I can tell you children’s homework is hard; I help with the maths and the wife helps with ALL the other subjects.
This is only the second term of my daughters first year at secondary school ( 12 years old ) and tonight I am struggling with “slope intercept graphs”.
When reading the instructions it is just like trying to read Chinese 
I have just watched a youtube video which has helped and I will have another go tomorrow night.
I feel your pain - I’ve got a son in Algebra right now and they started talking about calculating the value of the x-axis based on an inverse of the y-axis and it’s corresponding algrebraic formula and I was like “what?” 
It was the first time I had to guess that his answers were right. Luckily, he was (whew)
I’m sure I could figure it out, and time was short. But did I ever feel stupid at that moment 
I have an 8 yr old with spellings that blow me away!
Inaccurately
Inconsiderately
Insignificantly
and so on!
My 10 year old is in a similar vein with
Circumnavigate
Hypochondriac
Circumstantial etc
I gave up on the Maths homework and am not looking forward to them going to secondary school!
These days, you just go to online forums to get homework done, right?
These days, you just go to online forums to get homework done, right?
This has been done - but we try to stop it.
There are some good aids online though as I could not understand the instructions for “slope intercept graphs” on the test website. I checked out a youtube video and it made sense.
A lot of maths homework in our school is currently done online and the results are sent to the school.
Although I am a HUGE proponent of formal education - and fully acknowledge the value of learning HOW TO LEARN - there are many things taught in these elementary grades that has no little application in the broader world.
Of course, in the field of software development the ability to plot x and y (and z), for example, has some real world application (and, particularly GAME DEVELOPMENT which captures the hearts of many young people).
Let me say that I am VERY HAPPY to have grown beyond those years of helping with school homework. At the same time, I am envious of the magnificent resources available today to aid the learning process.
The fact that kids need help with their homework is a failure of the education system. That’s not what homework is for. Its proper purpose should be to consolidate the skills already well established at school and help to develop self discipline and routine.
If I had a kid who was struggling with homework, I’d send it back to the teacher and tell him/her to do a better job.
Excellent point! You are very wise, sir.
Well, most of my working life has been as a classroom teacher. If parents came to me and said that their kid had been struggling with the homework (and getting upset etc.) I would always apologise and tell them it was my fault, not the kid’s. It’s not always easy to get it right, but it’s important to try … and as the kids get older, the teachers seem to care less and less.
These days, kids take most of the blame that should rest with teachers. It’s not easy being a teacher, I’ll admit, but still, a proper education system will provide what each pupil needs to take the next step, rather than throwing them in the deep end with lead weights on their arms. (Don’t get me wrong—I hate kids. But fair’s fair! 
)
Yeah, good luck with that here in the US. They throw as many different approaches to the same problems and hope one sticks.
My oldest had one teacher who deducted problems in math because he calculated the exact answer (correctly) and she wanted them to estimate the problems. (ex. If the problem was 72 + 36, he would have put 108, when she wanted 110, 70 + 40).
My mom’s formal education stopped with High School graduation and my dad’s with Business College.
I got so little help with my homework that it was effectively none.
I have tutored before but have never helped any children with their homework (except maybe here?)
What I find ironic is that when I was in school we had to do all our math problems out in full on paper - use of calculators was strictly forbidden. Now they encourage use of not only calculators but of computers as well! I can’t help but wonder if my having to do math the way I was taught helped me learn the basics that I would have missed learning using today’s methods.
Similar to a DW user not knowing HTML and CSS or a jquery user not knowing javascript and then have problems.
i.e. using the tools blindly
When I went to secondary school they decided to teach SMP maths and all I remember is we had lots of blocks of wood to build into rectangles and did a lot with matrix ( I wonder what the plural is? ). Anyway after 6 years or whatever I went onto further education and that was all traditional maths and I did not have a clue about fractions etc. But when I took my HNC it became very useful and the people who had learned traditional maths had a hard time!
They throw as many different approaches to the same problems and hope one sticks.
We had this discussion with the teachers at my daughters primary school as they did not start teaching them the way I work out divisions etc. until the last year. They used a different method every year and we questioned this. The reply was “it gives them the option of using whatever method they are happy with” which did make a kind of sense.
[ot]
matrices :)[/ot]
My daughter is only 3 so I’m sure I’ll experience the same. As far as finding Good Teacher is very rare… Basically, if there is a Good Teacher then he/she probably won’t be a teacher to begin with. For example, if there is a good Computer Teacher who teaches Java at $30~60,000 a year where he can work commercially and get paid over $100,000… what do you think he will do?
If you compare South Korea education vs U.S. is like comparing food quality from a restaurant vs fast-food pickups. Surprisingly, teacher salary is same as u.s. What’s different is that finding a Job in S. Korea is incredibly hard due over-population where teacher have to compete aggressively to get a job! Here, I feel they are just grabbing teachers off from a street who claims to have a paper degree from whatever University.
[font=calibri]That’s not always a fair comparison, particularly away from IT subjects. For a start, the number of jobs for professional mathematicians, linguists, historians (etc) that are paid on a par with teachers is very limited. There are over 400,000 teachers employed in state schools in England, with a minimum starting salary of £22k (US$36k) – how much scope do you think there would be for them to seek other careers? Not much! Yes, good programmers might be able to command good salaries, but only a minority of teachers would be in that fortunate position.
Second, good teachers are not always the best in their subject field, and vice versa. (The converse is even more true). A good teacher has to know enough about their subject to teach it to an advanced school level, which generally means at most a related degree – not necessarily good enough to get a top job in industry. On the other hand, a good teacher has to know how to teach, to motivate, to empathise and to inspire, and has to be able to build the right kind of rapport and relationship with kids. There are plenty of people who are perfect experts in their subject, but are absolutely rubbish as teachers. It’s completely different skill sets, and people can’t always successfully switch from one to the other.
And thirdly, a common refrain (in the UK at least) is “people don’t go into teaching for the money”. More to the point, we don’t want people to go into teaching for the money. Now teaching is not a badly paid job by most standards (and this has improved over recent years), but the point about teaching more than most jobs is that you have to do it for the love of the job. If you don’t love it, you will be terrible at it, without a shadow of a doubt. There are very few other industries that are that extreme. To get good teachers, we need people who are motivated by the prospect of teaching in and of itself – teaching needs to pay enough that they can afford a comfortable lifestyle, but doesn’t need to (and shouldn’t) pay so much that it attracts people who only go there because it’s got the best salary.[/font]
Nicely said, Stevie. 
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. No matter how hard you try, if someone doesn’t want to pay attention, he won’t. Or you may try to explain things differently but still he doesn’t get it. There are various reasons why a kid may be struggling with his homework. Of course, one of them may be the teacher but not the only reason.
I have no children but I got plenty of nephews and nieces and most of the time, when they struggle is because they’re lazy 
Yes, that’s the discipline part of it. A teacher who’s on the ball will know what the kid’s ability is (through testing, observation etc.).
TBH, I rarely found laziness of kids to be an issue. Parents do have an important role in making sure they communicate with the teacher and make sure the kids spend time on homework. But failing that, from a teacher’s point of view, let’s just say that “we have ways of encouraging you to work”. 
(If I was sure a kid didn’t do the homework out of laziness, they’d find themselves doing it at play time. A great motivator, I can tell you.)
I agree absolutely, Alan.
When I was in school calculators did not exist. We were required to “show your work” and I was often reprimanded because I had a ‘gift’ for math and rarely went through the typical intermediary steps to arrive at the solution.
But, the most important point I wanted to make is that gaining the skill in learning is crucial. Schools should better emphasize learning how to learn. That is what has benefited me the most in my life overall.
{Plus an innate insatiably inquisitive nature was instrumental}
That is true. No one in the right mind would think that Education is the place to make a lot of money. However, there are many people where EDUCATION is the best paid job they could do. It’s like being recruited by military. Some do it for the pride of protecting their homeland but there are many who just joined since it was their best career choice. Many quit military after graduating from college. The same goes for public teacher. I’m willing to bet over 50% of teachers will quit if there’s commercial company offers 25% or higher salary. What I’m saying is that many horrible teachers are being a teacher because that’s their best paid job at the moment. At the end, U.S. will keep lowering education fund and willing to hire anyone for peanuts and the tax payers will be happier. It’s a infinite cycle of hiring bad teachers.