Why don't schools simulate a typical 9 to 5 work week for students and remove homework entirely?

https://lemmy.world/post/2394604

Why don't schools simulate a typical 9 to 5 work week for students and remove homework entirely? - Lemmy.world

I know this is typical for the US so this is more for US people to respond to. I wouldn’t say that it is the best system for work, just wondering about the disconnect.

There are compelling reasons send them 9-5

There are also compelling reasons not to

  • Teachers spend a non-trivial amount of time post class working on previous assignments, future assignments, setting up tests coordinating with other teachers and staff. If they start all this at 5, they’re stuck at the office until very late.

  • Busses/kids on the road before rush hour

  • Extra-curricular activities are better off earlier than later, don’t want clubs running into diner time.

  • better chance of getting home before dark in winter at Northern latitudes

  • What if all the honework in the future is done online and multiple choice… if its a written asignment it can be graded by an AI. Bada bing teachers have not much more to complain about. If you are a teacher and are still complaining about having to grade homework, its probably because your administration is stuck in 2007.

    A better argument would be, is homework with it. Once AI has significantly advanced to be trustworthy enough to grade, it will be trustworthy enough to do the homework.

    Want to be forward facing? How long before AI replaces teachers? What does classes were solely presented as a video feeds. At any point you can raise your hand It would stop the video feed You ask the AI question. A formulates a response and then tests you to make sure that you understand the answer before moving on.

    Imagine getting the equivalent of one-on-one tutoring in every subject.

    What if instead of milestone tests the AI just follows along and make sure you understand what’s going on? What if the next day it does a quick recap on the previous days lesson and asks you a couple of questions to make sure you get it?

    What happens when each individual learns at their own pace and goes as fast or as low as they need to. What happens when you can just walk away from a lesson and come back later?

    There are a couple of flaws with this. I spend a great deal of time structuring lessons to get students working with each other. I have met, and taught, too many people who have said that the only reason they stuck out through high school was the relationships they developed with thier peers and staff. We've seen what happens when students only do solo computer work, and it isn't pretty.

    There’s no requirement to be socially ostracized. You can still have groups, clubs, online and offline connections.

    I suspect most students will likely find they have more spare/social time. When they can learn at their own pace with individual attention.

    You may find that less kids feel like they are toughing it out, under these scenarios.

    I use the Modern Classroom Model for my classroom for the last couple of years which is a self-paced system. In 2020 during our zoom school year I was also fully self paced. Here are a few things I've found.

    A handful of students will shut down with self-paced learning. They have low self-efficacy and are failure avoidant.
    Another handful of students will hand off their chromebook to "the smart kid" in a different class and have them take the mastery checks for them. They will end up bombing the mastery assessment, but teenagers are not known for their executive function.
    A different handful have limited capacity for additional cognitive load. It is hard to do school when you don't know where you are sleeping that night or some other chronic trauma. They thrive when being told explicitly what to do, how to do it.
    Yet another handful will fly through the curriculum because they long ago figured out the game of school. Yet when I check in and ask deep, meaningful questions to see if they really understand the topic, they can't.

    Young gen Z and gen alpha really need to work on social skills and work ethic. Solo-self-paced experiences don't cover it.

    AI doesn’t know what it doesn’t know, let alone what somebody else doesn’t know.

    “Understanding” is just something that AI can’t do. It doesn’t know what your words mean, or what it’s own word mean.

    The advantage of curriculum is that you could feed it a textbook or a dozen and have that be the only information it knows. It doesn’t need to know everything, just the specific criteria that a government sets as baseline knowledge for specific tiers.

    The science will improve with time.