Should studnets have to do math homework?

Great Debates
#1

This is something that has bothered me for years. I had a math class in high school where the homework was worth more than the tests. Now, I got an A on every test, but ended up with a much lower grade because I didn’t do the homework.

Now, I see the value of hard work and I understand that a person needs to do things they don’t like. (If I didn’t know this before my current job, I do now.) But what could the point of forcing students to do homework when they already understand the concepts involved. Am I going to forget fairly basic algebra if I don’t do it everyday? I don’t remember math homework assignments for grades in college.

Do you think students should have to homework when they clearly understand the material?

#2

No, that might interfere with them catchin’ studs.

Oh, come on - there are some things you just have to get out of the way

#3

I don’t know that ‘studnets’ should have to do math homework but English homework might help ;).

I think this comes down to different theories of teaching. I have had teachers who were all about homework. I had other classes (math included) where your grade consisted of performance on three tests.

Is there a right or wrong to that? I don’t know. Some kids test better than others so the bad testing kid might benefit from a grade weighed heavily to homework. For you it was the opposite.

Also realize it is possible to cram for a test and having mandatory homework might do a better job of ensuring the material you are learning is really ‘there’. I have crammed for a few tests in my day and speaking for myself I can say I passed the test with a B or an A and would have failed the same test if I took it a few days later. I was a good test taker and had a good short term memory but I didn’t really learn the material.

I hated homework myself but it definitely has its place.

#4

Yes, because it gives them a chance to demonstrate that they do understand the material, it gives the teachers a chance to see what/if they need to explain in more detail, and it gives students a chance to practice the skills they’ve learned. Keeping it strictly to math, I know I would have horrible problems just doing my taxes if my math teachers hadn’t assigned lots of homework. After the fifth problem, I usually understood what I was doing and the rest was just practicing it so I wouldn’t forget.

#5

I must vote for homework as sometimes given being largely wasteful.
Often in mathI would be set say 40 questions in 4 sections. Each section would consist of 10 questions all simple variants on a theme, gradually increasing the difficulty as the question number got higher.
I would always do the last (hardest) question in each section, if it was trivially easy for my I would never bother doing the other nine questions in that section. This was because the maths books were written for all skill levels, and so had very shallow learning curves. I feel this was justified as it allowed me more time to work on subjects I found harder such as English and French.
I fear that forcing people to do too many repetitive questions in what is essentially there own time is probably one of the best ways to put someone off a subject.
Cheers, Bippy

#6

If homework is optional, most people who need to do it won’t.

If the teacher doesn’t give homework, all people who need to do it won’t.

I find it highly doubtful that anyone could go through an Advanced math course (like AP Calc) without doing any homework. Maybe your courses were too easy for you.

#7

Practice, practice, practice.

If you don’t understand the concepts, practice should help you learn them. If you do understand the concepts, then the exercises should be easy, no?

Math is a subject that requires near-daily exercise. Each day’s subject builds on what you learned the previous day. If you don’t keep up, it’s easy to forget and get lost on the subsequent, harder material. It’s a journey, not a goal.

(And I say this from the perspective of someone who had an intuitive understanding of math, and hated having to “show work” when many of those tedious steps came to me automatically. But I wrote them out anyway.)

#8

I am sorry, I checked the spelling in the post but not the title.

#9

Yeah, the practice is good for the students who need it but would not force themselves to do problems unless the problems were assigned. Most students do better with some sort of structure or framework than on a totally self-paced curriculum.

And turning the homework in allows teachers to evaluate where the students are and if they are getting the concept. Otherwise, how do the teachers know if the students are ready for the test?

#10

Maybe the teacher should allow students to “test out” of each section in advance of teaching the section.

Give the students (1) two weeks notice of a quiz; and then (2) a quiz at the beginning of each section of material. If the student passes, give the student the option of accepting or rejecting the grade. If they accept, then they’re done for that section with no further action required. If they want to improve, then they must do all homework for that section and take a test at the end of the section that will be their final grade for the section. Repeat for each section.

The teacher will spend more time giving and grading the quizzes, but this time and effort is mitigated by the fact that the teacher will have less homework to grade as some students will be exempt.

If a “C” student accepts the initial grade with no desire to improve, then making them do additional howmework, etc. will not likely help them if they only care about getting a “C” anyway. They will just end up doing the minimum work to end up with a “C”.

Eh… it’s a theory.

#11

That would work pretty well, actually. I can’t see any problems with it.

One thing I noticed as I got into more advanced mathematics was that the number of problems I was supposed to do dropped tremendously (10 total in second semester analysis), but the difficulty increased a lot. This is the right way to do more advanced mathematics, but it does assume some maturity (both mathematical and chronological) on the part of the student.

#12

Stick me down in the “homework is necessary” camp. In addition to helping you learn the material through repetition, being forced to do homework you don’t feel you need to do is a good life lesson. In the real world, you’re always going to be required to perform little mundane tasks that you feel are useless, but you have to do them anyway, because the Boss Man said to. Sometimes it may really be useless, sometimes you may just think it is because you can’t see the big picture, but it’s generally a good idea to do it. And as a matter of disclosure, I never (or rarely) did homework in high-school, yet aced all of the tests. I ended up getting mostly C’s and B’s, as the lack of homework impacted my grade pretty badly.

That being said, it seems that kids today are getting homework loads that are just insane. Some people I’ve known can get 4-5 hours per night of homework. Teachers seems to believe that by throwing homework around willy nilly, they can solve our school performace crisis, when in reality, they just burn the kids out.

Going with the Bippy’s example, I feel that 40 problems is probably too much for most math lessons, unless it’s a weekly assignment (I typically had assignments every other night). For really simply operations, maybe, but once you get beyond geometry and algebra, the problems can get pretty lengthy. If you don’t embed the concepts after 10-15 problems, you probably aren’t going to fare any better with 40. Just MHO.
Jeff

#13

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I don’t think I’ve ever heard of homwork being worth more then the test. When I was in school test were worth at least 25% of the grade. In some classes if you failed to do your homework you needed to get 100% on each test just to end up with a final grade of 70%.

**

They want you to do more then understand the basic concepts they want you to master them.

Yep.

Marc

#14

I don’t see how you can minimize “waste of time” lessons without eventually introducing inequality into the student evaluation process. Doing so isn’t worth the trade-off, either. I’d rather a handful of students feel a lesson is wasting their time than have an entire classroom filled with students who are graded using unequal and subjective grading standards… and know it, too.

For you, some homework assignments (and even classtime) were a waste of time because you understood what was being covered. I can understand your view. But try looking at it from the point of view of others. For example, say you felt that the amount of classtime dedicated to Concept A wasn’t enough for you to understand it completely. Naturally, your homework for that night will consist of dozens of problems about Concept A. You’re already dreading it. Then you hear he kid next to you say that he should be excused from the work because, as he claims, he already understands it well. The teacher agrees. Now, how would you feel towards the other student? How would you feel towards the teacher? Pretty darn unhappy, right?

There are bound to be inequalities in a classroom environment. Some students are better at learning. Some get along better with, or are outright favored by the teacher. It happens. But that doesn’t make it right to deliberately introduce another inequality, especially one whose only benefit is to save a student’s time.
Also, if I may say so, it seems to me that this thread is inspired by a complaint of yours-- as I read it, you were (are still?) upset about getting a lower grade, even though you feel you understood the material thoroughly. Even though you did well on tests, you got a lower grade because you didn’t do the classwork. You didn’t do your homework because you felt it was a waste of your time. Hence your question about homework.

I feel compelled to mention that your getting a lower grade was entirely justified. Teachers don’t grade only based on a subjective assessment of a student’s proficiency at the skills they were taught; they also grade according to the (objective) amount of work that was turned in. So while you may have understood concepts clearly and from the start, you did not complete the required amount of homework to reflect that understanding. While your comprehension of the material may have fulfilled the standards of an A grade, your performance didn’t.

#15

Some homework is helpful. Too much is awful. And too much when you’re like I am and often thought I got it in class but found out that when I sat down to do my homework I had no idea what to do is TORTURE. The same thing would happen when I got tutored; I was fine at the time, but get me by myself, and it all flew out of my head.

I think I only finally got through a college-level basic algebra class by brute force; I took it during a month-long summer session. Two hours every day. HORRIBLE. But we were graded on daily quizzes, so I had a chance of retaining the material. The homework was voluntary, and I always did at least some of it, or as much as I could.

I hate math. I’ve hated math ever since I ran into algebra. Math geeks, don’t take offence, I’m glad you’re out there.

#16

That’s not far from how my math classes in elementary school were done.
We could follow along with the class, or we could just take the end of section test - if our grade was high enough, we went on to the next level (doing as much homework as we felt we needed to do to pass the test).

So, the people who needed the repitition got it - the people who didn’t, didn’t have to do it.

#17

What’s the difference between understanding and mastering a concept ?

#18

I just thought of a twist on my “testing out” theory…

Make the highest possible grade on the quiz at the start of each section 85 points (“B”). In other words, even if you score anywhere between 86% to 100%, the most you can get is 85 points (“B”) on the quiz to “test out” of a section.

However, if you score between 86% and 100% AND your cumulative average is over 90% at the time of the quiz, you can earn any points over 85 that you would have gotten but for the point cap on the quiz ONLY if you help tutor the students who have a cumulative average of less than 70% going into the section.

If you score between 86 and 100 points on a quiz, and your cumulative average at the time of the quiz is less than 90%, you are not elligible for the “tutoring exemption” and you must either accept the 85 points or do the homework, etc. to get ahigher grade.

Basicall, you can’t ace the class on testing-out unless you help the lower-performing students.

#19

I just thought of a twist on my “testing out” theory…

Make the highest possible grade on the quiz at the start of each section 85 points (“B”). In other words, even if you score anywhere between 86% to 100%, the most you can get is 85 points (“B”) on the quiz to “test out” of a section.

However, if you score between 86% and 100% AND your cumulative average is over 90% at the time of the quiz, you can earn any points over 85 that you would have gotten but for the point cap on the quiz ONLY if you help tutor the students who have a cumulative average of less than 70% going into the section.

If you score between 86 and 100 points on a quiz, and your cumulative average at the time of the quiz is less than 90%, you are not elligible for the “tutoring exemption” and you must either accept the 85 points or do the homework, etc. to get ahigher grade.

Basicall, you can’t ace the class on testing-out unless you help the lower-performing students.

#20

What would be the social dynamic created by this “arrangement” ?