Oct 29 2007
Homework
And the honor roll. How to balance, i.e. homework. Not giving homework, a continuing endeavor, does that mean give student a break from stress - homework-free weekend or whenever, the homework would go away, disappear? I just don’t see the point that if the kid have to do it sooner or later. It’s not like an assignment, ok to relief Jane I’ll give it to Joe to do. So Jane doesn’t have to worry about it thereafter. Homework, think about it. If the kids don’t do it, who’s going to do it? I’m not advocating one way or the other if they should be given homework on weekend/holidays. “Others are experimenting with later start times so students can get more sleep.” Are they dumb or what, there is the set 24 hours in a day for everyone. Starting late?? As for seniors prefer late nights vs toddlers prefer day light, I do see the point to have pre-k or first graders (they always wake up early than the rest of the household) to start school early than high school (King can’t even wake up on his own..) - in terms of sharing the bus. The schedules here now is high school starts first, then the middle schoolers and the primary schools are the last to be picked up.
As for honor roll, my kids schools’ mentality is ‘oh, no, we don’t know how your kids perform in terms of percentile in the class’ Give me a break, will you? So ranking will damage the losers? Do I want to my kids grow up in a glass jar, where everyone can do no wrong, where everyone is doing fine? In my middle/high school in Beijing, every mid and final term, we saw all our names listed on the honor roll on the right hand side of the blackboard, heading by the highest scorer, from #1 to # 53 (our class was large), no one less. We knew clearly where each of us stood academically. Did it cause suicide? Not I knew of. Or pushed the loser to slide more? I couldn’t tell. (Losers are one kind of human beings that aren’t good at school. Who say they won’t be good at other things?) But I appreciated it. It provided a sense of my own standing again my peers. Showed me the reality, which I’ll inevitably face soon. We had a harmonious atmosphere. Competitive? highly. Hostile? absolutely no.