Too much homework isn’t good for kids.
Research has found that homework offers no real benefit to primary school children. According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, 95% of 10 and 11 year old children in Australia are given homework, but Richard Walker from Sydney University’s education faculty says only students in years 11 and 12 benefit from after-school work. “The amount of homework is a really critical issue for kids. If they are overloaded they are not going to be happy and not going to enjoy it,” he said.
Meanwhile, in France a group of parents are boycotting homework. They say “its useless, tiring and reinforces inequalities between children.” Homework is officially banned for primary school children in France, but teachers send students home with work anyway. This is from The Guardian:
“They say homework pushes the responsibility for learning on parents and causes rows between themselves and their children. And they conclude children would be better off reading a book.
‘If the child hasn’t succeeded in doing the exercise at school, I don’t see how they’re going to succeed at home,’ said Jean-Jacques Hazan, the president of the FCPE, the main French parents’ association, which represents parents and pupils in most of France’s educational establishments. ‘In fact, we’re asking parents to do the work that should be done in lessons’.”
What are your thoughts on homework?
High-class escorts in Spain are striking. ‘They’re refusing to have sex with the country’s most powerful bankers – until they agree to open up credit lines to struggling families. “We are the only ones with a real ability to pressure the sector,” Madrid’s largest luxury prostitute trade association said. “We have been on strike for three days now and we don’t think they can withstand much more,’ said a women, known as Ana MG. Apparently the bankers have been trying to get around the protest by posing as engineers or architects, but they’re “not fooling anyone.”
Most extensive face transplant ever
A 37-year-old man who was injured in a gun accident in the US in 1997 has been given a new face in what doctors say is the most extensive face transplant ever. Richard Lee Norris received a new face, teeth, tongue and jaw in last week’s surgery – and has already begun to feel his face and recover his sense of smell.
Mr Norris has been living as a recluse since the accident 15 years ago. His surgeon, Eduardo Rodriguez, said the surgery would give him back his life. “It’s a surreal experience to look at him. It’s hard not to stare. Before, people used to stare at Richard because he wore a mask and they wanted to see the deformity,” he said. “Now, they have another reason to stare at him, and it’s really amazing.”
Could hi-tech surveillance cameras be the key to stopping school yard bullies? Twenty five government and non-government schools in NSW received funding for CCTV cameras, fencing and lighting from the Federal Government’s Secure Schools Program. And they say the extra security has cut the instances of bullying and the number of break-ins and vandalism. Doonside Technology High School reported a 70 per cent drop in bullying since the cameras were installed.
The report in The Daily Telegraph said the “funding was not specifically targeted at “student bullying, harassment, student violence and child protection or opportunistic acts of vandalism or property crime in schools”. But data obtained under information access laws shows video footage has been reviewed by school bosses during the investigation of serious incidents between students.”
The cameras are banned in change rooms and toilets and parents are kept informed about camera positioning.
What do you think of the idea of CCTV cameras in schools?
The Syrian Government has reportedly accepted a peace plan designed by Kofi Annan, which aims to end bloodshed in the country. “The Syrian government has written to the Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan accepting his six-point plan, endorsed by the United Nations Security Council,” Mr Annan’s spokesman said. The plan aims to end violence in the region, provide aid to the suffering and and create an environment “conductive to political dialogue”. It also calls for a daily two-hour humanitarian ceasefire.
Meanwhile, the UN has increased its estimate of how many people have been killed in president Bashar al-Assad’s crack down on protestors over the past year to more than 9000.
A Victorian man who helped a friend conceive using IVF has won limited access the child while the court decides if he’s legally a parent. The Herald Sun reported: “The wealthy entrepreneur wiped away tears as he listened to evidence of the potential damage his son might suffer from not knowing his biological dad. The unusual case has highlighted an apparent conflict between state and Commonwealth law regarding known sperm donors, which could potentially affect other single Victorian women using IVF to conceive.”
The woman’s barrister said it was always her intention to be a single mother and that the child should not be considered a child who had never had a father, but “a child for whom the father is not a parent”. The man’s barrister said his client wanted to be “an active, involved and significant figure in this child’s life.”
A study of more than 220,000 people over the age of 45 has found that those who spend 11+ hours sitting down every day have a 40% higher chance of dying within the next three years. Those who sit for just 8 hours have a 15% greater chance of death. The 45 and Up study also found sitting down all day could lead to physiological issues. The researchers founds that even standing up a few times a day can be beneficial to overall mental and physical health.
How many hours a day are you sitting down?
Have you seen anything in the news you want to talk about?








Comments
61 Comments so far
I believe there has to be a balance here. Having a child commence a routine at a young age to complete 5-10 minutes of homework would potentially set the child in good stead by the time they commence high school when the homework load increases. The 5-10 minutes could include 2-3 sentences of the days events, sight words, reading allowed to the parents (which could be done whilst cooking dinner).
Giving a young child more intensive tasks to do at home after already being attentive all day, will of course be tiresome for them and would not be surprising to see the disinterest or an unwillingness to be completed by the child.
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I am a teacher and I can honestly say I hate homework – with a passion. It causes fights in families and stress all round. I gave homework to my senior grades because that was the schools policy and that’s what parents expected, but I gave it on a Monday, due in on a Thursday (those who didn’t have it by Friday spent their lunchtime completing it). That way everyone has a free weekend! Hooray! Social time is just as important for kids, playing and spending time with their families will produce as much, if not more, learning than homework – which should only be revision if anything.
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Thank God for you. In some ways I see why homework gets set, particularly in the senior years of high school. But, oh the drama! Some of those projects are nightmarish. I don’t even do them for my kids, I just supervise them and help them find information when needed.
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The homework issue in France, I can understand. Children in France have very long school days and, in fact, for me, it is one of the major contributing factors in terms of where we choose to educate our children (my partner is French and we have spent time living in Australia and France together). My partner had 38 hour school weeks in his senior secondary schooling which is all a bit of a joke when you consider the 35 hour working week for adults in the workplace! In Australia, the at-school time is much less than in France and I do think that homework is merited. The issue is really the scale of it. I think it needs to be age appropriate and it needs to allow time for extra-curricular activities which contribute as much educational worth in terms of essential life skills – such as teamwork, leadership, time management – and which enable children to grow into well-rounded individuals. It also needs to allow time for children, particularly younger ones, to play – to relax, to foster creativity, to burn excess energy.
The other issue, for me, is that, in France there seems to be much more of a focus on quality family time – I suspect that this also contributes to the issue. Families don’t want their quality time spent with their children behind a desk, working on stuff that they feel should have been achieved in the 7+ hours of lessons a day, when it could be better spent as a family unit. Of course, this is not true of all French households but it is particularly more prevalent in the countryside where we live and where family seems to be valued a lot. If French children had shorter school days perhaps parents would be more accepting of a little homework but, as it stands, many children come home exhausted from school.
The other issue which comes into, though, it is the fostering of inequality which I think is a valid point – some parents have the time, energy and inclination to support children with their homework but others do not. What happens to the children of those parents? Do they fall behind? The idea that school work happens at school, theoretically at least, helps promote equality in access to educational support and, ultimately, educational outcomes. So, although I support an age-appropriate and manageable amount of homework in Australia, I can also see the argument against it.
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The CCTVs, the fences and locked gates after hours, our schools are becoming like prisons. Don’t agree with this at all.
With regards to homework my daughter is in year 1 and she gets about 10 mins a day plus a home reader. This is the maximum amount of homework I would support at her age. She should be getting home from school and have free play time, and no this does not mean parking in front of the tv as one commenter suggested. So much can be learned by a child through play with their family and friends, and just being a kid. And it is wonderful that there are parents out there who want to spend time with their children and maintain a close and loving relationship with them!!!
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In regards to the homework question I love this…
No Play,No Learning
Know Play, Know Learning
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Totally agree!
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Homework is very much different courses for different horses. It depends on how good the school is that your kids go to and how confident you are as a parent that the class teacher is going to get through the curriculum. It also depends a lot on the disposition of your kid.
In my case when my kids were in primary school they went to the local Government school. There were no maths, English comprehension or grammar books either on the book list or provided by the school so as a parent you had no idea of what maths (for example) had to be covered during the course of that year.
My children did one hour of homework a night starting from grade 1. They both did Kumon, and after the evening meal they would do their Kumon work, followed by any homework given by the school, then they would use the rest of the time working on the maths and English textbooks that I purchased for them from the Educational textbook shop.
I wasn’t in favour of the school sending home homework as generally it was some stupid worksheet set for the sake of sending home homework, and I didn’t particularly want my children wasting their time doing it.
I had no problem at all getting my children to do an hour of homework every night as we had a rule in our home of no T.V, computer (unless it was for homework) or electronic games during the week so I didn’t have those things competing for my children’s attention. They were happy to spend time working their way through their textbooks.
If I had have been very confident in the school and the class teachers and I could see that they were covering all the curriculum I probably would not have gone down the track of buying school textbooks for my children to work through at home.
Also if I had very ‘difficult’ children I doubt that I would have upset the harmony of the home by forcing them every night to do additional school work.
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I’m a teacher at a school (primary) that has a no homework policy. I love it because in the past, most of the homework I have set has either been relevant to the topics covered in class and taken me forever to prepare and few kids completed it so a waste of time, or it was a photocopied sheet from a book and irrelevant to what we were doing in class but handed out because I had to set homework and that was easy for me.
Nowadays I don’t have to worry about setting homework and I know most parents also prefer this. Students are expected to read every night and take books home daily. We also encourage practice of basic mathematical facts (addition/subtraction and multiplication/division facts) and in our class extra practice sheets are always available for students to take home if they want them. Some teachers send the weekly spelling lists home as well.
One argument we’ve had against the no homework policy is that students need to be prepared for homework when they get to high school. My counter argument is that where does it start? If we gie our year 6s homework so they are preparede for homework in high school, then what about the year 5s? Should we give them homework so they are ready for year 6? Then what about the year 4s? Do they need homework to get ready for year 5? When does it end? Do we need to give our 3 year olds homework so when they reach school age they know how to do homework!!??
Anyway, sorry for the rave. Just my 2 cents worth.
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One of the main problems I have with homework is that setting it doesn’t recognise the ‘two-parent working family’ set up which, let’s face it, is more prevalent today than ever before.
I’m struggling today with kids who come home straight after school and who (technically) have time for homework but when I was working full-time I’d walk in the door past 6pm with a very hungry and tired pre-schooler + a bookfull of homework for the 7 year old. It’s not rocket science to work out that this is a terrible time for everyone in the family to tackle homework. But, when you work full- or part-time when else is the homework going to get done?
If I do homework first, then dinner is too late and the little one is whinging and being disruptive which, in turn, disrupts the homework process and makes it take longer.
If I do dinner and bath first, then I’m asking my (then) 7 year old to start her homework at 7pm when she’s tired, grouchy and just wants to wind down.
From a parent’s perspective it’s a lose/lose situation every time. I’ve heard the argument that homework is a way to get parents involved in their kid’s learning but there doesn’t seem to be any acknowledgement from the school system that many families have two working parents these days and this has an impact on how much time we have to spend together.
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I never set homework for my students.
Sure, they do assessment tasks, which they take home and work on but I believe that’s all they need.
I also refuse to set homework as I’m a parent too….and I get that it causes conflict, problems and imposes on family time.
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I think one of the best things about homework for primary school aged children is,when treated the right way,it opens up a dialogue between home and school and encourages parents to talk to their children about what they are learning.However,I do put a huge disclaimer in there that that only applies to quality homework that consolidates learning and doesn’t result in tears,tantrums or fights.
To me the whole point of homework is not the work itself but the values it gives students…it teaches them independent study skills , responsibility for learning and probably most importantly that learning is not something that occurs in isolation in the classroom. It’s too late to try and begin home study habits in year 11 when it is deemed ‘useful’ for academic progression.
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Too much homework….not good.
Too little homework….not good.
All work and no play makes for dull children. But where do you find the happy medium ? It’s a problem.
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I was sceptical about the amount of homework my children’s (primary) school sends home, until I realised that the idea is about building good home study habits. Homework at our primary school is really about getting students to be more independent learners, so that by the time they are in high school and they really have to be working outside school hours, it is not such a shock. I’m lucky though – mine come home, have afternoon tea, and automatically get out their homework books – I rarely have to nag. Yes, I pinch myself daily!
Projects however are another matter – I sometimes wonder if they are intended to test the knowledge and ingenuity of the parent as much as the child!
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I’m concerned about the homework debate. Sure there are such things as too much work, or too complicated projects. However, with subjects like maths, (especially basic arithmetic) you really need to do some repetitions before grasping the concepts.
If your daughter is in tears over multiplication tables at 7 years old.. and you think it’s too hard and unnecessary to teach her. Then there’s a huge problem – her maths skills won’t get better magically, and it’d only be more difficult for her to learn skills as she gets older. So I am not understanding the rationale of “less homework” in situations like this.
Australian children’s literary and mathematics skills are appalling by world standard. This is a wealthy country, with great free education, dedicated teachers. However the attitude of learning fundamentally is taught at home. If you tell your kids “there’s no point in doing homework” from a young age, that’s undermining the teachers and the system.
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How great that someone’s family was willing to donate such an extensive part of their son to make a difference – it would be hard to see your child’s face on someone else. True generosity.
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Yay! Finally someone talking sense about homework. What a waste of time. The kids learn more having time to help with the shopping or cooking or playing a board game. It causes too much unnecessary stress. Let’s veto it here!
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Finding homework a real struggle. I believe it is supposed to be a revision of what children learn in class. However, my daughter at 7 is being set maths sheets with division and multiplication that she clearly doesn’t have a clue about. She ends up in tears. I try to explain what it’s all about but it is not sinking in. I am not a trained teacher and I don’t know the best way to explain what for her are difficult concepts. It is not helping her, it is battering her confidence. It’s all about getting them Naplan ready only it’s not really working.
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Which is why naplan is crap. Teachers are being pressured to get results regardless of the worth of those results thus are teaching to a test and passing it on to you at home.
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I second that!
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we had an email sent around earlier this week telling us that year 7 parents are complaining that their kids aren’t getting enough homework and we need to set more. Those complaints are the only reason I set regular homework, aside from reading, as I don’t believe it is necessary until senior school.
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I had a parent teacher interview today. The teacher told me that some parents were interested in their 8-9 year old children learning problem solving for maths. As a result she had sent home some exercises for them to do over the holidays.
Fortunately she stressed they were not compulsory. I told her I’d think about them as I wasn’t really worried about an 8 year olds problem solving skills, given that brains grow until one is 25 approx. The teacher agreed, but said some parents had requested extra. All I can say is WTF?
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I think homework is absolutely essential. I loved doing homework after school. My parents always gave me additional work to do if I wasn’t given “enough”. I also had a tutor 2 afternoons a week from years 7 to 12. It kept me out of mischief and gave me a huge advantage at school. I picked up things faster too. As a result I got a good university education and am now in an interesting, challenging profession.
I sit down with my nephews once a week who are in year 2 to help them with their homework. Their mum doesn’t put a lot of emphasis on it but I see the benefits of it.
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It’s alright for kids like you that enjoyed doing homework but there are kids out there that have had enough by the time home time rolls around. I wish you luck if you have a child that baulks at it!
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My children don’t get assigned homework, they are both asked to read each night and that’s it!
I’m happy with this arrangement as I agree homework in primary school is unnecessary.
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I agree that homework is unnecessary in primary and lower secondary as they should be able to get everything they need from the school day. But unless you are doing the most trivial of subjects in higher secondary or uni, it’s impossible to pass let alone do well without a good deal of independent unstructured study. I think it’s better to get kids used to this idea when the deliverable is 10 minutes and not all that important and have a gentle glide path to a full load rather than throw them into 2-3 hours per night in year 11 (and yes we have the homework battle pretty much every day)
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I love sending homework home for parents! Now you can see what it’s like for ME to try to get your child to do ANYTHING in class without an argument/ snide remark/ look of contempt/ moan/ groan (this is for high school kids – not sure about primary). The good kids do it, the argumentative kids don’t. It’s also nice to think that maybe parents might take some sort of interest in helping their kids learn?!
All for the CCTV cameras in the playground if it reduces bullying.
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Heh – nice one.
“it pushes the responsibility for learning onto parents…”
Oh, didums. Some parents believe it is our responsibility to teach their children everything – including manners, responsibility, social skills etc. Let’s face it – the work that most kids get set in primary school is hardly rocket science – if you’re even a semi-literate adult you should be able to help your kid out.
And there is also research out there that suggest that homework helps move skills from short term to long term memory.
Plus have you seen the curriculum? Have you seen how much teachers are supposed to cover in the time we get with your kids? (minus sports days, public holidays, music lessons, the days you can’t be bothered getting them to school etc. etc.) There simply ISN’T enough time to fit all things in during the 5 hours a day your child is in a classroom.
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If you can be bothered, here’s some research…
http://www.addison.pausd.org/files/addison/homework/Synthesis%20of%20Research%20on%20Homework.pdf
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Both of you come across as somewhat burned out.
Of course some parents want to shove responsibility off onto others, that is only some.
Yes you will have kids whingeing about doing stuff for you at school. Do you really think they don’t do that home already?
You can still send your kids to their rooms to do homework and not take any interest in it anyway.
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I am so over homework. In our house it used to be a battle every night and as I have posted previously, me doing it!!!
This year the worm has turned. I ask whether he has homework – yes. Please do it. If he doesnt, get in trouble with your teacher. But I forgot. Tell someone who cares. I have paid my dues in the homework dept and refuse to do it again, especially when it’s not my homework.
We have teacher conferences next week and this will be a topic to discuss.
Can’t stand it!!!
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My Dad is a primary school teacher (grade 5 mostly) and attempted to cut right down on the quantity of homework he sent home with students – and there were complaints from parents. So then to avoid the boring pointless homework sheet style homework he started designing week long (small/ fun) projects that could be completed at home with a parents in put – well then the complaints started flooding in. A lot of them wanted the sheets as evidence that both he and the children were actually working but, other than supervising, didn’t really want to engage with the process.
I think most homework for primary school students is pointless and much more could be gained by a weekly piano lesson, drama class, walk in the park, visit to the library, anything really!!
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Sooo over homework.
With 2 primary school aged children, we would much prefer to come home and spend some quality time hanging with the fam – even if that is reciting times tables while hitting a tennis ball or jumping on the trampoline, writing a few spelling words in chalk on the driveway. Much more preferable than sitting down for 20 mins each night (per child, whinging time included) when everyone is tired. I really do question whether they get any benefit at all from their written sheets.
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What ARE the arguments in support of homework?
Prior to secondary & tertiary education, and beyond the odd ‘project’ or practice, I just don’t get it.
None of mine are at school yet, but amongst my friends there seems to be a massive discrepancy in set homework. Between individual schools, and even individual teachers. Some hand it out every night, others rarely at all.
That’s rather telling in itself isn’t it….
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Yes, I agree. Massive discrepancy between schools as to how much and how often.
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Homework is one of the main causes of tension, anger and conflict in our house. As a parent, I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. I feel it’s not my place to undermine the school by saying to my daughter “homeworks sucks and you shouldn’t have to do it” but, on the other hand, where do I draw the line at something that, in the end, doesn’t really add much to her learning.
I also find it terribly difficult to manage the workload. Kids are at school for 6 hours a day. By the time my kids come home, they are over it. Trying to get them to sit down and focus on homework when all they want to do is let of steam and do something active is a Herculean task.
In our house, homework is done if and when we can get it it, in between everything else that is going on. And I don’t just mean after-school activities, although my kids do plenty of those. It’s also my own work, work to do with the house (dinner, washing up, tidying etc…) that all has to be put on hold.
In terms of family stress, with two full-time working parents, homework has been the undoing of us many a time and I’ve had some weeks when I’ve sent the books back incomplete because we just simply couldn’t get it done or I couldn’t take another battle after working all day.
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As an ex school teacher, homework is over rated and unnecessary. Of course my children do it but I don’t agree with it.
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That’s really interesting to hear from a teachers’ perspective. Do you think it’s useful to reaffirm or solidify what the kids have learned that day? For example I always struggled with maths and I thought that doing exercises at night were useful for me to remember how to do it – is that not really the case in your experience? What about reading or is that not really “homework” as such?
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I’m a primary school teacher and am also very much against a lot of the homework that is set for children say up to grade 3. I’m all for home readers/sight words/ spelling words etc. I’m really against busy written work just for the sake of it at home especially when it’s a complete repition of what’s already been done during the day. I would much prefer my children to be outside playing together all afternoon or participating in sport. In bed nice and early to read books and practise sight words. I would much prefer a quick email or note once a fortnight to point out what they’ve struggled with so we can work on that at our own pace. On Mondays I make my 5 and 6 six year old sit down and complete all written homework for the week just to get it out of our hair. Then the rest of the week we just do home readers and sight words.
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See that’s the thing though. All of you commenting that you’d rather spend that time playing with your kids, or teaching them things while participating in family activities…homework is not really meant for you. Homework (good homework that is) is meant to support the child’s learning. If the child goes home and sits in front of the TV for 3 hours before bed, well homework is a much better alternative.
And good homework is simple and focused. My Kindergarten class are asked to practice their sight words and sounds as well as read their Home Reader. Not exactly time consuming but very valuable in helping the child progress….
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I’m having trouble understanding your point. I never said my kids spend 3 hours a day watching tv. In fact they aren’t allowed tv until Fridays. Being a teacher myself I’m not silly enough to do their homework for them as you’ve implied. You also mentioned the merits of home readers and sight words which i’m all for. Your point?
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Gosh, modern medicine never ceases to amaze me. A gunshot victim getting a whole new face!? Incredible.
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I am so happy for Richard Lee Norris!
The medical world amazes me with what it can do! I hope he can have a happy, fulfilling life again
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Australian Financial Review publishes claims (and enough proof, one would hope) that News Corp in Australia used dirty tricks to destroy rivals.
Can the News Corp apologists please stand up? Let’s hear again ‘no no no would News Corp Australia do anything underhand like tap people’s voicemail’.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/pay-tv-piracy-hits-murdoch-20120328-1vxfw.html
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Awesome idea wether its physical or intimidation, body language, can all be caught on camera…it sure fixes the whole she said, she said and prove people wrong…..teachers can only see so much
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There is more to bullying than physical intimidation. Just ask at any school, particularly girls. CCTV footage wouldn’t catch the sophisticated, cruel, calculated and threatening words delivered. I dislike it when bullying is simply seen as physical violence – non-physical bullying can be just as damaging and life affecting.
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Sure, but a reduction in phsyical bullying is a good thing, no?
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It would capture body language though…
Uncomfortable as it is, girls are also getting more physical now too.
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I think it’s a good idea. At my brother in laws school there are physical fights at least twice a week… And the majority is between girls… I went to the same school (over 12 years ago) fights were rare maybe once a term… And girl fights even rarer!! I think in my whole time at high school I saw 2 physical girl fights though there were plenty of non physical ones..what’s wrong with girls today!?!
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I went to an all-girls high school in the early ’90s and I never once saw a physical fight. (But plenty of bitchiness & verbal bullying.)
I agree – what the hell is wrong with girls today?! What’s changed??
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I went to co-ed high school between 93 and 97 and witnessed a lot of girl on girl fights, especially in years 8 and 9.
It was bizarre to me then and it’s bizarre to me now.
I guess the biggest difference today is camera phones. But it’d be hard to argue that girls weren’t getting more violent.
Why so angry?>?
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There are few expressions I detest as much as “girl-on-girl”. In my opinion this phrase is part of the problem. (Not having a go at you personally, I know it’s become an everyday part of our language, but I wish it hadn’t.)
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It was girl-on-girl. I think your distaste stems from that term also being used for lesbian porn.
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Yes this is where my distaste comes from, and it really bothers me that we now describe teenage girls, and their actions, using porn language. I agree with you about the influence of mobile phones and the idea that people are viewing the fight, and I also think using porn language adds to this ie violence between girls for others to watch and enjoy. I would prefer the language to be “2 girls fighting” or “girl against girl’.
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fair enough. But you have to see that your mind making it sound like that is just your mind, not everyone’s…
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ooops…I turn 46 in two weeks…
*stands up quickly*
*faints*
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Yep, me too – down among the dead men …
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And I turn 30 in two weeks. Aaaaaaargh!
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It’s OK – you can keep sitting around all day for another 15 years…
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JJ! Thanks for the giggle :-p
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