Not to understand the concept of 'homework help'?

[bringincrazyback]

I realise I'm probably going to cop some flak for this, especially as (disclaimer) I don't have children of my own. But I'm genuinely posting this to try and understand, not to troll.

I don't get why 'homework help' has become a thing. Granted I'm 50 so have to delve back a fair way to remember my own schooldays but I can remember my parents helping me with homework maybe two or three times in the whole of my schooling, and personally that's the homework approach I understand - surely part of the point of homework is to help children develop independent research skills? - I certainly feel my parents did the right thing in making me get on with it myself. So I struggle to understand why I hear so many mums talking about homework help and how much time it takes up, how stressful it is etc. When my stepdaughter was at school and was at ours for the weekend with homework to do, I noticed that there seemed to be this expectation that parents would examine homework in depth and make suggestions/supply answers where necessary etc, or at any rate DH did this and I got the impression SD's mum did too. I kept my opinions to myself - not my child, not my place to interfere etc - but internally I've been wondering about this ever since. How does the child ever develop proactive learning skills if the parent intervenes every time they get stuck, or even before?

I asked a friend this question once and she pointed out it can be necessary if the child has different educational needs, which I totally get. But that aside... I just don't get it?? Genuinely interested in understanding more about why homework help seems to have become such an accepted norm nowadays.

Though I agree with previous posters that homework at primary school is not really the issue here as it's pretty pointless anyway - but the OP seemed to be talking about secondary level also.

My parents didn’t help me or encourage me with homework. My dad I guess didn’t see the need as in his eyes I would end up a housewife. My mum would have liked me to have gone to college etc but dad was the boss! My dad died when I was early 20s and I would have loved to show him my degree certificate! I never was a housewife as such!

I am mid 50s. I got homework from the first week at school when I was 4 and a half. At that age of course my mum helped me.
But no as you got older you had to do it yourself.

My Parents didn't do any homework with me. I was taught to read by four years old by my Mother and we did simple Maths. I was very intelligent and an advanced reader, so I don't know if that's why she didn't.

My Auntie, in the 60's was laughed at by her Neighbours for keeping her children in, to do extra work. hers were one of the first to go to University in the area. You didn't need qualifications to have OK earnings, though.

I think that's the difference, children have to achieve grades. As said, the work is complex from a young age and o top of that, children are expected to have hobbies, in the form of after school clubs.

When I used to help my now 22 year old, it was to help her look at different aspects. She had to analyse historical events and highlight different points, in ways that we didn't when I did CSE History.

For Families that don't engage much, it would help critical thinking and comparing/contrasting, if the Parent is able, that is.

I think it's about creating a more well rounded learner, as well as the child being shown that learning is important and not something that just happens in school.

My parents certainly got involved with homework (whether I wanted them to or not).

Much of my children’s homework in the early years of primary school was specifically designed to be done with parents.

As they have got older they do it mostly alone but different children need different levels of help.

One of mine rarely needs any input. The other quite regularly needs additional assistance. It depends on the child.

Doing homework with a child often helps you pick up where they have missed or misunderstood key information.

My quiet child find it excruciatingly difficult to raise their hand in front of the whole class to say they don’t understand but a 5 minute explanation 1:1 with me on the first sum of the page can often set them happily off on the right path to complete the other 29 sums on their own.

It’s also worth pointing out that my children get far more homework than I ever did.

From 5 yo they had an hour a night. By 8yo it was up to two hours a night.

two hours a night for an 8yo! Mine gets about 10-20 mins a week!!!

It's interesting though. I was having these discussions with my Gardener. The area we live in is "disadvantaged", but tbh, our generation was partly disadvantaged by our Parents and their attitude to how the world was changing and not encouraging us. We were written off by our schools as well.

His opinion is that him and his Siblings were fed and clothed by his Parents, as were most of the children were we lived, but not much else.

In some ways having one or two children today, does take more Parental involvement than the big families that were the norm when I was growing up.

I'm early 40s school homework was reading until aged 10. Then it was spellings, timetables, writing and some sums. Proper homework started in secondary.

I did have family members listen to me read but as I learnt to read at aged 4 that fizzled out earlier than other kids.

I didn't need help to do other homework however my English teacher noted at GCSE in other schools parents were reading their children's essays so she got us to swap and read each others. This helped amongst other things like her being a hard marker and her other teaching methods so everyone in the class got at least a grade C in one of the English GCSEs.

On the other hand my DSD in primary has her parents doing projects given for homework with her, and her dad and myself listening to her read and checking she understands her maths work.

Unfortunately like plenty of my family and friends' we find the Maths teaching in primary schools poor as they are trying to teach stuff the children aren't ready for. A lot of my friends' are from working class backgrounds but have postgraduate degrees like myself. At least one of our degrees is in a STEM subject.

I grew up in a very poor area and even 45 years ago had to do homework where you talk to an older relative or go to the library and find out something. Although we didn't have all the craft homework that kids have today.

@Birdsgottafly interesting you point that out.

Some of my friends' from white working class backgrounds had no expectations and encouragement in going on to higher education from their parents, and have openly said so. The ones that did go mixed with people from other ethnic backgrounds and white middle class people where it was expected.

On the other hand I know women who were brought up in the white middle classes, my age and older, who were told by their parents they expected them to get married rather than go to university and have a career. Some went to university before age 21 and did get support from their parents once they got in, but most got degrees later in life mostly as SAHMs.

Thanks for the insights, folks... it does help me to understand some of the issues in more depth. Sounds like kids having more homework to do, and starting it earlier, are big factors and things have admittedly changed a lot. I'm especially surprised to hear how young they are starting primary kids off with homework, and it sounds excessive to me so I can see how kids that age would need help. In primary school I only got homework on Fridays in the top year, and even that was only one measly English comprehension exercise! lol - I think the aim was to set the ball rolling for us on learning how to look things up and do research on our own. Of course, that's both easier and harder now we have the internet...

I wouldn't want them to fall behind, so I'd help them, point them in the right direction, or help them understand a concept. Surely there's nothing wrong with that?

I agree, because that's nudging them towards developing the skill themselves. I think part of why I have been puzzled by this is that when I used to watch my DH help SD (when she was at secondary) with homework, he more or less told her which bits to change and what to change them to, and SD just went away and changed them. Repeat 2 or 3 times until DH would finally declare the work 'ready'. I never got the feeling that the exercise helped to develop SD's own reasoning skills or research abilities, so perhaps it's a bad example.

frogsoup, I thought the points you made were really interesting, although I am going to declare myself as possibly an exception to the general principle you mentioned, in that my background is working class, my parents admittedly probably hadn't had the education to help me with some of the stuff I was doing at school, but I got very good results at the end of it despite that.

Mention of the 'leave it to the school' mentality made me grin, though: I had to be taken out of my very first school for that reason. I had started learning to read independently through books and TV, without any explicit teaching, and the school slammed my mum for that. Apparently I was making the other children feel stupid and teaching reading was the job of the school! It's a good job things have come on since the 70s...

Yes of course. My dad's involvement with my schoolwork was in direct response to the lack of input he felt he got as a child. That he did well all the same (though not enough to pass the 11+) was entirely down to him, because like you say, school was certainly no help either as it expected all of them to become the proverbial hewers of wood and drawers of water. I think things are better now, but the system remains much too divided by class in terms of how much input parents are expected to have in their child's education - exacerbated by the fact that it's obviously harder to help your own kids if you had a poor experience of school yourself and don't feel confident in your own abilities.

I wonder if I had homework at 4.5, 50 years ago because I went to a very old fashioned primary school? We sat at small wooden desks with ink wells as children had for many years, and were taught from the blackboard.

I didn't get homework other than reading or spelling until y5 (9-10).

DS had a homework task from y1. He couldn't access it himself as he didn't have sufficient literacy skills of reading/ writing to follow instructions and write responses himself (suspected dyslexia). Fortunately in y2, his teacher doesn't seem to be a fan and we've had fewer tasks, and she's fudged holiday work with life activities

I'm not a fan of homework as it tends to be polarising and parental involvement masks pupil input/ understanding. It benefits those with parents with time and decent education who are more likely to do well in school anyway.

what am I supposed to do when they say "I don't know how to do it?"

In any kind of coaching, its much more helpful to ask them questions and get to the bottom of what they do not understand, what it is that is stopping them doing homework. Its not complicated, the answers to what is required will be in the work they have done in 5e classroom...a quick read though and you would know what questions to ask.

Get them to explain it to you, there is nothing better for getting clear about what you do not understand than trying to explain it to someone else.

My own parents refused to have anything to do with homework, they considered it cheating. Some of my friends' parents would sit wit( them and discuss the topics so that we were all contributing. Then we were given quiet time in order to do our own work. Having had the chance to ask about anything not understood, and to see what others thought, was so helpful. Later, I did an MBA as a mature student, a d we used the same method, discussion til we all were ready to get on and answer the questions ourselves.

My father only ever helped me with my homework once when I was 8. Other than that I never had any help at all.

There's an 11 year age gap between me and my youngest sister. I didn't do it for her, but would just be there and I grew closer to her because of all the time we spent together.

I think memory plays tricks, partly. My memory of homework was my mum boasting to friends that I was such a self starter and never needed any help, rather than her helping me. However I'm absolutely positive she was hearing me read from age 2. She used to buy me Peter and Jane books so she must have read with me. I thnk some of us forget the help we did receive - memory stores unusual events, rather than everyday normality. I remember the colour of my own special bowl because it was so special, but I don't remember the colour of the other, normal, cereal bowls.

Also I agree that homework used to be doable from the sheet or with the aid of our encyclopedia, whereas it is more research and project based now. Even spellings require them to find their own words on the internet, not just learn from a provided list. My 9 year old can answer questions on a sheet but he can't plan, gather materials, research, structure and execute a project totally alone. We tend to go for chickenwire and papier mache whenever we can, as a change from "book work".

My attitude to this has really changed over my 7 years of having a schoolchild. I used to be much more gung ho, leave them to it type thing. Now I think primary homework is about them just getting the thing done. I doubt I really was such a self starter that I would learn a weekly list of spellings without any nagging or help being tested by my mum.

My neighbour has no GCSE's and often has to send her Y4 daughter into me for homework help. The latest was literacy based and c covered topics that I studied in secondary school. They had to write a persuasive speech and there was a checklist of 15 items they had to use such as alliteration, adjectives sentence and vivacious verbs. There might be quite a few parents who aren't familiar with these terms.

*adjectival sentence

Examples of homework DD(6 in y1) needed help with: pick a farm animal,research it and write down facts about it, maths homework not done in class yet(we always do homework at the weekend), phonics sheets to read(parents have to check they're read correctly), role play x story and add pictures...dunno there's been loads. On top of that weekly spellings and reading (books don't get changed unless the diary is signed).
Even in nursery when she got only (maths) games,she still had to play them with someone.

Lastnight I think most of us are in that position with grammar these days. I have a postgrad degree but no idea what a fronted adverbial is. My poor children know they're on their own with these things!

@IStillDrinkCava it's an adverb at the beginning of the sentence. Why it needs a fancy name, I don't know.

Suddenly, the children jumped out.

I helped DD1 all the way up to and through GCSEs.
I expect to help DD2 similarly.
Both DDs find academics hard and have SpLD.

If my DD has maths homework and can't do it, I would rather spend the time explaining it 1-1 with them, than they do it all wrong, go back to the teacher who has to try to explain it whilst teaching a class. I always make sure it is clear where I have helped.

If they have a 'make a castle hw' (and yes we did get that in y7) I will help with cutting etc as otherwise the learning gets lost with the fine motor skills which both struggle with, and time spent is way disproportionate.

If they have revision I will go through it with them and test their knowledge and understanding.

Those with able kids, or straightforward homework, don't need to help. But I make no apologies for helping mine get the most from their h/w and from their education in general.

My Mum was a teacher - we got help with homework if we asked,until we stopped asking ( and I am oldish,we didn't get homework at all at primary school!)
Mostly remembering it now it seems her aim was to get us to think about what we were doing - I have the line "so,go back to first principles..." fixed in my mind forever.She didn't ever tell us what to do or give us answers but she showed us how to think about the questions and convinced us that we could do it.
It was really valuable,and I'm so grateful to her - I'm sure she would rather have been sitting with a cup of tea and a book than helping a frazzled teenager think through a physics question.
And I helped both mine if they needed it - following the same principles I hope.I think the right help at the right time is important.

Because grammar people like having specific words for specific thing .

Doesn't it depend a lot on the school as well? At primary I needed help because my teacher wasn't bothered if anyone understood what she was teaching and just assigned tons of homework.

Went to a very different middle school where most parents knew exactly what was being taught and my mum used to grill me before parents evening so she didn't feel embarrassed .

Post primary age my mum helped me with Math mostly as I was absolutely rubbish at it.

By highschool, she wasn't sure what subjects I was taking at A levels.

Also could help me with Math, but not English or my native language or Japanese...