Another teacher in my building told me that he asked his students how many of them did homework. . . . Blank stares are his answer. He's puzzled because as an educated person he remembers having to do homework. He asks again and the kids look at each other and shrug. He thinks they are kidding but one student says "I'm not playing Mister, I don't do homework."
When asked "Why not?" the response was "It's boring."
SO. Um, homework is practice and we learn and get better by practicing. Is there a whole generation that thinks that they are SO special and SO gifted that the learning is just going to LEAP into their brains while they sit by passively and drool?
A local school district is just horrified that more than a thousand more students are failing a class this year since last year. Texas passed a law that states that districts cannot require teachers to give a minimum grade (a 50 instead of 0) and because students are NOT doing homework then they are failing. So Irving wants to take away failing grades for homework.
WHEN do the kids have to become accountable? Are we supposed to spoon feed them into old age and ALLOW them to perform in a sub-standard way? We're supposed to protect their precious little psyches and tell them it doesn't really matter...that they don't have to do the mean old homework.
I know that many of our children have obstacles to overcome. But MANY MORE are enabled to be lazy. I will help a child that wants help with my last dime. I do NOT CHOOSE to enable students to be lazy.
What do YOU think?
Last Friday was my last day as a DISD teacher, almost exactly one year to the day after I started. I basically quit because of exactly what you're talking about here. I worked my tail off for that year trying to figure out what *I* was doing wrong that was making the kids so apathetic and devoid of energy and curiosity. In the end, I think I just decided that it's going to take more (and better) people than me to change our society's attitudes towards learning and start sending kids into classrooms who are motivated -- either internally or from outside themselves, say parental expectations -- to learn. I couldn't learn for them, and I couldn't face a whole career spent killing myself for the 5% of the kids who actually gave a sh*t.
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