Yeah we’re joking around but can we all at least agree fuck homework
It’s almost always busy work. I saw a tweet that claimed homework is a way to condition kids to accept working after hours and that shit really stuck with me.
At a certain point, you get the material or you don’t. Doing several drills or being forced to show work doesn’t help.
Bourgeois school systems in general. It’s daycare with added indoctrination. Parents have no choice because they need to work ridiculous hours to keep themselves and their children from starving and their children must therefore be left in the care of teachers who are only allowed to teach a very specific curriculum designed to create a docile domesticated workforce.
The whole system is based on the myth of meritocracy that convinces the children of the respective social classes that they deserve their oppression/privilege.
The entire education system in capitalist society is designed to reinforce this dynamic.
Students and teachers have a very one sided dynamic whereby the student is denied any agency whatsoever and is treated as an empty vessel to be filled with acceptable liberal ideology.
Homework has plenty of room to be good but the way it’s implemented is a problem.
Like practicing material that you’re struggling on is generally a good idea, getting a word search because the teacher has to give homework no matter how relevant it is or else parents complain isn’t good.
And even then practice work is generally structured as just keep doing it over and over and over rather than trying to introduce problems that build up a proper understanding of whatever you’re doing.
Some education - particularly language education - really does boil down to rote repetition until the lessons sink in. Some skills - like playing an instrument or building up a certain muscle group - really is about doing it over and over again until it becomes second nature. Some education is simply about establishing a large encyclopedia of knowledge or a toolbox of techniques that you can recall at a moment’s notice. The clarity of the moment isn’t what you’re trying to establish. Its the speed and accuracy of recall that is what’s being trained.
There are ways of structuring educational programs such that people have more time to focus on particular skills efficiently. Block scheduling, for instance, allows you to spend more hours on a single task or idea building up familiarity. Immersion courses and training camps can focus your attention on a particular skill set and give you more opportunities to master it.
But a lot of education is doing a thing over and over again until you get better at it.
