Lol.
I never did homework or paid attention in class either.
My teachers insisted I only did well on tests because I cheated, so they separated me from the class for a test....the class average went down a full grade, not me. After that I never had to turn in homework.
On my binder I wrote clearly "I learn by osmosis" to warn my teachers....it actually seemed true.

Gotta love him for that. He's the guy you'd want to copy test answers from in school if you didn't pay attention in class or didn't do your homework.

You know, because you were busy doing "important" things like smoking cigarettes and drinking liquor.

No. We not having it, go finish your chores then do your homework.

I took a Joyce Major Authors class in college (about 15 yrs ago). We read Dubliners and Portrait in their entirety, and probably about 40% of Ulysses and excerpts from Finnegan's Wake.

For some literature, you really need to do homework to appreciate fully. You'll miss a ton if you don't know history and current events that people were generally aware of at the time. And, even when you do that work, sometimes you still won't get it all - which is how I see Finnegan's Wake.

My experience reading (some) Ulysses was great, but it depended on the professor who would assign a chapter for homework and then spend the entire class going through it with us. We were Lit majors, so we knew The Odyssey, but some references were completely over our heads. Like, Bloom is humming advertising jingles throughout the book - and these weave together with other literature references, sometimes making a joke about popular culture, sometimes taking a swipe at literature/history. I got maybe 10% of the significance during my initial, solo reading.

My mid-term paper was a super close reading of one small section (I think it is in chapter 4) where Bloom is in the tub, contemplating how his dick and balls look like a lily pad as they are floating in front of him in the tub.

@drradon: I agree with you 100% on teaching both and teaching basic arithmetic first and then leading on to proper math once that foundation is established.

@dannym3141,

I was first blindsided by it when my kids came home with multiplication homework and were adamant they couldn't answer it the way I was showing them because it would be marked wrong, it was the wrong way to do multiplication.

The link to the full Manitoba math curriculum is below. The worst sections are under 'Mental Math' with the idea being that you should be able to add/subtract/multiply/divide all numbers in your head with a dozen pages worth of tricks. The tricks being what newtboy was calling 'proofs'. Our curriculum calls them 'techniques' though and I've included an example from the Grade 3 curriculum verbatim after of how it is supposed to be 'taught'.

Overall Math curriculum:
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/math/index.html

Grade 3 example:
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/math/support_gr3/number.pdf

From page 56:
Describe a mental mathematics strategy that could be used to determine a given basic fact, such as
-doubles (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 7 + 7)
-doubles plus one (e.g., for 6 + 7, think 6 + 6 + 1)
-doubles take away one (e.g., for 6 + 7, think 7 + 7 – 1)
-doubles plus two (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 6 + 6 + 2)
-doubles take away two (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 8 + 8 – 2)
-making 10 (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 6 + 4 + 4 or 8 + 2 + 4)
-commutative property (e.g., for 3 + 9, think 9 + 3)
-addition to subtraction (e.g., for 13 – 7, think 7 + ? = 13)."

Now before you think me and observe there's nothing wrong with showing kids some extra tricks to help them, that is NOT how this is supposed to be used. If you read further, students are REQUIRED to "explore" multiple methods of calculating answers and must demonstrate they know and can use all these 'tricks'. So instead of providing assistance for difficult calculations as it should be, it's used to make ALL calculations difficult, and create extra work, AND makes kids just learning the concept completely overwhelmed with everything you MUST know to get a right answer to 2+2=4.

And here's the link to the Grade 11 review of the basic arithmetic:
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/math/ess_mm_gr11/full_doc.pdf

And for the Grade 11 students and teaching them to add/subtract/multiply and divide, the teacher's guide describes this like a subjective discovery process with quotes like this:
"Consequently, mental calculation activities should include periods for thought and discussion.
During these periods, the teacher should encourage students to
-suggest a variety of possible solutions to the same problem
-explain the different methods used to come to the correct answer and their
effectiveness
-explain the thought process that led to an incorrect answer"

An important note is we are not talking about solving complex word problems here or anything, but specifically for calculating a basic arithmetic operation with the different methods being those described from back in Grade 3 already outlined above.

The whole Paris accord thing is like voluntary homework assigments for schoolkids.

If one kid decides he will not do what he picked, because another kid picked an easy assignment, who cares? For some he is stupid and lazy, for others he may appear clever and cool for avoiding work with no penalty.

It was all voluntary so opting out just gives you the immediate ignominy of failure to comply with a goal you set for yourself.

How do you propose to force China to pick a more difficult assignment? By not doing yours? What?

It's an alternative fact when you make a blanket statement that includes "ever, all, never, etc" and when you tell other people to verify it for you, with Google, YouTube, etc. Or your reply is along the lines of "c'mon dude, just look around, haven't you been paying attention?" That's not dealing with facts or truth.

It comes across like a college freshman who is repeating something that rolls off the tongue, then goes blank when challenged on it. Do some post-grad work on your claims, do some research, do your homework.

Interesting. When I was in college, I got good mileage out of (in order of preference):

1: Not buying the book listed on the syllabus at all. LOTS of courses didn't assign any homework from the book, and covered all the information that would be on tests in lectures. So I never bought a book before it became clear that I would actually have to use it.

2: Buying used books, if at all possible directly from a student who took the course the previous semester. I never ran into the "new edition" problem mentioned in the video, and my major was Computer Science, which I'd think would tend to change more in a short period of time than most disciplines.

3: Sharing a single book (and the purchase price) between 3-10 other students. Even in the few courses that did have homework (Engineering Physics and Calc 2 had a lot for me), it was quite helpful to share a book with several other students and work through the problems together whenever homework was assigned.


So this never really seemed like a big problem for me, although I guess that doesn't help much for High School textbooks, where we generally only have to pay for them in the form of taxes.

@PlayhousePals & @oritteropo
Nope, that's my own creation. I attended a Photoshop seminar last year (as part of an advanced vocational education course), but me and one of my classmates already knew how to use Photoshop, so we kept challenging each other to create strange and funny images throughout the seminar. You can admire our creations here: https://imgur.com/a/NFavi (but please don't share them, they probably violate a ton of copyrights ).
My profile pic is part of the first image. Our homework was to photoshop a small group of meerkats into a desert. I added a few more - and five pop culture easter eggs.

@newtboy
you misunderstood.

respectable investigative journalists gain that respect by being consistent with their reporting.

chris hedges is such a journalist.

but,by your metric,him being on RT negates that respect.now this is an assumption on my part,but i am using your words to come to that assumed conclusion.you have yet to agree or disagree with what chris hedges is saying,choosing instead to attack the medium in which he is saying it.this is your right,i just happen to disagree with you on this matter.

i refer back to one of my original comments,and a point i tried (and i guess failed?) to reiterate:discernment is the key.

so in a sense..yes..it is our responsibility to do our due diligence to vette the veracity of an investigative reporter.

those "reporters" who shill for either the democrats or republicans reveal themselves as the whores they are fairly quickly.

demagogues can almost be instantly identified due to their constant appeals to emotion.(keith olbermans new youtube channel from GQ "the resistance" comes to mind).

and reporters who are simply bad or lazy are quickly revealed as well.by other reporters.

let's take @bcglorf review of chomsky,and how chomsky is singular in his constant criticism of american foreign policy and asks the question "why can't he,just for once,speak on the positives that america has done in the world,or speculate on what could have happened had american not intervened in third world country A or B".(paraphrased)

now this is not an entirely unfair question,and in chomsky's books..he does address the very specifics that bcglorf would like to see chomsky address,but in lectures you are lucky to get a sentence in regards to such subjects.

but notice that while bcglorf would like to see chomsky speak in more broad terms,he never once questions the veracity of the details chomsky is laying down.

do you know why?
because chomsky does his homework,and backs up everything he says.

bcglorf respects chomsky for this,while simultaneously wishing he changed the channel once in awhile.

bcglorf utilized discernment to come to the conclusion that chomsky is a worthy,if infuriating,read/listen.

i do not mean to be speaking for Bc,and maybe i am missing the mark by a long shot using him as an example (if i did,please forgive Bc).

but my basic point is that we ALL discriminate and discern using our own subjective tools,our experiences and ultimately our understandings.

the problem here,and it is the underlying message on this thread,is confirmation bias.

we all know about this,and this election cycle REALLY brought this up to the forefront.

what i find interesting,and always makes me giggle,is how people will point to the "mainstream media" as an outlet for:propaganda,fake news,biased and slanted news ..but..it is NEVER the news THEY consume.the news THEY consume is hard hitting journalism.

so when i see people dismiss a piece that may happen to be on a questionable outlet..i laugh..because MOST outlets are ALL questionable.

so yes my friend,it is up to us to discern what is valid and what is bullshit.secondary sources help.concrete,trackable sources help and discussing and talking with one another is probably the greatest help of all.

but if you reside in an echo chamber,and everybody is just smelling each other farts.then some information may come as a shock.

my faith dictates my politics.
i am a dissident,and a radical.
the dynamic is always "power vs powerlessness",and i am always on the side of the powerless.

so it should be no surprise that on my list are people such as chomsky or hedges.

because they criticize power.

You remind me of Raleigh, whom I quote as follows...

You never studied your Holy Homework. That's two capital H's there. All the rest are lowercase in any fucking case.

Supreme Court? You are not the fucking supreme court of anything except hell.

For the next 10,000 years you will shovel your shit and eat it because you're on repeat motherfucker and it just started backwards and you can't do a fuckin' thing about it.

The public are gonna take back from you everything you took away from them you motherFUCKER!

My first instrument was the drums and I would rather listen to my neighbor's dog bark all day then hear most drum solos. She's competent and has done her homework but it's still as formulaic and predictable as most drum solos are.

Now THIS is a drum solo, Dennis Davis was Bowie's drummer for a number of years and I still crank this 8 minute solo 40 years after it was recorded in 1976. I have yet to hear any musician top this solo on any instrument, for my money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPk3_X00ld4

Is this a real product or an advertising student's homework?

because they never see only of their shit applying to them, and everything is always someone else's fault.

Accidents happen with birth control (if you're even using it) but if you're a right wing religious nutjob then you're forced to bring your accident to term and into a life of shite because family planning isn't a real option.

No responsibility is taken. If the kids don't learn well at school then it's the teachers. Or the curriculum or whatever. It's bullshit. Teaching happens at home as much as at school, and I'm not just talking about homework.

My mother's just retired as a teacher in the UK. She'd have kids play up in class and end up having to phone the parents to tell them about it and discuss what they could do to help. Most of the time all she got from the parents was an incredulous 'what's it got to do with us? He's at school, he's your problem, if he's being naughty it's you who's fucked up'.

She taught kids who have never known anyone in their family have a job. Parents don't work, their parents don't work, and even their parents never had a proper job. These kids just don't understand their place in the world, or rather they understand the tiny little world they live in but have no idea how to get out of it or even that it's a possibility.

These kids then grow up and do what their family has always done. They have kids mid teens and just live at home soaking up the benefits.

It would take an astonishing amount of foresight for a kids from this world stop and think 'Hey, maybe if we waited a bit and saved some money it would be much better'. They'd be the first in the family for generations to think that way.

These are extreme cases, but the same mentality flows around the whole system. Everything is there to be moaned at and criticised and most importantly blamed for all your problems. This leaves you a victim of circumstance, there's nothing you could have done...