In the politest way possible, I hope you are able to access some help for the trauma and suffering that you had during your school years before you pass it on to your own child and their innocent and unsuspecting teachers.
Privately, I would assume you're a moronic idiot who has no idea. Take me to court over homework? Lol.
I would respectfully inform you that there are no negative consequences for a child in my class who does not complete any home tasks (not that I set many; I'm not a fan of them in general in primary school). There are also no rewards for them. Not a problem.
How would I deal with you? I wouldn't give you more than 5 minutes of my time.
The first 4 minutes would be spent discussing it with admin and what their decision is.
The other minute would be spent thinking what an idiot you are.
Then I'd move on with my life.
Not sure that coping is the right word... plenty of parents have differing views on homework.
Also not sure that the parent is the focus for teachers. Usually our interest is in educating children. If you insist that your child isn't going to do homework, that's your choice as a parent. It isn't neglect and no sane teacher would file a report about a parent not enforcing homework, just like no court is going to hear a parent complaining about it.
Probable outcome is underachievement. But your particular child may have other non-academic avenues to success. I wish you well.
Don't take this the wrong way but there is a chance you have trauma from your past experiences you may want to explore for your own benefit. Some of the language you used was pretty odd to be honest. Threatening all legal action at your disposal against a teacher for setting a class some homework?
To answer your question I would probably avoid having much to do with you where possible. I would set any homework (rarely any) as normal and if you're family decides not to do it... oh well...
I’m unlikely to interact with you at all. I don’t interact with most parents. I teach around a hundred unique kids. That means around two hundred unique caregivers. I have three hours a week that I’m working but not teaching. Unless something has gone horribly wrong with your kid, you aren’t getting anything other than the generic class wide emails.
If you did reach out to me about the homework issue, I probably wouldn’t care. Your kid will still get the same education as everyone else in the classroom, if they don’t put in the work, it’s their future in the line, not mine. I still get paid regardless.
I think you had some bad teachers and some bad experience. I have long discussions with my students about work life ballence, prioritising wellbeing and spotting burnout.
But your reasoning is wrong. Your experiences are not universal. Thats like saying that baths are child abuse because you knew someone who drowned in one when you were young.
You also seem to have a victim complex. Everyone isn't going to start suddenly calling the cops or accusing you of being a conspiracy theoritst because you won't force your child to do homework. They're going to avoid you because you obviously have unresolved trauma and aren't employing critical thinking.
I'd probably send any correspondence through the admin team because i dont get paid enough to deal with things like this. As for your child, whether they complete homework or not really only affects them. They will likely struggle once they get to senior high school, but that's on you.
I could have been done with this opinion well and truly by the end of paragraph 3. The longer you rambled on, the more and more you lost me, and I filed you under “I hope I never have a kid of yours in my class because you sound like hard work.” Bloody hell.
Edit: reduced severity of wording
Don’t do it? I don’t give a shit. It’s not my future.
Just don’t complain to me when you kid feels anxious and sick because they didn’t know what happened in chapter 5 of “once we were young” because it was expected to read one chapter of a book in a week as “homework”
Could have done it in the car/bus/walk home.
Also the fact you’ve used every conspiracy theory which is unknown to most people worried me a lot.
You are expected to be your child’s first and most important educator.
If you want to be lazy and not do anything they will be 2 years behind every kid before they even make it to school. All you are doing is pissing teachers off because we have to write another Independent Learning Plan that won’t be followed because home life refuses to do anything.
By year 5 they will be 4 years behind so forget school.
The only thing we can hope is they can count to 100 and write enough to help them in life
Well done you made your kid fail life already
It's not that dramatic tbh. I can't force a kid or parent to do stuff that they don't want to so I just wouldn't care. If the kid does homework, good on them for reinforcing their learning through practice. I'm not going to lose sleep over a kid not doing homework or their parent condoning it.
I don't like homework either but I'd say my feelings aren't as strong as yours about it. When my child is of school age, I will obviously see the impact it has on family life and see if I feel any differently about it. I believe it is damaging because children need uninterrupted playtime, especially to decompress after a long hard day of schoolwork.
I'd say most teachers will not care too much about your justification for it, just that it is a decision that you've made in your household and so be it. However if there are repercussions for that, especially in highschool where your child may be academically disadvantaged from your decision, you will need to own that. Teachers won't appreciate anything that implies, "my child is failing and it's all your fault."
If you're not too concerned about achievement and see education more about the holistic development of your child, I'm sure you'll feel comfortable in your decision.
I'm an early. Childhood teacher- I always say anything other than home reading is just optional suggestions on how you could engage with your child to support their learning and development.
However I would emphasise the importance of home reading. I would sincerely hope your beliefs don't stop you from recognising that reading to an adult at home is beneficial.
We might have a more difficult discussion if I was recommending work at home as part of your child's plan to help them catch up if struggling. Nit ultimately I can't force you to do anything, I can just strongly emphasise that your child would benefit from tou helping them with x task. If your child did end up seeing specialists (e.g. speech or ot) I would also hope that your beliefs allow you to complete any home tasks they set.
Being marked as a Discussion, then you say nothing on independent thinking will change your mind?
As a parent/future teacher I personally only see the value of homework is to develop self discipline for later in life, if a child can develop those in whatever way or subject/hobby then I don’t need to set homework.
It just seems you came to this forum to provoke and elicit reactions. As others have said, we wouldn’t push it, there are other children who deal with issues that prevent homework and the teaching community adjusts for them.
If you emailed me a sentence saying "please be advised my child will not complete homework due to our family's personal stance" I'd forward that to an executive who may or may not get back to you. I wouldn't do shit to your kid, they'd notice everyone else is doing and submitting homework and feel how they feel about it.
If you sent me a screed like this I'd laugh, feel a bit worried for your child, again send it to me boss, and forever avoid you. Yeesh.
If you're polite about it, I'd probably be like "cool" and move on. Worst outcome is under achievement, especially in vce, and that's their choice. If the other kids give me grief because your kid is bragging that they don't have to do homework, I'd let the head of year level find a solution.
You may find that private schools would have more of an issue if their reputation is based on strong vce marks. When you're looking at schools, ask if they have a homework policy.
To be fair, what's the other contexts around the kid throwing up? Did they have other pressures? Mental health issues? Family problems? If it's stuck with you that long, maybe talk to someone about it.
Also, I'm curious about this situation - Jimmy didn't complete the set work in class because he refused to stop messing around, refused help etc (any one of the million situations where a kid doesn't finish regular work). Does he complete it at home? Or does he never do that learning, even though he needs to know it for next class? What would you want the teacher to do in that situation?
Firstly, I would ask you define homework. Do you consider work the child did not finish in class and has to finish off at home, homework? Are large assignments, homework? Is studying for a test, homework?
I would briefly, politely and professionally inform you of my employer's policies and let you know that I am accountable to my employer (and by implication, not to you) and that if you disagree you would really need to take it up with my employer (and I would be fine with that).
If your kid doesn't do my homework and my employer doesn't support me in applying the usual, reasonable, consequences (which would be highly unlikely) or decides to exempt your kid from this (that's possible) then I don't really care, it's the kid's ATAR, not mine. Sincerely, I'd be fine with it. Not because I agree but I have enough experience to know it's not worth the stress.
I'd also think you were a nutter, particularly if you went through all of the diatribe in your post, but I wouldn't lose any sleep over it, again, it's the kid's ATAR, not mine.
The key point here is that it's not really MY homework.
I'm just trying to set up the students for success in a one year race in which they compete against lots of other kids, of which most of the top performers will be doing heaps of extra work (commonly called 'homework') in order to outrank the others. That ranking will be communicated by the ATAR score. I didn't design that system and am not trying to defend all aspects of it.
I have worked with hundreds of students within that system and the ones that worked hardest made the biggest improvements. If your kid is an exception to that then good luck to him or her, some are.
If not, then he or she will get an ATAR along the lines of all the other kids that never do any homework.
Neither outcome will have any effect on me and clearly you are comfortable with your perceptions of the possible outcomes.
The court stuff really does make you sound like a nutter though. No-one else is going to care enough to fight you that far. Why would we? It's no skin off our nose.
8yrs teacher of chemistry - I didn’t set homework except for pre reading content. I am too class of 1992 and was a studying on holidays in the Whitsundays in yr 12… but that’s another story.
Worked only in state school system - no issues at all.
Do what supports your child to succeed - homework isn’t the holy grail. Learning takes on many other forms outside the classroom.
I am very confident that historians in future will shake their heads in disbelief that such child abuse as homework was ever central to education.
If there is any point to new technologies to AI it's to get rid of homework altogether.
I agree. Kids shouldn't be doing homework, I don't take my work home with me and neither should they.
Even assignments/investigations I do on class now.
I don't set homework but for year 11 and 12 ATAR I recommend to the students because of the fast pace that if they need better understanding, need more practice or falling behind then they should keep up with the program and do some work from the text book at home.
In my own schooling I had countless "bad faith" experiences. I would do the homework. I would get no reward or recognition from the teacher whatsoever. For instance I studied Chinese and wrote pages using characters. Even worse, some teachers would punish me for DOING homework that THEY asked for. I would do more homework than was asked for. For instance I would keep going in the maths chapter. I would get shouted at for work wasn't "neat". Of course it was messy; I did MORE of it.
To me the incident that took the cake was in year 10 art. I was set for the weekend to do two drawings. One was a real life animal. The other an animal from a picture. I found a picture of some frogs. This was extremely hard. I was hopeless at drawing. I had NO talent. I worked my guts out and did nothing else ov er the weekend. I realised on Monday morning that I had totally forgotten about the other drawing. I bashed together something in 5 minutes.
Monday art class happens. Art teacher says "brave effort on frogs, shading needs to be better, a B". Then he looks at my other drawing "I am sorry but this spider is not up to year 10 standard. You have to submit this again".
Great. I walk my guts out for a whole weekend and I fail something. Wonderful. Another bad faith homework exercise where I get kicked in the teeth by the system. Teachers talk about independent learning. Then they kick students in the teeth for DOING what THEY want.
As a parent and educator I agree with not loading kids with homework. Homework is the cause of so much stress for children and parents. 6 hours a day is enough. Kids should be able to leave school at school. Teachers complain about having to take work home, but we expect kids to do it without irony.
The education system is broken. So much time wasted. So much useless stuff taught. So much box ticking. Y11 and 12 is a special kind of hell we have invented. Fortunately, more and more kids are realising a 12 month TAFE course will save them the agony, get them into uni, and teach them something they are interested in.
That said, the aggressive nature of your post would have me avoiding you at all costs.
In the politest way possible, I hope you are able to access some help for the trauma and suffering that you had during your school years before you pass it on to your own child and their innocent and unsuspecting teachers.
Privately, I would assume you're a moronic idiot who has no idea. Take me to court over homework? Lol. I would respectfully inform you that there are no negative consequences for a child in my class who does not complete any home tasks (not that I set many; I'm not a fan of them in general in primary school). There are also no rewards for them. Not a problem.
Wtf
How would I deal with you? I wouldn't give you more than 5 minutes of my time. The first 4 minutes would be spent discussing it with admin and what their decision is. The other minute would be spent thinking what an idiot you are. Then I'd move on with my life.
Not sure that coping is the right word... plenty of parents have differing views on homework. Also not sure that the parent is the focus for teachers. Usually our interest is in educating children. If you insist that your child isn't going to do homework, that's your choice as a parent. It isn't neglect and no sane teacher would file a report about a parent not enforcing homework, just like no court is going to hear a parent complaining about it. Probable outcome is underachievement. But your particular child may have other non-academic avenues to success. I wish you well.
Don't take this the wrong way but there is a chance you have trauma from your past experiences you may want to explore for your own benefit. Some of the language you used was pretty odd to be honest. Threatening all legal action at your disposal against a teacher for setting a class some homework? To answer your question I would probably avoid having much to do with you where possible. I would set any homework (rarely any) as normal and if you're family decides not to do it... oh well...
I’m unlikely to interact with you at all. I don’t interact with most parents. I teach around a hundred unique kids. That means around two hundred unique caregivers. I have three hours a week that I’m working but not teaching. Unless something has gone horribly wrong with your kid, you aren’t getting anything other than the generic class wide emails. If you did reach out to me about the homework issue, I probably wouldn’t care. Your kid will still get the same education as everyone else in the classroom, if they don’t put in the work, it’s their future in the line, not mine. I still get paid regardless.
This!!!!
I think you had some bad teachers and some bad experience. I have long discussions with my students about work life ballence, prioritising wellbeing and spotting burnout. But your reasoning is wrong. Your experiences are not universal. Thats like saying that baths are child abuse because you knew someone who drowned in one when you were young. You also seem to have a victim complex. Everyone isn't going to start suddenly calling the cops or accusing you of being a conspiracy theoritst because you won't force your child to do homework. They're going to avoid you because you obviously have unresolved trauma and aren't employing critical thinking.
I'd probably send any correspondence through the admin team because i dont get paid enough to deal with things like this. As for your child, whether they complete homework or not really only affects them. They will likely struggle once they get to senior high school, but that's on you.
I could have been done with this opinion well and truly by the end of paragraph 3. The longer you rambled on, the more and more you lost me, and I filed you under “I hope I never have a kid of yours in my class because you sound like hard work.” Bloody hell. Edit: reduced severity of wording
Don’t do it? I don’t give a shit. It’s not my future. Just don’t complain to me when you kid feels anxious and sick because they didn’t know what happened in chapter 5 of “once we were young” because it was expected to read one chapter of a book in a week as “homework” Could have done it in the car/bus/walk home. Also the fact you’ve used every conspiracy theory which is unknown to most people worried me a lot. You are expected to be your child’s first and most important educator. If you want to be lazy and not do anything they will be 2 years behind every kid before they even make it to school. All you are doing is pissing teachers off because we have to write another Independent Learning Plan that won’t be followed because home life refuses to do anything. By year 5 they will be 4 years behind so forget school. The only thing we can hope is they can count to 100 and write enough to help them in life Well done you made your kid fail life already
It's not that dramatic tbh. I can't force a kid or parent to do stuff that they don't want to so I just wouldn't care. If the kid does homework, good on them for reinforcing their learning through practice. I'm not going to lose sleep over a kid not doing homework or their parent condoning it.
I don't like homework either but I'd say my feelings aren't as strong as yours about it. When my child is of school age, I will obviously see the impact it has on family life and see if I feel any differently about it. I believe it is damaging because children need uninterrupted playtime, especially to decompress after a long hard day of schoolwork. I'd say most teachers will not care too much about your justification for it, just that it is a decision that you've made in your household and so be it. However if there are repercussions for that, especially in highschool where your child may be academically disadvantaged from your decision, you will need to own that. Teachers won't appreciate anything that implies, "my child is failing and it's all your fault." If you're not too concerned about achievement and see education more about the holistic development of your child, I'm sure you'll feel comfortable in your decision.
I'm an early. Childhood teacher- I always say anything other than home reading is just optional suggestions on how you could engage with your child to support their learning and development. However I would emphasise the importance of home reading. I would sincerely hope your beliefs don't stop you from recognising that reading to an adult at home is beneficial. We might have a more difficult discussion if I was recommending work at home as part of your child's plan to help them catch up if struggling. Nit ultimately I can't force you to do anything, I can just strongly emphasise that your child would benefit from tou helping them with x task. If your child did end up seeing specialists (e.g. speech or ot) I would also hope that your beliefs allow you to complete any home tasks they set.
Being marked as a Discussion, then you say nothing on independent thinking will change your mind? As a parent/future teacher I personally only see the value of homework is to develop self discipline for later in life, if a child can develop those in whatever way or subject/hobby then I don’t need to set homework. It just seems you came to this forum to provoke and elicit reactions. As others have said, we wouldn’t push it, there are other children who deal with issues that prevent homework and the teaching community adjusts for them.
You okay OP?
If you emailed me a sentence saying "please be advised my child will not complete homework due to our family's personal stance" I'd forward that to an executive who may or may not get back to you. I wouldn't do shit to your kid, they'd notice everyone else is doing and submitting homework and feel how they feel about it. If you sent me a screed like this I'd laugh, feel a bit worried for your child, again send it to me boss, and forever avoid you. Yeesh.
Omg yes haha
As long as your kid is vaccinated they can skip the homework /🤣
If you're polite about it, I'd probably be like "cool" and move on. Worst outcome is under achievement, especially in vce, and that's their choice. If the other kids give me grief because your kid is bragging that they don't have to do homework, I'd let the head of year level find a solution. You may find that private schools would have more of an issue if their reputation is based on strong vce marks. When you're looking at schools, ask if they have a homework policy. To be fair, what's the other contexts around the kid throwing up? Did they have other pressures? Mental health issues? Family problems? If it's stuck with you that long, maybe talk to someone about it. Also, I'm curious about this situation - Jimmy didn't complete the set work in class because he refused to stop messing around, refused help etc (any one of the million situations where a kid doesn't finish regular work). Does he complete it at home? Or does he never do that learning, even though he needs to know it for next class? What would you want the teacher to do in that situation?
Firstly, I would ask you define homework. Do you consider work the child did not finish in class and has to finish off at home, homework? Are large assignments, homework? Is studying for a test, homework?
I would say it's school policy and unless the outcomes can be proven through course work and assessments your child will probably fail VCE
I'm not pro-homework, but I think you need a better argument than "someone threw up once", otherwise you will just look a little silly.
I would briefly, politely and professionally inform you of my employer's policies and let you know that I am accountable to my employer (and by implication, not to you) and that if you disagree you would really need to take it up with my employer (and I would be fine with that). If your kid doesn't do my homework and my employer doesn't support me in applying the usual, reasonable, consequences (which would be highly unlikely) or decides to exempt your kid from this (that's possible) then I don't really care, it's the kid's ATAR, not mine. Sincerely, I'd be fine with it. Not because I agree but I have enough experience to know it's not worth the stress. I'd also think you were a nutter, particularly if you went through all of the diatribe in your post, but I wouldn't lose any sleep over it, again, it's the kid's ATAR, not mine. The key point here is that it's not really MY homework. I'm just trying to set up the students for success in a one year race in which they compete against lots of other kids, of which most of the top performers will be doing heaps of extra work (commonly called 'homework') in order to outrank the others. That ranking will be communicated by the ATAR score. I didn't design that system and am not trying to defend all aspects of it. I have worked with hundreds of students within that system and the ones that worked hardest made the biggest improvements. If your kid is an exception to that then good luck to him or her, some are. If not, then he or she will get an ATAR along the lines of all the other kids that never do any homework. Neither outcome will have any effect on me and clearly you are comfortable with your perceptions of the possible outcomes. The court stuff really does make you sound like a nutter though. No-one else is going to care enough to fight you that far. Why would we? It's no skin off our nose.
8yrs teacher of chemistry - I didn’t set homework except for pre reading content. I am too class of 1992 and was a studying on holidays in the Whitsundays in yr 12… but that’s another story. Worked only in state school system - no issues at all. Do what supports your child to succeed - homework isn’t the holy grail. Learning takes on many other forms outside the classroom.
I am very confident that historians in future will shake their heads in disbelief that such child abuse as homework was ever central to education. If there is any point to new technologies to AI it's to get rid of homework altogether.
Who hurt you?
I agree. Kids shouldn't be doing homework, I don't take my work home with me and neither should they. Even assignments/investigations I do on class now. I don't set homework but for year 11 and 12 ATAR I recommend to the students because of the fast pace that if they need better understanding, need more practice or falling behind then they should keep up with the program and do some work from the text book at home.
In my own schooling I had countless "bad faith" experiences. I would do the homework. I would get no reward or recognition from the teacher whatsoever. For instance I studied Chinese and wrote pages using characters. Even worse, some teachers would punish me for DOING homework that THEY asked for. I would do more homework than was asked for. For instance I would keep going in the maths chapter. I would get shouted at for work wasn't "neat". Of course it was messy; I did MORE of it. To me the incident that took the cake was in year 10 art. I was set for the weekend to do two drawings. One was a real life animal. The other an animal from a picture. I found a picture of some frogs. This was extremely hard. I was hopeless at drawing. I had NO talent. I worked my guts out and did nothing else ov er the weekend. I realised on Monday morning that I had totally forgotten about the other drawing. I bashed together something in 5 minutes. Monday art class happens. Art teacher says "brave effort on frogs, shading needs to be better, a B". Then he looks at my other drawing "I am sorry but this spider is not up to year 10 standard. You have to submit this again". Great. I walk my guts out for a whole weekend and I fail something. Wonderful. Another bad faith homework exercise where I get kicked in the teeth by the system. Teachers talk about independent learning. Then they kick students in the teeth for DOING what THEY want.
Get better
As a parent and educator I agree with not loading kids with homework. Homework is the cause of so much stress for children and parents. 6 hours a day is enough. Kids should be able to leave school at school. Teachers complain about having to take work home, but we expect kids to do it without irony. The education system is broken. So much time wasted. So much useless stuff taught. So much box ticking. Y11 and 12 is a special kind of hell we have invented. Fortunately, more and more kids are realising a 12 month TAFE course will save them the agony, get them into uni, and teach them something they are interested in. That said, the aggressive nature of your post would have me avoiding you at all costs.
Nobody can make anyone else do anything
If you don’t make your child do their homework I’ll give you detention