# Parents doing the kid's homework **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 10, 2010, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139 "2010-11-10T04:11:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139/61 "2010-11-12T16:52:54Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > When I was a kid and I’d ask my mom how to spell a word, she’d say “D-I-C-T-I-O-N-A-R-Y”. Well that’s one way to guarantee you won’t learn to spell. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139/62 "2010-11-12T16:59:41Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > I find this ridiculous. Kindergarteners don’t need to be doing anything with computers. Sixth-graders don’t need to be doing anything with computers. There’s so much else to learn first, basic stuff! People need their own mental tools before they can do anything important with electronic tools. Now I disagree especially strongly with this. Strong computer skills and computer literacy is 100% essential for just about everyone these days. If you don’t start young you are going to end up way, way behind the curve. ---
**Author:** ![lindsaybluth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/90db22/32.png) [@lindsaybluth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lindsaybluth)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139/63 "2010-11-12T17:51:56Z")
> [@Cyberhwk](#): > > Then the final came around, everyone got their cheating methods ready, and he went around and flunked every one of them. 😃 Wow. Now, if you’re my age roughly (under 25) the parents would threaten to sue and make a huge scene. This teacher was made of nails, a member of MENSA and got her masters at 20. She lived like a pauper; I have no doubt that she would have personally hired a lawyer if need be. The most bizarre thing about this girl was that she was in gifted classes throughout school. She wasn’t stupid, but she got lazy somewhere in middle school. As I recall, she failed the AP history class and didn’t graduate with honors. But she already was likely accepted into a college, so if she changed her ways she probably didn’t suffer in college. ---
**Author:** ![lindsaybluth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/90db22/32.png) [@lindsaybluth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lindsaybluth)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139/64 "2010-11-12T17:54:30Z")
Clearly **spark240** hasn’t interacted with someone under 12 in quite awhile. My SO’s little sister, a 12 year old 7th grader, has entire homework assignments online, often at the website of the textbook manufacturer. It would be a real bitch if she’d just learned to point and click last year :rolleyes: ETA: I had a home computer by age 5. I’m 23. So **spark240** is off by nearly two decades. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139/65 "2010-11-12T22:39:38Z")
Also, purely to pile on **spark240** , books are technology. Shouldn’t kids be learning how to memorize masses of details instead of relying on flammable, innovative books? Save library research for the point when they don’t actually _need_ to read and can do it all in their heads. Arithmetic as well: Using paper is cheating. Ditto abaci. They need to not use such things until they can extract cube roots of arbitrary four-digit numbers in their heads. After all, what is the human brain _for_ if not perfect recall of rote material and unimaginatively churning through mechanical algorithms? ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139/66 "2010-11-12T23:10:46Z")
> [@Palo\_Verde](#): > > No, but the point isn’t to teach the writer how to spell. The point of assigning an essay is not to get a brilliant essay from a child. It is to teach them how to write an essay! If the parent goes over it and over it with the child, the work is no longer the child’s! But that _is_ how you learn to write an essay. You write out a rough draft, then you give it to someone else to give you feedback, you incorporate the feedback and write another draft until it’s good. That’s how _everybody_ learns to write. Hell, it’s not just the process of learning to write. It’s the process of writing. Anyone who writes professionally has editors and other proof-readers to provide feedback. But no one accuses them of cheating. You seem to be arguing that the cycle of writing/feedback/rewriting should only take place between the student and the teacher, and that it’s somehow not fair for the parent to offer feedback. That sounds pretty silly to me. FWIW, my parents proof-read my papers for me as many times as I asked them to. But they never wrote them for me. No matter how many misspelled words, run-on sentences, or meandering paragraphs they pointed out, I still did the work. Hell, I did _more_ work than the people who wrote it once and gave it to the teacher to grade. I wrote it several times until it was good. I’m thankful that my parents gave me as much help as they did, but I earned my grades. I also tend to think that spelling is not a particularly valuable skill any more. Computers aren’t going away, and they’re better at it than we are. There’s still value in being able to pick the right homophone from a list so you don’t sound like an idiot, but being good at spelling in a vacuum isn’t any more valuable than knowing how to write free-hand calligraphy, or calculate using a slide rule. The tech has moved on, and there are loads of things machines _aren’t_ better at to focus on. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139/67 "2010-11-13T00:00:03Z")
Now for a more serious post: Spelling comes with reading, and having read widely, and that doesn’t take anything but time and finding things you want to read. I fully agree that learning spelling by rote is obsolete if you know how to use a spellchecker (which basically means being able to get within spitting distance of the correct spelling and being able to pick through homonyms), which means it’s _just as obsolete_ if you have a dictionary to hand. Getting within spitting distance of the proper spelling is tricky. It means both spellcheckers and dictionaries are worthless unless you _just know_, for example, that ‘physician’ is derived from one of those damnable Greek words that was originally spelt with a ‘phi’ (_physike episteme_), or that some Latin-obsessed jokers arbitrarily declared that ‘dette’ ought to be spelt after the fashion of Cicero and so added a useless ‘b’ to it. How do you _just know_ such things? By reading. Voraciously. Off screens, billboards, and pieces of paper. Therefore, the best way to teach spelling is to encourage reading, and _not_ insist on either musty paper or politically correct classics. If they are reading, they are being exposed to the written word, and _that_ is how one successfully internalizes the rules of both spelling and usage. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139/68 "2010-11-13T03:06:14Z")
> [@Cyberhwk](#): > > I had a World Geography teacher that flat baited people. A few started cheating. Then they cheated blatantly and had text books open on the floor copying down answers. I mean, how could you POSSIBLY miss this. This went on ALL SEMESTER. > > Then the final came around, everyone got their cheating methods ready, and he went around and flunked every one of them. 😃 I had a college professor who was fond of making fake tests & answer keys and “losing them” around campus. Finals would come and a few students would mysteriously get really low grades. _Really_ low grades like **11%**. And the best part? He’d openly admit to doing this to anyone who asked! 🙂 Sometimes he’d even bring it up on his own without prompting. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139/69 "2010-11-13T03:36:51Z")
To add to the pile-on, there are bad ways to use computers with kids–but there are good ways, too. I’ve had kids post PSAs about germs on a school-based website, videos they researched, wrote, and acted out. I’ve had kids create brochures for a school-wide fundraiser using MS Publisher. I’ve had kids create a concept-map about what they learned during a year, in prep for a presentation to parents, in a brainstorming software program. I’ve had kids present their social studies findings in a format called a video-slide-show (each kid slides their hand-drawn picture in front of a camera, speaks their piece, and removes it), which I later integrated into a Google Earth presentation. We track butterfly migration using a participatory website, and use another interactive site to identify the caterpillars the kids bring in. We check the weather every morning, using the time to develop an idea for what a particular temperature feels like. Students enter their lunch choices on a spreadsheet that graphs the results for them, and they see me email it to the cafeteria every day (except when a student asks to perform this step). If we could get the dang website to work, I’d have them in there emailing each other with book recommendations. When we’re examining reproductive rates of animals in conjunction with a service-learning project about Heifer International, students’ findings went straight onto a spreadsheet with a line graph. What you’ll note is that the technology isn’t a substitute for research. Rather, we use it either to conduct our learning, or to represent our learning. Computers are a tool just like books and pencils and electric lights are all tools. You can use them well or poorly. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139/70 "2010-11-13T14:48:07Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Now for a more serious post: Spelling comes with reading, and having read widely, and that doesn’t take anything but time and finding things you want to read. I fully agree that learning spelling by rote is obsolete if you know how to use a spellchecker (which basically means being able to get within spitting distance of the correct spelling and being able to pick through homonyms), which means it’s _just as obsolete_ if you have a dictionary to hand. > > Getting within spitting distance of the proper spelling is tricky. It means both spellcheckers and dictionaries are worthless unless you _just know_, for example, that ‘physician’ is derived from one of those damnable Greek words that was originally spelt with a ‘phi’ (_physike episteme_), or that some Latin-obsessed jokers arbitrarily declared that ‘dette’ ought to be spelt after the fashion of Cicero and so added a useless ‘b’ to it. > > How do you _just know_ such things? By reading. Voraciously. Off screens, billboards, and pieces of paper. Therefore, the best way to teach spelling is to encourage reading, and _not_ insist on either musty paper or politically correct classics. If they are reading, they are being exposed to the written word, and _that_ is how one successfully internalizes the rules of both spelling and usage. Somebody always has to trot out this myth. Yes, a 6-year old sounding out new words is going to notice the letters that make up said words. Once reading proficiency rises to the level where the reader is able to take in an entire word or, ideally, clusters of words each time the eye stops moving, the precise makeup of individual words is no longer noticed. Unfortunately, many students never make it to this point, leaving us with many adults who spell great but can’t read for shit. FWIW, I learned to spell and type by playing the online text game [Gemstone III (now IV)](http://www.play.net/gs4/). You’re going to get your ass kicked if you can’t type “get handaxe from my knapsack” quickly and correctly. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139/71 "2010-11-13T15:03:06Z")
A while ago this was a popular subject on talk back radio in Sydney. Three things absolutely amazed me: one, that so many people would ring up to defend doing a relative’s work two, that nearly all of them seemed to be Asian three, that none of them were capable of seeing how wrong their actions were, “but she is my little sister…” It must be a common thing though. I often interview people that have degrees, have submitted beautiful applications and can barely communicate at the level of a 10 year old. I’m thinking outside assistance as soon as they start answering questions. ---
**Author:** ![trupa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aeb1de/32.png) [@trupa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/trupa)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139/72 "2010-11-13T15:53:19Z")
Agree re: typing or word processing software, but disagree re: math and calculators. Anecdote: My wife is tutoring a grade 8 student in math and science (physics and chemistry) this year. While the student had originally learned her times tables and other basic math skills in elementary school to a reasonable level (we know this because we had been involved in helping her acquire those skills back then), in junior high the students were told to use a calculator for all their math problems. The result (at least for this student) is that she has regressed in her math skills back down to a grade 4 or 5 level. She has forgotten most of her times tables and hyperventilates over anything to do with fractions or ratios. This is of course not only affecting her math course but her ability to learn how to do problems in physics and chemistry as well. Bringing in the calculators or spreadsheets too early /too often may promote the loss of previous skills because you don’t keep practising those skills. > [@hdc\_bst](#): > > I’ve gotta agree with **OpalCat** and others here. You’re coming off as a bit of a Luddite. > > Typing and software use are easily learned subjects that shouldn’t require a huge block of instruction. So is handwriting. Why not teach students to take advantage of the wonders of the modern era. By using a word processor for their essay, not only will it look professional, but the student can go through more review/revise cycles because of the ease of editing their original version. They can spend more time thinking critically and focusing on composition. > > Similarly for math (uhoh, out come the long knives), a calculator, Excel spreadsheet, or more advanced program can allow the student to spend more time on formulating the problem and understanding the operations that must be performed than hand-calculating said operations. This, of course, assumes that they’ve already learned how to perform calculations by hand. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139/73 "2010-11-13T17:41:11Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > Somebody always has to trot out this myth. What myth? That being exposed to words in context will help you spell them? > [@](#): > > Yes, a 6-year old sounding out new words is going to notice the letters that make up said words. Once reading proficiency rises to the level where the reader is able to take in an entire word or, ideally, clusters of words each time the eye stops moving, the precise makeup of individual words is no longer noticed. True, to a certain extent, but irrelevant: People who have been proficient readers for the vast majority of their lives still notice spelling errors (my cite is the SDMB), indicating they _do_ notice the precise makeup of individual words. > [@](#): > > Unfortunately, many students never make it to this point, leaving us with many adults who spell great but can’t read for shit. Cite? I’ve always noticed that people who are not eager readers also have poor spelling. > [@](#): > > FWIW, I learned to spell and type by playing the online text game [Gemstone III (now IV)](http://www.play.net/gs4/). You’re going to get your ass kicked if you can’t type “get handaxe from my knapsack” quickly and correctly. Thank you for demonstrating my thesis. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parents-doing-the-kids-homework/560139.md?page=3)