VertigoGal said:
I'm a sophomore in high school and while I tend to get a ton of homework, I can't typically be bothered to do it because the majority of it is busywork. I have a job/friends/sports and it's just a waste of time to worry about it.
I generally don't put much effort into homework (and save it til 3 am if I absolutely have to do it at home haha). Because teachers don't put much effort into the assignment and it's just a waste of time. I know what teachers want out of an essay for example- so I bullshit it and give them the essay they want and it only takes me 10 minutes to write in the morning. It may be a horrible essay but it gets me an A because I know my audience.
The only exception is my AP world history class- we have a ton of homework, not necessarily assigned, but just expected. I have to read the chapters and if I want notes on them I have to take them in my spare time. It's a ton of work but I don't mind it because I can do as much as I feel is worthwhile, and I'm not given pages of insulting busywork.
About preparing for college though...yeah we need some homework so it's not too much of a shock. But, in high school unlike college, in addition to homework we have to sit in that building for 8 HOURS a day. so I think the load could be a bit lighter than in college and we'd survive.
I think actually this is just about the best argument possible against "busywork," because figuring out how to manipulate the system isn't the main skill you should be developing, and I wonder how many of your teachers might reconsider their approach to homework if they realized that even students of your caliber are having this response. I was fortunate to attend high schools where, to the best of my recollection, only one class I took had much of this "busywork"-type homework, and I looked on it then and still look on it now as a sign that that class was in general poorly planned and taught. (I had a couple classes like this in college, as well--large major-requirement classes with inexperienced, overworked TAs who basically gave you an A simply for submitting a prettily worded essay conforming to the expected Intro--Thesis--Point 1--Point 2--Point 3--Conclusion archetype.) It wasn't that I didn't have lots of homework; I did, but most of my assignments were either of an absolutely-essential-for-keeping-up-with-tomorrow's-lesson type, or else more protracted ones (research papers, etc.) where it would definitely show if you'd tossed it off at the last minute no matter how good your composition skills were (admittedly, mine weren't that great). I'm a tough grader myself, and my students don't get As unless they've exceeded the assignment requirements by a wide margin, and in a way that demonstrates considerable original thought and exceptional effort. If they submit a very well-crafted, well-worded paper with a solid thesis showing they've read and understood all the materials as well as the assigned question, they get a B. Which is a good grade and nothing to be ashamed of.
I do think the fact that so many students nowadays are juggling multiple demanding extracurricular activities, as well as jobs, needs to be factored into the homework equation also; this is a much more pervasive problem than it was 20 years ago. My first two years of high school, I did cross-country in fall and track in spring, but I didn't have a job and neither did most other athletes, and if they did it was maybe 10 hours a week. My last two years, I didn't have time for sports, because my "job" four afternoons and evenings a week was picking up my siblings from grade school, taking them to the park to play for awhile, fixing them dinner then helping them with their homework while my mother taught. While this definitely put a crimp in my social life, I was able to simultaneously get some of my own homework done, since most of this happened at home. But so many high school students today, especially college-bound ones, are involved in sports
plus newspaper or yearbook
plus working 20 hours a week, and that only leaves so much time and energy available for serious focus on homework. That makes it all the more important that whatever homework there is, not be so excessive in quantity so as to make reasonable time left over for socializing and sleeping infeasible, nor so rote and unstimulating in quality so as to invite a cynical triage approach to completing it.
It is true that college is usually less demanding of one's time in an immediate sense (i.e., you don't have to be in class 8 hours a day). The relevance of prior homework experience to college, I think, lies *mostly* in time management and study skills: ability to guesstimate accurately how long getting the work done will take you; being realistic about what sort of environment you need to really buckle down--some do just fine in the dorm or student union with commotion all around, others need to find a quiet nook in the library; understanding how to use the syllabus (I wish more high school teachers would have one) to strategically anticipate and prioritize.
But a healthy and productive attitude about what being a student is all about is also important, particularly when it comes to hardass profs like me
who expect you to really exert yourself, and this is why it concerns me to see good students, whether through exhaustion or jadedness or whatever, making a habit of the Oh-well-this'll-do approach. Furthermore, I find that most of my ambitious students who wind up struggling with burnout are suffering not so much from unmanageable demands on their time, as from looking around at other ambitious students who apparently feel much more enthusiastic about and rewarded by their classes than they do, and miserably wondering, "Why don't I feel like that? When did there start being nothing more to it all than a neverending daily grind to make the grade?" I don't think it usually occurs to high school students to feel this way, because the reality of your responsibility to make your own future seems so far off at that stage, and it's easier to rationalize away the jadedness as simply what's needed to manage the curveballs the system keeps throwing you, which you really have no choice about. But there comes a time when you'll have far more of a say in what gets thrown at you and when, and that usually starts with college, and that can really be paralyzing if you're still locked into the know-your-enemy approach psychologically. I realize this is a worst-case-scenario I'm advancing, and I hope I'm not sounding melodramatic nor failing miserably to make sense explaining it--I've seen it happen plenty of times, but it's hard to put the process into words.
As far as homework quantity and type for earlier grades, I think really the same principle applies, only with more time needed for socializing and recreation outside of school. I agree with ShellBeThere (always helpful to have a psychologist around in this forum, lol) about report projects being probably the best form of longterm skill-building through homework at this stage...with the caveat that the needed time management and study skills seldom if ever emerge
sui generis as a consequence of aging; they have to be helped along, and preferably by parents, since they know their child's strengths and weaknesses best (though the aid of a dedicated and patient school librarian--if there is one--who's kept well-informed by the teachers can also go a long way). Teaching our calm and alert oldest son to read was relatively speaking a breeze; teaching his equally smart but hyperactive younger brother was much harder, and I expect he'll probably need more "constructive encouragement" well into his school years than his brother, who at age 8 contentedly sits down and barrels through whatever takehome drills he has with no problem. My own older brother was hyperactive too, and his work habits were erratic and disorganized well into high school, at which point he got heavily involved in sports and, perhaps paradoxically, became much better able to manage his time and economize his energy. I do think *some* of the drill-type homework we had growing up was detrimental to him, to the extent that it hurt his self-confidence to not find completing it as easy as his siblings did, and neither he nor my parents could realistically change that at that stage. So perhaps it's true to say that less homework would have improved, or at least avoided further hurting, his performance overall, and that would've been a good thing. But on the other hand, his problems certainly weren't his teachers' fault either, and he's said himself that all those years of plugging miserably away at papers and problems to often-disappointing effect nonetheless helped prepare him to grasp what was called for when things finally came together and he was ready to take effective control. Inadequate downtime was never his problem really. Still, going back to my "triage approach" point, I do think that's a bad thing to let happen at any age, and the earlier homework burdens start nudging kids towards it, the more unacceptable it is.