Who Invented Homework?

Re:Who Invented Homework? by Jtsummers on Thursday May 05, 2016 @08:30AM (#11635453)

Thanks to the economic state of the US, most families can't afford the time to dedicate to their children to properly educate them in the breadth of subjects that schools (attempt to) cover. And this assumes that the parents are either educated or capable/willing to source proper materials to provide information (or the tools to access information) for their children.

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Re:Who Invented Homework? by nibs on Thursday May 05, 2016 @08:37AM (#11635500)

Agreed. Which makes me sad. The funds do exist, but it all goes to public education. One cannot opt-out of school taxes, even when one opts out of school. It is not just an issue that is purely economic, the money exists, it just does not exist in the hands of the parents.

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Re:Who Invented Homework? by emidln on Thursday May 05, 2016 @10:02AM (#11636163)

Part of this is that parents alone don't shoulder the burden of paying for their children's education. All taxpayers share in this. Exemptions or credits along these lines are short-sighted.

You expose another issue that comes up frequently which is the idea that the cost per pupil is somewhat fixed in a region (for administrative purposes anyway) and so regardless of the school a parent choose for their child, the state should pay that school. As an extension, if the parent would choose to home school, that parent might be paid the prevailing rate for a child.

I don't think that works on a number of levels (again, poor parents probably can't afford to not work for $6k for 9 months of the year). Perhaps combined with other social programs (such as a UBI), this would be more reasonable. I think there would be a huge media backlash over kids who end up with effectively no education due to parents just taking their kids UBI+their UBU+school fees and then letting the kids play video games all day (regardless of whether this actually happens or not). Standardized testing would probably become even more important as a means for the state to make sure that your children are actually being educated.

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Re:Who Invented Homework? by germinalphrase on Thursday May 05, 2016 @08:55AM (#11635617)

Possibly, but if the per pupil cost is between $6500-19800 (Utah and New York, respectively) would this amount of money free at least one parent to fully educate their children? If that were true, wouldn't it seem to follow that more people would do it?

Public education must be - or at least have the appearance of being - a good deal economically.

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Re:Who Invented Homework? by nibs on Thursday May 05, 2016 @09:02AM (#11635669)

Probably not, unless you have 3+ kids. My Mom always worked park time, and we had a community that would get together and hang out and share in the child care. And you definitely have to make sacrifices, we grew up in the country in a pretty small house, etc. but we lived fairly well on 1.5 incomes.

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Re:Who Invented Homework? by antisthenes on Thursday May 05, 2016 @12:31PM (#11637535)

I agree with you about the economic state of US, but "not having enough time" excuse has nothing to do with the economy.

http://www.statisticbrain.com/television-watching-statistics...

Perhaps if the average American cut down their TV watching time in half, they'd suddenly have time to spend more on their children and help them through the subjects studied at school.

Going by the provided statistics, is it any wonder Asian Americans (least amount of TV time) do better in school than other demographics? I have no doubt that parents in those households spend an above average amount of time helping their kids with schoolwork and make absolutely sure they don't fall behind.

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