How will homework prepare me for life?

[Spin Doctor]

Please justify this seemingly meaningless task for me before I become a college failure. I have tried to look down every possible path within my knowledge and cannot see why not enjoying my time off will better me as an individual.

 

[Nezaros]

It doesn't. It's just another part of the flawed educational system you have to deal with, one way or another.

 

[SpaceYeti]

It gives you resilience to handle the BS you have to deal with later in life.

 

[Auburn]

It gives you resilience to handle the BS you have to deal with later in life.

This is surprisingly accurate.
BS to prepare you for more senseless BS on its way... >.<

 

[Spin Doctor]

I hate stress... I think I'm just going to move to the Chinese countryside and become a self sufficient hermit. I'll have a wooden staff and a herd of cattle. Maybe learn some kung fu to fend off any authority. Then a beautiful woman will emerge from the mists and I will learn about the world with her. And sex... lots and lots of sex... Yeah....

What? An INTP can dream can't he?

 

[Nezaros]

What? An INTP can dream can't he?

It's what we're best at.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

It gives you resilience to handle the BS you have to deal with later in life.

Pointless bureaucracy?

 

[snafupants]

Homework might teach you discipline or ingrain some specialized skill. More likely: it will just piss you off and squander finite time. You're doomed!!!

 

[Teohrn]

Homework isn't a bad idea in itself. It does develop discipline, and in some subjects, like math, it's very useful. Even then, it's only useful in teaching mathematics because of the way mathematics is taught in the West: lots of reproduction; little understanding.

On the other hand, the way it's put in practice is terrible. It has always been menial repetition of something I have already known well enough. (That's actually an argument for "homework prepares one for life".)

Homework will prepare you for the petty, menial, irrelevant and unnecessary things in life that we do for no reason. Homework won't develop you intellectually in any sort of way.

 

[just george]

Please justify this seemingly meaningless task for me before I become a college failure. I have tried to look down every possible path within my knowledge and cannot see why not enjoying my time off will better me as an individual.

It gets you used to the idea that people in positions of authority that they do not deserve may load you up with pointless work that achieves nothing, but reminds you that they are in positions of authority, and you are not, so that you may serve them better.

Of course, it brings up some important concepts:

1) who are they, in their supposed authority, to tell you what to do; and
2) who do you become, if you acquiesce

Personally I see it as akin to training a dog. If you want to do your homework, sit, heel, and roll at behest of authority for no benefit to yourself or anyone, then good luck to you.

If you don't like the idea, then thank God, Bhudda, Shiva, Yoda, Apollo, Ghandi and Tom Cruise that you may just be a free and independent human being

 

[snafupants]

Please justify this seemingly meaningless task for me before I become a college failure. I have tried to look down every possible path within my knowledge and cannot see why not enjoying my time off will better me as an individual.

Honestly, as Bukowski emphasized, your life is your life. You can trek across the country or kill yourself in a seedy motel tomorrow. It's basically your call. Choose wisely. Obviously these are radical examples, but so is the reasoning behind the dialectical. It's radical because your culture and peoples' expectations prohibit perfectly valid courses of action. Leave school, if you like.

 

[Architect]

• Everything we are on this planet is a product of evolution, and it even permeates our thinking and social structures
• Evolution selects winners via continual competition
• Homework is a competition and so prepares you for life

I believe these to be the essential fact about this matter, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. I don't personally like competition that much, however I've been a fairly competitive person throughout my life and I do believe that its good to test yourself against others. In some other sense life is much more than just a competition, so ultimately you need to learn to balance the two.

 

[snafupants]

• Everything we are on this planet is a product of evolution, and it even permeates our thinking and social structures
• Evolution selects winners via continual competition
• Homework is a competition and so prepares you for life

I'm not seeing how three follows from one and two.

There's some dumb shit that might have nothing to do with success in life. Many "successful" people, like Bill Gates, dropped out of college.

The idea of a "winner" is incredibly naive and very human. What's the prize haha?! Also, the first point is also totally moot - what you're saying is the hubris of science. Nothing more.

 

[Spin Doctor]

All valid theories. I don't think I'll ever be motivated to do it, just more accepting as time goes on.

 

[Teohrn]

Homework isn't even close to being a factor in determining success, not even in the education system. Homework determines how much of a monkey you are and how high the lack of independence is.

I didn't do homework, yet I had the highest grades in class, and I was always the guy with the right answers and question in class. Why? Because I had the knowledge and the wits. As long as you have that, you're going to do fine. Homework is simply an irrelevant chore, consisting mainly of practice and reproduction of curriculum, that the teachers use as a means to know how the pupils are doing. Ridiculous even for its intended purpose. If you know that you know, why bother stooping down to doing homework? It's like wading in sewer water! Have some respect: disregard homework, attain knowledge.

If I were you, I would dissuade myself from doing the homework and use the time you would have used on homework to go ahead in the curriculum. That's far more useful.

 

[EditorOne]

Like Space Yeti said.
It may do different things for different kinds of people, but for the INTP it mostly exercises your ability to deal with tedium.

Don't let the Bill Gates thing lead you astray. He is a smart guy who knows a lot even without the schooling. There's another example who isn't half as much fun: auto tycoon Henry Ford. He filed a lawsuit against a newspaper which called him an ignorant anarchist. He found himself on the witness stand, under oath, forced to answer questions to which he gave the wrong answers, eight days worth - ie, the American Revolution was in 1812. Sort of like Sarah Palin. He won the lawsuit: He was indeed ignorant, as the testimony showed, but he wasn't an anarchist. If they'd claimed he was an ignorant, prejudiced, Jew-hating bigot, they'd have won hands down.

Education isn't all bad, unless you're in Texas.

 

[BigApplePi]

Please justify this seemingly meaningless task for me before I become a college failure. I have tried to look down every possible path within my knowledge and cannot see why not enjoying my time off will better me as an individual.

I disagree with this ... I think. Homework is mostly unpleasant if you don't know what it's for and it takes a long time to find out.

I have to ask, "What homework?" If you are smart and know it already, where did you learn it? In the garage? At the library? From life experience?

If the homework is technical, it teaches you skill right away to build on for the next step, like math or auto shop. It's like on the job training.

If the homework is history, you don't find out what it's for until later when you encounter serious current events you wonder how they could ever have happened.

If the homework is English literature, well if you know it already you don't need it. But what if you missed something? What if you are biased to never notice Russian novels? Then when something about Russia comes along later, you have no feel for it.

 

[Felan]

What SpaceYeti said and I would add that mentally getting over and just doing it isn't going to make you less of an individual. It will just help develop a more flexible response to the shit in life. If you are confident that you will never have to do some incredibly stupid thing that someone asks of you then by all means chuck it.

I myself wish I had more studious in this regard because I sometimes think I tend to be a bit of a pain when asked to do something I think is stupid. Worse, I usually end up having to do it anyway but just ruffle more feathers than necessary. Bad habits can be a bitch to break.

 

[Proletar]

I was one of those that knew everything when I was in the 4th grade. Just a couple of weeks into the semester, I had finished the math-book, and before christmas, I had moved on to the 5th grade math. I was also prominent in the language-classes, and I had just started playing music. Everything I did, I did perfectly. I never even did my home-work. But still at the small friday-tests, I always aced everything.

It caught up to me eventually. I moved to a different school for the 6th grade, and after some research I found out that it was the third hardest school for grading in the country. The school-work wasn't just dust to blow away anymore. It began to be difficult. I rarely aced anything those days, but I still had good grades, and I still didn't do my homework.

After the 9th grade, I barely passed. I got into a music-oriented high school-education and still never did my homework. Once again, I barely passed and didn't even get the graduation after the third year. Instead, I worked double-time the next spring to catch up to everything I missed. As of now, I'm the best salesman at the office. But that's just luck and understanding from my employer. Also, I'm extremely intelligent and a great conversationalist.


Point being, that you should do your homework. Ask yourself this question:

If you don't have the energy to do your homework when you're dealing with extremely easy material, then where in the fucking hell are you supposed to gather the energy needed to do the homework after a day of hard work? Get the discipline and get smug on the inside. It's the only way.

 

[The Introvert]

Please justify this seemingly meaningless task for me before I become a college failure. I have tried to look down every possible path within my knowledge and cannot see why not enjoying my time off will better me as an individual.

Busy work is the most effective way to get students to sit down and actually look at the material. Essentially, it's force-feeding information down the throats of supposed intellectuals. You may not benefit nearly as much from homework, as you probably are interested in learning for learning's sake, and busy work is just time-consuming and boring.

I don't fault the professors for assigning homework as much as I blame the system for either
a) not enticing students to be excited about learning
b) pushing through too many people that are not meant for higher education

Plus, what everyone is saying about BS. That's totally true too.

 

[Spin Doctor]

@BigApplePi It is not that I already know then specifics of the curriculum. I am in college for the sole purpose of getting certification that qualifies me for an above average job. When I have parents who make a perfectly good living in modern society, but don't use ANYTHING that I have in school so far, the question arises: why am I wasting my time learning something that won't directly give me a higher salary when I'm older? Why not just ask me to smash rocks and put them back together for 4 years and call it a deal?

 

[BigApplePi]

@BigApplePi It is not that I already know then specifics of the curriculum. I am in college for the sole purpose of getting certification that qualifies me for an above average job. When I have parents who make a perfectly good living in modern society, but don't use ANYTHING that I have in school so far, the question arises: why am I wasting my time learning something that won't directly give me a higher salary when I'm older? Why not just ask me to smash rocks and put them back together for 4 years and call it a deal?

That really is a good and tough question. You say your parents don't use anything. I can't rebut that without specifics. Can you tell me your curriculum? It could be you are taking far different courses than when I was in school.

In general school is SUPPOSED to give you an education. What this means is you learn values EVERYWHERE, not just the immediate value of getting a certification. You can do that, but what about enjoying life? Without telling you more about myself, I don't regret my education much at all though I haven't taken a survey of the details to answer that. I remember in my senior year I finished all my credits so I was able to sit in a class. There was a wonderful professor who lectured on art. He was charismatic ... so good he once came to New York and I attended his lecture. I would never scorn art again as superfluous. How are you going to rebut that?

I have more to say about this, but I'll wait.

 

[walfin]

Please justify this seemingly meaningless task for me before I become a college failure. I have tried to look down every possible path within my knowledge and cannot see why not enjoying my time off will better me as an individual.

Does it count in your final grade?

If it doesn't, then just don't do it. Simple.

 

[Duxwing]

I entirely disagree. Homework is an entirely necessary tool for getting more learning done outside class. In AP History, AP Chemistry, and English, we read our books at home and then discuss our understanding in class. Mathematics requires practice because thinking every part of an equation through would render problems like "For cos(x)=45, what is 'x'?" very difficult. Indeed, learning mathematics primarily involves drilling concepts like trigonometric identities so deep into your head that just looking at a problem makes you intuit, "Sin(x)/cos(x) simplifies to tan(x)" without expending any more than a tiny amount of effort. Thus, the intuition becomes the primary mode of operation and utilizes the unconcious mind's tremendous "brute force" ability to check every possibility and select the one that applies.

The same logic applies to all classes in which the given period of time in school is insufficient for the purpose of learning. Biology and its derivatives require memorizing charts and names. Mathematics, chemistry, and physics are fields of intuition guided by logic. Thr humanities are boundlessly complex. The school day just isn't long enough to cover everything, so we do homework to maintain tempo.

-Duxwing

 

[Hadoblado]

I don't mind when homework is finishing what you failed to complete in class. This gives real motive to actually do the work in front of you, and develop discipline while your habits are still malleable.

Homework that covers new areas also seems okay. If you haven't the time to learn something in class, but the content is important, then it seems acceptable to have homework to keep everyone up to date.

What I cannot abide is homework that is simple repetition of things already learned. Rote learning is BS and time wasting. If you can't come up with something new for me to learn, why the fuck should I take the time to address it?

I spent over half my lunch times wasting even more time completing homework I had refused to complete at home. Somehow the teachers were still alright with this, though honestly it should be a warning alarm for anyone concerned with the academic progress of their pupils.

 

[Spin Doctor]

That really is a good and tough question. You say your parents don't use anything. I can't rebut that without specifics. Can you tell me your curriculum? It could be you are taking far different courses than when I was in school.

In general school is SUPPOSED to give you an education. What this means is you learn values EVERYWHERE, not just the immediate value of getting a certification. You can do that, but what about enjoying life? Without telling you more about myself, I don't regret my education much at all though I haven't taken a survey of the details to answer that. I remember in my senior year I finished all my credits so I was able to sit in a class. There was a wonderful professor who lectured on art. He was charismatic ... so good he once came to New York and I attended his lecture. I would never scorn art again as superfluous. How are you going to rebut that?

I have more to say about this, but I'll wait.

I'm currently going for a liberal arts a.a. I've taken English, philosophy,political science, among other classes so far. When I asked the teachers after their class about skills I retain from their class, the ones that felt like answering all told me critical thinking and/or writing skills. I haven't surveyed a math teacher yet but I'm curious to find out.

I guess my INTP superiority complex prevents me from believing that I'm not already an excellent critical thinker.

 

[BigApplePi]

@Spin Doctor

I'm currently going for a liberal arts a.a. I've taken English, philosophy,political science, among other classes so far. When I asked the teachers after their class about skills I retain from their class, the ones that felt like answering all told me critical thinking and/or writing skills. I haven't surveyed a math teacher yet but I'm curious to find out.

I guess my INTP superiority complex prevents me from believing that I'm not already an excellent critical thinker.

Thinking ain't enuf. You have to know something to think about. I was just walking down the street on Monday chatting with a professor from NYU. (We had shown up at the wrong location for a seminar and were headed to the right one.) I asked him what he was a professor of. He said, "political science." That stopped me cold because I wasn't sure what political science was. See? I'm modestly well educated but mostly on my own with a B.S. degree. Never took a course in political science and still don't know what it is. Education pays off. The conversation switched to nuclear physics at he had a masters in physics.

Doing homework pays off in another way. Do you want education only for vocation? You may consider vocation a necessity and that is probably right, but what about friends and a girlfriend/boyfriend? Want to attract one? Do you think only knowing how to talk shop is the best idea? Forget it. The more homework I did, the better I can talk to my wife today.

What I said above may have been disjointed, but I hope you get the idea. Questions?

 

[nexion]

I'm not going to say that homework has any real value, as I spent about half of my highschool life not doing it (and getting mediocre grades) and the other half reluctantly doing it (and getting somewhat better than mediocre grades). My opinion has always been that homework is there for the people who need it, and the people who do not should not be obliged to do it, but sadly, it seems I am one of the few who think this way (at least, if I am compared to the people within the education system).

That said, though, please don't do bad solely because you think you shouldn't have to do homework. As much as I may agree and as important as principles can be, this one isn't worth it. Just do it and get over it.

 

[Spin Doctor]

@Spin Doctor
Thinking ain't enuf. You have to know something to think about. I was just walking down the street on Monday chatting with a professor from NYU. (We had shown up at the wrong location for a seminar and were headed to the right one.) I asked him what he was a professor of. He said, "political science." That stopped me cold because I wasn't sure what political science was. See? I'm modestly well educated but mostly on my own with a B.S. degree. Never took a course in political science and still don't know what it is. Education pays off. The conversation switched to nuclear physics at he had a masters in physics.

Doing homework pays off in another way. Do you want education only for vocation? You may consider vocation a necessity and that is probably right, but what about friends and a girlfriend/boyfriend? Want to attract one? Do you think only knowing how to talk shop is the best idea? Forget it. The more homework I did, the better I can talk to my wife today.

What I said above may have been disjointed, but I hope you get the idea. Questions?

I understand about the education aspect. I am far from knowing everything I probably need to fulfill what my degree will describe me as. I do always desire to learn more, but I want to do it because I want to, not because that's what society expects. It basically goes against my entire being to supplement individuality with practicality.

I think timing was an issue for me, too. Graduating high school, you get a chip on your shoulder when you still aren't eligible for life yet. I mean, 12 out of my 18 years of life? Cmon, gimme a fuckin' break already with the school thing.

The homework still doesn't agree with me though. Any way it's described, at its core it is still repetitive administration of known material. Homework should be optional, as a way for students who need more help to practice on their own time. It doesn't work for me, and it being mandatory only gives me otherwise unneeded stress.

My opinion has always been that homework is there for the people who need it, and the people who do not should not be obliged to do it, but sadly, it seems I am one of the few who think this way (at least, if I am compared to the people within the education system).

That said, though, please don't do bad solely because you think you shouldn't have to do homework. As much as I may agree and as important as principles can be, this one isn't worth it. Just do it and get over it.

I agree with your opinion.

And you shouldn't worry about me. What I lack in motivation I make up for in rationality. I am not stubborn enough to throw my life away due to sour grapes.

 

[Words]

It works for most people and its a pretty solid institution(social structure), so it is supported by both bottom-up and top-down pressures of society. Which means that its unlikely you'll be able to change things. My logic has been "do homework, Better grades, better school, more intelligent friends." I'm tired of being easily understood only be a few people, I'm tired of having to explain things ad infinitum. I also like to exchange ideas.

 

[walfin]

It works for most people and its a pretty solid institution(social structure), so it is supported by both bottom-up and top-down pressures of society. Which means that its unlikely you'll be able to change things. My logic has been "do homework, Better grades, better school, more intelligent friends." I'm tired of being easily understood only be a few people, I'm tired of having to explain things ad infinitum. I also like to exchange ideas.

In my country there was once a news report about a teacher who abolished homework for his class. It resulted in significantly better grades.

Those were otherwise rather underachieving students, grades-wise.

 

[redbaron]

It won't.

I never did assigned homework. I just summarised textbooks in my own notes and passed all my tests by knowing it from back to front. All up I did maybe half an hour of homework a week. Maybe.

Homework is useless and eats dick, and if you ask me has nothing to do with work ethic in the real world. I was an abysmally lazy and inattentive student. I'm a highly successful and diligent worker.

Working a job that has personal meaning is different to answering questions with none. At least for me. I know plenty of people who 'did their homework' in school. They're busy studying useless subjects at university that won't earn them a decent living. Or busy working jobs they hate because they studied a useless subject at university and couldn't land a decent one with it.

That said, I think jobs are largely what you make them. There's opportunity to ascend in almost any work environment if you're intelligent enough to capitalize on it.

 

[Fghw]

You'll find in life that many things are inherently unnecessary. I found that out and i'm only 16.