Letters to the Editor
PJBabiba
Published Letters: 29 Editor's Choice: 4
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Flawed reasoning. Flawed research. Awful argument.
[Read the article: Building a hate for learning]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First of all, I highly doubt that the Japanese do less homework than we do. Secondly, the quality of homework they – and all Asian students do – is more related to their coursework and helps them learn the material. Educators in the United States are torn between disciplining noisy kids and wanting to make learning more “fun.” We forget that learning, most of the time, is not supposed to be fun. Do you think that anyone, given the choice, would actually want to stay inside and memorize the multiplication table instead of going outside and diving into piles of leaves with friends? No, but we do it because it’s necessary. Because if you don’t learn the multiplication table, you’d be the idiot adult who doesn't know that 6x7 is 42.
I'm sorry, but some Americans can be such morons when it comes to education! I mean, think about when you’re trying to advance in your career as an adult, or when you’re trying to learn a difficult hobby. There’s ALWAYS homework when you want to learn anything! You can’t just put in time at work or put in time at the dance studio or music studio. You have to go home, take the charts and graphs from the company reports and try to understand them. You have to go into your living room or garage and practice those dance moves or piano pieces.
It’s that work ethic that we’re trying to instill in our kids when we make them do homework. If the homework itself is frivolous, well that’s the fault of the instructor who doesn’t know how to teach. This author does make a point that teachers need to be taught what kind of homework assignments to give – in essence, how to teach. I agree with that, but as other posters have pointed out, she also confused bad homework which is mostly busy work with all homework.
She also seemed to have done all her research in big cities in the Northeast, where the competition is overwhelming students and parents.
I live in North Carolina, and I've never had any problems with "too much homework" from the educators here. In fact, there was probably too little. I remember coming here from China when I was nine years old, and being shocked that they were still teaching fractions here in the fourth grade and that my classmates hadn't mastered long division. Long division? I mean, hello! We learned that in China when I was in the second grade -- when I was 6-7 years old!
Certain subjects, like science and math, history and foreign languages, absolutely require quality homework that would sometimes involve rote memorization and hitting the books every night to make sure that you understand the material. Trying to make the homework "fun" in these cases is just busy work and undermining your ability to learn. Honestly, how does someone make conjugation and the periodic table fun? They're not, so get over it.
This author, while explaining her theories on education, falls back on generalizations and anecdotal evidence and has nothing substantial to say other than sounding an alarm bell about how we're giving our kids too much work. I would have more respect for her if she could explain in detail the differences between rich families and poor families' approaches to homework, what kind of homework educators should use to teach the different subjects in school, and what kind of differences there are in the amount of homework across the country.
But as it stands, she did not in this rather benign interview. Sounds like someone didn't do their homework.
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Yeah, high school is basically pointless...
[Read the article: Building a hate for learning]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have to agree with what Jane said.
High school for me was a mind-numbingly boring four years punctuated by the pains of adolescence and social ranking. Why don't American educators recognize that the rest of the world is teaching their high school students what Americans teach their college students and catch up already?
Sorry, the issue of education has always gotten me riled up. Those four years of my life in high school are ones I'll never get back in terms of my education -- and nowadays, to learn the things that I should have learned back then, I'm having to spend time after work in my private life to do so.
The American education system is abysmal.
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Who is she really?
[Read the article: I'm obsessed with being a hipster]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was reading the letter and I realized halfway down that the LW kept referring to herself as a "nerd," but she never says what that really means.
What kind of things does she like? What kind of clothes does she wear and why? Does she, in her heart, actually disdain hipster fashion or does she not have the resources to shop at American Apparel / Urban Outfitters all the time? And how is different from her former hipster friends in other ways? Does she disagree with their ways of thinking, ways of life?
All there is in her letter is this terrible yearning and sadness about what she supposedly had and not has lost. I say, it's better to be with people who appreciate you for who you are rather than feel judged everywhere you go.
She needs to take a nice, long break from hipster-dom and figure out who she is.
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NOT an exchange student!
[Read the article: Instant prejudice: Korea and Virginia Tech]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For goodness sakes, can we stop talking about this guy as if he was an exchange student who had just RECENTLY arrived in the US?
I am a Chinese woman who came to the US in 1991 when I was nine years old. I grew up in the US, just like this gunman did. I consider myself to be more American than Chinese. All my friends are American. I grew up watching the same TV shows and movies that a typical American kid did, and probably just like this murderous psychopath did.
So can we stop acting as if his nationality or ethnicity has ANYTHING to do with this murderous rampage?