs the same), you would aim to atleast do 4 hour a night worth of study (Which I seriously think that was ridiculous). Given that my school starts at 8 and my fair distance and commute time of approx 1 hour on average (so that means I have to wake up at 6 and due to other reasons during the week I have to wake up at 5), this doesn;t allow me to flexbly go over asm uch content and review every subject and do past papers etc, instead I only get time to work on assignments and do homework. I remember my grade 8 year level coordinator also saying that you should do at least 2 hours of homework a night.
Hmm, so I guess this is something I can relate to, although this is primary school we're talking.. 

But yea, In my view, I think there should be homework for primary school students, given that if the primary curriculum is efficient and one would be learning some basic level foundations that will prove extremely advantagious later in life at more advance studies (Trust me... my junior high years were wasted and I swear I could have started taling moles and equilibriums then, rather then now, or probably start basic calculus bakc then to) however, give it 30 minutes maximum. No More. Maybe start gradually increase the workload at later primarily levels so they don't flat out when they step up to middle school... then middle school to junior High... and much higher from.. Junior high to senior school.

Speaking of which, I need to read over my Biology stimulus and prepare for my long response EBI exam tmw lol. Should get studying now

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

(as a teacher) Homework suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.

[Duke87 1,070]

Practically speaking, school lasts generally in the range of 6 to 6 1/2 hours a day. Add a couple hours of homework and you've matched a full time work schedule. Prep for the real world, eh?

 

I had about an hour of homework each night on weeknights in elementary school, and then 2 or so each night in middle and high school with assignments also often on weekends and vacations.

 

Still, I think it's oversimplifying things to measure homework purely in terms of time. An hour spent doing pointlessly tedious and repetitive work does not provide the same value as an hour spent practicing meaningful things. I recall quite a few "creative" assignments involving spelling words in middle school that were a total waste of my time.

 

That said, I'm a fast learner, so other kids probably get more value out of some of this stuff than I did.

[MushyMushy 3,618]

As a highschool student myself, I can definitively say that homework is helpful (doesn't mean I like it). I do not, however, think that large amounts of homework in elementary/primary/grade school is logical. At that point in one's school career the stuff you are learning is so basic you shouldn't need all of the homework - it's just busywork taking time away from all the developmental things elementary school-aged students need to do (like socializing, playing, etc).

 

Going back to my previous point about how homework is good, I mean that depending on how the homework is done. In the past school year, I had an English teacher that promised to give us homework every night (which he pretty much fulfilled sans a day or two). We had anywhere from an hour to multiple hours of homework in the class every night, and we still had 6 other classes to worry about. This work was not exactly cut out for people like myself... I'm typically very slow at English work since I struggle to grasp it. Granted, I still get very high grades in my English classes (>95), but it takes me longer than average to do the work. This problem gets more irritating since the homework he assigned did nothing to further my understanding of the material... so I was basically wasting my time. He also frequently used "homework" as a way to finish "classwork" since he always assumed we would finish the in-class work faster than is humanly possible.

 

The flip-side of his class was my math teacher's class. She assigned us review work most nights, but did no check it (she only checked our weekly review assignment). Basically, she used homework for what it is for: review. If you struggled in her class in general, or struggled with a certain unit, you could do the work and ask questions about it before the lesson the next day. I'm generally an excellent math student so I rarely did the reviews, but when there were things I had a hard time with, I did the reviews and figured out the material. This system basically allowed for people who were struggling with something to get help, and for people who understood the unit to spend their free time doing something else since they didn't need the review.

 

I'm sure you can guess which teacher people liked more.

[Sabretooth78 808]

The mark of a truly effective teacher is one who gets their students to want to learn.  Yes, that isn't easy and there are other factors that come into play as well (cough, parents, cough).  Once you have that I think you'll go a long way toward guaranteeing a usefulness to homework.  Yes, a lot of it was quite pointless.  There are a lot of people who are going to disagree with me on this, but one of the things I thought was the most useless were summer reading programs - and I've always enjoyed reading.  Forcing somebody to do something isn't going to cultivate an interest in it, especially when you only have a select list of books to choose from (maybe the teachers ought to expand their horizons, too).  A little off-topic, but relevant.

 

I don't remember an excessive amount of homework.  Granted, I wasn't always the best at actually doing it.  Oftentimes in high school I was actually able to finish it up before the end of the school day in study hall(s) - are those still a thing?  To be honest, I always had pretty good grades (graduated in the top ~15% based on raw GPA as I recall) and more or less was able to coast through high school and I didn't become a good student until my junior year in college.  Could I have done more?  Certainly.  Would I be in a better place for it now?  Doubtful.  Yeah, I'm probably not a very good example to follow. 

 

The real world is "what have you done for me lately?"  To use the American paradigm, you need to do well in high school, but once you're secure in getting into a college/university it basically becomes more and more meaningless as time passes.  Judging by my bout of senioritis I must have actually known that at the time.  I have my 20-year reunion coming up next year which I want as much to do with as my 10-year (which was nothing).  I've actually considered deleting my facebook page (which I rarely use anyway) just to head off the flurry of contact BS that I know is going to happen.  Same thing happens to college once you get a job (but perhaps to a lesser degree).  You need that piece of paper but (in my case at least) you'll never directly use that information again.

 

The saving grace of a good college education is that it will teach you to think - something that is not a goal of the primary public/private education system.  I think that's why you hear so much about people who major in something and then never get a job in that field but live a perfectly well enough life that they otherwise probably wouldn't have.

 

Yeah, so I basically failed at the whole indoctrination part of the primary school system.  I'm not a good conformist. 

[GMT 389]

can't get enough homework.

it helps to fortify what you learned today and builds the foundation for what you learn tomorrow.

 

luckily I barely made my homework back in the days so I could spend enough time playing sc4 ^^

still got me a univerity degree and made it thru pilot training... so what...

 

 

fun aside, I think it really matters how long your school day is. I'm a spoiled german brat who had a regular schoolday somwhere from 8am to 2pm and maybe, just maybe once a week til 3pm.
leaves enough room for homework imho at least to get another look at what happened today because this really helps to build the knowledge.

looking at other countries where school times regularily equal those of a fulltime employee I really think homework should be kept at the very very .... very minimum, if any.

they're still kids you know? not working drones in the making. and this not just in primary school

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

The need for extra work out of class is subjective and personal.  Elementary schools should have no need of assigned work, and if the teacher is any good the learning day is never really over for the students.  One of the nicer things an elementary teacher can do for his students is to ask each morning what they learned after school was dismissed yesterday.  This creates an incentive to have something to say in that session.  It also identifies the 'do nothings'.

 

Learning is a lifetime effort, even outside of formal schooling.  If you don't learn something every day, even if it is something trivial, the day is a bust.

[Duke87 1,070]

The most interesting thing I've seen done with homework was what my high school physics teacher did. He did not collect and grade our homework but he would check and make sure we had done it, and missing more than two assignments in a quarter would result in points being taken off your grade. I gotta give the guy credit for making us do our homework without putting in much effort on his part.

That wasn't as bad as the policy a couple of my college professors had, though, where you had to hand in every single homework assignment or you would automatically fail the class regardless of your performance on exams and everything else. In classes where the homework assignments coukd get quite tedious (six of the same type of problem, but I had it down after doing only one or two), THAT was ridiculous.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

Duke, many college professors who are teaching have never taught at a lower level and have no idea what they are doing.  So they dream up schemes to help them evaluate students. 

 

Before I was a college professor, I was an industrial instructor for a large scale computer manufacturer (one of the seven dwarfs), and in my industrial classes the students were motivated because their jobs or promotions depended on what they got out of the course.  When I and many others were wiped out by the PC (it took 10 years), I got a job teaching in a public college.  After a bumpy start, I got very good at it.  Of course I was teaching programming and operating systems, so the material was a push for me.  The interesting thing was the range of students from really motivated people wanting to get on with their lives in a better situation to place holders who were being baby sat on Mom and Dad's nickel, or worse yet, the same ones who were on student loans and going to get a surprise in the real world when they finished.

 

I remember one student in particular who wanted to learn C++, but the course was for C.  I gave him all the support I could, but he had to turn in the C assignments for grades.  In the end, he learned both, and I think he was much better for it.  All it took was a textbook and a link to C++ Annotations.

[Zelgadis 638]

The correct amount of homework for any primary school kid is no homework. I you must, 30 minutes, max. At that age, it's more important for a kid to explore, go outside, bang sticks together, and be the natural little scientists that they are. 

 

I fear that the true purpose of modern high-stakes schooling is not about learning information, but instilling a sense of normalcy to the notion that if you're not working 16 hours a day, you're not working hard enough. 

[Odainsaker 2,137]

I remember my math teacher would explain that students properly needed two hours of homework every day.  Two hours worth of rote math homework was always daily assigned.

 

The science teacher also said students needed two hours of homework every day, and so two hours of science project homework was duly assigned each day as well.

 

Feeling left out, the social studies teacher embraced of the importance of two hours of daily homework as he too assigned two hours of social studies homework.

 

We would never learn a foreign language without immersion, and so the language arts teacher gave us two hours worth of homework written in a foreign language. 

 

Not wishing to miss out on a trend, the art teacher in turn assigned two hours of messy art homework.

 

The mandatory extracurricular activities required an extra two hours of mandatory extracurricular homework.

 

I wished the physical education teacher would assign two hours of outdoor activities homework, but, since the English teacher also did double-duty as the P.E. coach, we got two hours of English literature homework each day instead.

 

As a school day was from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., we officially had enough assigned daily homework to keep us busy till 6 a.m., ironically with only two hours of non-programmed time remaining.   Two hours to sleep...or bathe...or eat...or plan the revolution...

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

^ I have to assume that this tongue-in-cheek example was for laughs.  Ha...ha!

 

I can understand assigning something with a due date more than overnight.  Sometimes some serious library work is needed, and school libraries tend to have only one copy of a given work.  Every student in a class cannot access the same volume simultaneously.  Of course some students are clever enough to access the public libraries, but the needed volume might be out or not in the index.

 

Teaching computer science subjects, one tends to avoid giving essay or exposition assignments but programming assignments instead.  These generally require a few days lead time.  This one also tended to pop quizzes.  If the handed in program doesn't compile, guess what mark it gets?

[flatron 83]

I don't know how much of the day spanish children spend in school. Here in Germany, it's usually just from 7:45 to 13:00 and sometimes even just till 11:00, so pupils are of course given homework. (As a child, It never really took me longer than half an hour to finish the tasks but as I was always the first to arrive at the pool in the afternoon, it's clear that others spent more than two hours for that stuff.) I definitely stopped doing any homework in year eleven because I didn't see the merits(of course I dropped a bit in Maths, but I could maintain two digit grades on a scale where 15 is best, which was pretty much what I wanted)

I can understand assigning something with a due date more than overnight.  Sometimes some serious library work is needed, and school libraries tend to have only one copy of a given work.  Every student in a class cannot access the same volume simultaneously.  Of course some students are clever enough to access the public libraries, but the needed volume might be out or not in the index.

 

Teaching computer science subjects, one tends to avoid giving essay or exposition assignments but programming assignments instead.  These generally require a few days lead time.  This one also tended to pop quizzes.  If the handed in program doesn't compile, guess what mark it gets?

I hope you don't give them an F... Although I don't understand why your pupils don't just press "compile" by themselves to see if it works...

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

<snip>

I hope you don't give them an F...

Although I don't understand why your pupils don't just press "compile" by themselves to see if it works...

 

No, a zero, since the marking system is numeric.  Failure to even try to compile a program being handed in is an act of either abject stupidity or utter hubris.  In either case, a slap between the ears with a two by four is called for.

If the program doesn't compile, all that was needed was to ask for help.  I had regular office hours through the week and often spent them alone marking papers.

[TekindusT 3,809]

I don't know how much of the day spanish children spend in school. Here in Germany, it's usually just from 7:45 to 13:00 and sometimes even just till 11:00, so pupils are of course given homework. (As a child, It never really took me longer than half an hour to finish the tasks but as I was always the first to arrive at the pool in the afternoon, it's clear that others spent more than two hours for that stuff.) I definitely stopped doing any homework in year eleven because I didn't see the merits(of course I dropped a bit in Maths, but I could maintain two digit grades on a scale where 15 is best, which was pretty much what I wanted)

Don't know how it is nowadays, but if I recall well, it was from 8:00 to 13:30 and 15:00 to 17:00 every day when I attended primary school. Plus homework time.

You may think it's a reaaaaally long work day, and you're right, it is. It is thought like this because parents tend to spend at work between 8:00-9:00 to 17:00 or 18:00; because many companies stupidly give 2 HOURS to their employees to have lunch (and if there is time, some siesta). I find that insane, especially after having worked in Germany, and I hated it when I worked full time before moving to Germany. You basically spend your day at work. In winter, you clock in when it's dark, clock off when its dark. Without a shadow of doubt, this kind of timing has a lot to do with the Spanish productivity. 

I didn't get into that topic before because it's been around 10 years I finished my secondary education and I don't really know as a matter of fact anymore how many homework time kids have. But it felt like a lot way back.

  Edited June 18, 2015 by TekindusT  

[flatron 83]

<snip>

I hope you don't give them an F...

Although I don't understand why your pupils don't just press "compile" by themselves to see if it works...

 

No, a zero, since the marking system is numeric.  Failure to even try to compile a program being handed in is an act of either abject stupidity or utter hubris.  In either case, a slap between the ears with a two by four is called for.

If the program doesn't compile, all that was needed was to ask for help.  I had regular office hours through the week and often spent them alone marking papers.

OK, I can understand that then.

[flatron 83]

I don't know how much of the day spanish children spend in school. Here in Germany, it's usually just from 7:45 to 13:00 and sometimes even just till 11:00, so pupils are of course given homework. (As a child, It never really took me longer than half an hour to finish the tasks but as I was always the first to arrive at the pool in the afternoon, it's clear that others spent more than two hours for that stuff.) I definitely stopped doing any homework in year eleven because I didn't see the merits(of course I dropped a bit in Maths, but I could maintain two digit grades on a scale where 15 is best, which was pretty much what I wanted)

Don't know how it is nowadays, but if I recall well, it was from 8:00 to 13:30 and 15:00 to 17:00 every day when I attended primary school. Plus homework time.

You may think it's a reaaaaally long work day, and you're right, it is. It is thought like this because parents tend to spend at work between 8:00-9:00 to 17:00 or 18:00; because many companies stupidly give 2 HOURS to their employees to have lunch (and if there is time, some siesta). I find that insane, especially after having worked in Germany, and I hated it when I worked full time before moving to Germany. You basically spend your day at work. In winter, you clock in when it's dark, clock off when its dark. Without a shadow of doubt, this kind of timing has a lot to do with the Spanish productivity. 

I didn't get into that topic before because it's been around 10 years I finished my secondary education and I don't really know as a matter of fact anymore how many homework time kids have. But it felt like a lot way back.

I always found the idea of a siesta quite appealing... And at least in rural parts of Germany, people working in shops, banks, medical practices, pharmacies etc do get that aswell.

I don't quite see the point in giving homeworks to kids who attend school all day long already. I mean, when shall they play, read, spend time with friends or outside, etc.?

[Duke87 1,070]

The concept of the siesta was an adaptation to living in tropical climates in pre-industrial times. No one wants to be out working in the fields in the hottest part of the day, so instead everyone takes a break and then gets back to work later after it cools off. This trend continued through industrialization because even if it isn't working in a farm field, working during the hottest part of the day just is not a good way to be productive if you have no means of beating the heat. But today we have something else: air conditioning. You would think that the advent of air conditioning would have rendered the siesta obsolete, but old habits die hard, eh?

Despite living in the US I experience the siesta concept in some ways by virtue of having a flexible work schedule. Often I like to head out and run errands in the early afternoon simply because there's less traffic and stores are less crowded than if I wait until after the typical workday ends. But the downside is that on days when I do this, I find myself working later to make up for it... something which I don't necessarily care for. Psychologically, I feel less productive and less energetic when I finish working later, even if the total number of hours I worked is the same. I'd ideally rather make up any midday break time by starting earlier rather than finishing later... but that would require that I be a morning person and I'm not.

[TekindusT 3,809]

In our times there are still plenty of work environments where air conditioning is not available or its implementation is impractical. I remember myself 3 years ago working in Summer inside a factory. The temperature inside the plant, next to the heating ovens, reached 50ºC before noon.

Siesta time can be OK if you enjoy a flexible work schedule. You manage your time according to your needs and you're a more satisfied and therefore productive employee. It is when this 2 hour gap or siesta time gap is forced to all employees when things start to go wrong.

  Edited June 21, 2015 by TekindusT  

[Jasoncw 12,060]

I don't think homework is very important for most subjects although I think the idea of having a short task to do every day at home could be a good way of having students engage a subject outside of the classroom in a different context, but what is assigned as homework is rarely that.

I think the main thing that should be encouraged is general intellectual activity/interests/hobbies. Experiences and social skills (being a kid and doing things as part of growing up) are also important. School and society in general should focus on developing healthy, well balanced, thoughtful and intelligent people. Slaving away at homework for subjects that you're never going to need functional knowledge of is not worth it. The time is better spent developing hobbies or spending time with friends, or best yet, both at the same time. No one says "I wish I had spent more time studying biology in high school" on their death beds, even biologists.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

As I recall assignments in high-school classes, they most often consisted of exercises that had to be completed by the next class which might be one or more days away.  I generally got mine done in class or in study classes, and hardly ever took any of it home.

[metarvo 712]

 The material is such that one wonders what kind of a goof-off teachers are doing instead of completing the curriculum.

Although this was originally about Spain, it seems as though there's a lot of homework nowadays in the U.S. as well, so therefore it's applicable here too.  What they're doing, at least in my state, is preparing the students for the bevy of tests they have to do.  Schools are pressured to have enough students pass the tests or they get slapped with bad ratings.  However, more time for these tests mean less time for curriculum.  As a result, there's more homework.

  Edited June 26, 2015 by metarvo  

[matias93 7,535]

Particularly about Spain and its model, it was invented circa 1992, and my knowlegde about it is when it was 'imported' to Chile in 2002, with the name "Jornada Escolar Completa", JEC (complete school [working] day). Long story short: it was a disaster.

The basic prupose was rather sinister: increase working efficiency by disminishing the time parents must be taking care of their children, "freeing"* them to work more hours, so the schools have, atop of their responsabilities in teaching, the burden of being day care centers for grownup children.

The normal school's working day (8:00 to 13:00 or 14:00 to 19:00) was unified in a 9:00 to 16:00 (later extended at 8:00 to 16:00), and all the time after lunch (14:00) was programmed as monitored activities. The promise was to end homework and to do those exercises at school.

Nevertheless, headmasters prefered to use the extra time to train the students for standarized tests, now extended to all courses and every year and bounded to economic bonuses for top 10% schools*. Homework was not ended, but moved to the nights, and the aproximate total study hours rise up to 10 hours (minimum).

Further, to archieve that all students were in the school buildings simultaneously, thousands of dollars should be invested in more classrooms, at record time (with a 5-year deadline to implement all the system). The quality of the new buildings is obviously subpar, as the personnel using it: the monitored activities weren't guided by teachers, but merely assistants without any training (so, no advantages for monitoring, just daycaring).

In 2006, with the student's manifestations, one of the most socially backed petitions was the end of the JEC, and by 2008, it was cancelled in most schools countrywide.

[A Nonny Moose 8,263]

^ Political interference in education is usually a disaster of one kind or another.  There is a difference between an educator and an educaterer who follows a script written for political reasons.

Teachers who toe the government line soon become educaterers, and lose the principles of education that they've theoretically chosen as a career.

[hamsterTK 93]

It's not about the time spent doing the thing so much as the amount of time left over...