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Bad Teaching Techniques
Nov. 19th, 2010 10:03 pmIn response to this thread on homework at BoingBoing: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/11/19/mental-physical-and.html
I went to high school in the mid-90s. In 9th grade, my average homework load was several hours per weeknight, and I was regularly staying up past midnight working on my homework; in 10th, it was less than one hour per weeknight. It varied from class to class, and teacher to teacher.
Math and foreign language teachers tended to assign the most homework. I think it was appropriate, in moderation, in foreign languages. I think it was excessive in math. Some of my math teachers would spend the whole class going over the previous night's homework. So in those classes we were expected to read the assigned chapter in the book, go over the problems, and teach ourselves. Some of the students coped; others of us did not. I am good with logic, but, to this day, I am unable to make heads or tails of math books (it's something about the way they are written; I had much less trouble with one statistics book written by an anthropologist for anthro students) and would end up having to work out my own methods of solving each problem. These would take time and a lot more calculation than the standard method.
I went to high school in the mid-90s. In 9th grade, my average homework load was several hours per weeknight, and I was regularly staying up past midnight working on my homework; in 10th, it was less than one hour per weeknight. It varied from class to class, and teacher to teacher.
Math and foreign language teachers tended to assign the most homework. I think it was appropriate, in moderation, in foreign languages. I think it was excessive in math. Some of my math teachers would spend the whole class going over the previous night's homework. So in those classes we were expected to read the assigned chapter in the book, go over the problems, and teach ourselves. Some of the students coped; others of us did not. I am good with logic, but, to this day, I am unable to make heads or tails of math books (it's something about the way they are written; I had much less trouble with one statistics book written by an anthropologist for anthro students) and would end up having to work out my own methods of solving each problem. These would take time and a lot more calculation than the standard method.
