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How was your homework load when you were at school?

I've been hearing about how kids worldwide are overburdened with homework ever since I was a kid myself. In middle school I read about Chinese first graders at an elite school having to do homework until 11 pm to keep up, WTF. The thing is, I could never relate because I've never been overwhelmed by homework my entire school life. Maybe it's the schools I went to, but homework was such an irregular thing that I would often (90% of the time) forget that we had homework in the first place and would scramble doing it during break time or even the 5-10 minutes in between classes. Most of the time the homework was only a page or less anyway and easily done if you read the book and half paid attention in class.

We did have to do projects/reports that took a week to complete and I lost some sleep over but it wasn't that frequent. There was time for that during the weekend anyway. I loved doing those because I always made the most visually pleasing reports and dioramas.

In college I had a liberal arts degree and it wasn't that different. The most time I'd spend on homework was 1.5-2 hours a week to write an essay in a foreign language.

BTW, I'm from the Philippines. And looking back, maybe I should have been doing more homework for the fields I'm weak in (math, chemistry, physics). However, if the homework is so tough that it takes hours to finish, doesn't that mean that the student didn't learn the subject matter in class and is lacking the skills required to complete it efficiently in the first place?

What was your experience with homework in school?
 

Volimar

Member
In the US back in the mid 90s. About an hour a night more or less. Factor in study hall where you could get some work done. So much was just busy work though. Not difficult, just time consuming. Nowhere near as bad as some folks have it.
 

CronoShot

Member
I almost never had to do homework at home before college. I could get away with doing it before school, or in between classes.

I'm in college now, and it's significantly more work. Or at least it feels like it.
 

Greddleok

Member
Too much. Especially considering I had an hour+ commute to school.

Often I'd be up late finishing it. Never particularly hard, just the volume.
Languages were the worst, one teacher would give us 100 words to learn over the weekend and then test. Seriously? It takes more than 1 weekend to learn that many words, I always did terrible in those.

When I was in primary school I also had a ton of spelling tests, which I never learned for and consistently got the bottom grade in the class.
I was even sent to the "remedial" English class for dyslexic kids and kids with learning disabilities. I was there for 2 weeks until they realised I was just lazy, not that I actually had a problem with spelling.
What a waste of time spelling tests were. I now spell absolutely fine, and I so rarely handwrite something, that spellcheck fixes it for me when I make a rare mistake.
 

Crayolan

Member
I didn't have that much in high school but I'm a procrastinator so it always felt like I had something hanging over my head.

In college my homework was intermittent, there would be long periods in which I didn't have much to do and then suddenly I'd get overwhelmed with big assignments from every class at once and have to spend a week in the library getting little to no sleep. All nighters were very frequent.
 
OP here, glad to know I'm not the only one who BS'ed homework growing up.

Too much. Especially considering I had an hour+ commute to school.

Often I'd be up late finishing it. Never particularly hard, just the volume.
Languages were the worst, one teacher would give us 100 words to learn over the weekend and then test. Seriously? It takes more than 1 weekend to learn that many words, I always did terrible in those.

As a language learner myself I can see the rationale behind memorizing 100 words but yeah, that's tough. It would have been more manageable if the teacher gave you tools to help you memorize (spaced repetition apps for the win).

What sort of volume are we talking about? Did teachers give you homework for every single class?
 
In Secondary School in the UK I was given about 20 mins of homework per lesson with 7 lessons a day. So I would end up with about 2.5 hours of homework each night.

In College I was given about 40 min per course. I had 5 courses. This is the first time i remember thinking this was bullshit. My school ended at 5.30pm. I didn't get home till 7pm. This meant I had 3.5 hours of homework. I also needed to do about 1.5 hours of study for each course per day. I did get between 9am-5.30pm 4 free hours to study. So it was sort of manageable. However I'm not including the 2 month long coursework pieces given. That shit was bonkers.

When I hit uni I actually felt relived with the work we got. It wasn't until my last year I did anything worse than my college years. Ahh the scrum days.

Personally I don't see HW as all that useful after a point. GCSE's and onward I would say it would be smarter to do an exam and CW to prove you knowledge.
 
In College I was given about 40 min per course. I had 5 courses. This is the first time i remember thinking this was bullshit. My school ended at 5.30pm. I didn't get home till 7pm. This meant I had 3.5 hours of homework. I also needed to do about 1.5 hours of study for each course per day. I did get between 9am-5.30pm 4 free hours to study. So it was sort of manageable. However I'm not including the 2 month long coursework pieces given. That shit was bonkers.

Wow. That's crazy. And 1.5 hours of study for each course per day?! What sort of super-hard courses were you taking? I literally can't fathom it. After 1.5 hours of study a day before an exam I was already going bonkers.
 
Wow. That's crazy. And 1.5 hours of study for each course per day?! What sort of super-hard courses were you taking? I literally can't fathom it. After 1.5 hours of study a day before an exam I was already going bonkers.

It since has been named one of the top performing schools in the UK. I still wouldn't send my kids there. If you remember the acceptable amount of HW clip from a show a while back, my friends and I just laughed.

It was for a pretty standard cert if i remember correctly. I do remember bullshitting a lot of stuff and once I worked out the quickest way to write an essay, my life got easier. Oh and minimum word court for anything was 500 words.
 
I did it between classes 90% the time for middle/high school.

College was mostly BSing papers in a few hours or doing projects.

This.

Final years of college moved away from papers and tests entirely and more towards projects, but in illustration one can sense if a project was rushed from a mile away during critiques.
Didn't stop most of my work from being garbage though.
 

Tudor

Member
Through high school I was placed in a kind of accelerated learning course to graduate a year early, so I always knew we had more work than the normal students but even then it wasn't really more than 2-3 hours a night to be properly on top of it.

So to answer your question, 2-3 hours a night after a 8:30-4pm school day so I was usually done by 7/8pm
 
It since has been named one of the top performing schools in the UK. I still wouldn't send my kids there. If you remember the acceptable amount of HW clip from a show a while back, my friends and I just laughed.

It was for a pretty standard cert if i remember correctly. I do remember bullshitting a lot of stuff and once I worked out the quickest way to write an essay, my life got easier. Oh and minimum word court for anything was 500 words.

Hmm, I guess the discipline learned on the way wouldn't have hurt.
 

nayzzar

Neo Member
Yeah same here. Mostly between classes or during the break. Although I don't remember them giving us a lot of homework to begin with...
But we did have a lot of quizzes. Like 7 to 9 Per week.

Uni has so for been me trying to keep up with all the deadlines and projects lol. Rarely do I get time for myself. Design studio is eating me up inside haha...
 

Mephala

Member
School was weak for me. I had a little extra hw along with a few select other students because we were ahead. Many simply didn't care thus would hold some of us back.

How you compare in your school is irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. I went to afterschool tutoring. I did more work there in 1hr than about 3 in school. The amount of homework given from this tutor class was at times crippling.
We had tests and competitions sometimes too. It really showed the difference for those who put the work in to drill the process as well as learn the theories. At school I learned but until the tutoring I wouldn't say it was really working hard.
 
Primary/elementary school: ok amount, a bit more than I would like. 1-1.5 hours per day; a bit more during exam period.
Middle/junior high school: Lots and lots and lots of them, hours everyday. A semester worth of one subject could be pile up to be higher than me: just the homework, reading material not included.
High school: homework ok; I hate the reading part(especially literature) which are mostly boring... I hate most of Shakespeares' work... kill me already! Straight As in math and chemistry though.
Not sure. I never did it.
I wish I were as cool as you. But then my parents would kill me.
 
Ignored it mostly, was fairly light as I recall. I just studied two days or so before tests.

Didn't really take school seriously until after high-school when I started studying that would become my career. (CS)
 

Ragnaroz

Member
Never had any homework after the first few grades of elementary schools. Especially not in college. I find it baffling that you people have homework in college. We had projects and stuff, but never regular homework.
 
We had 5 suicide attempts over the time I was there. Hence why I'm not sending my kids. I mean it worked, but the cost of a social life and life experience before Uni was not worth it.

Yeah, I was wondering how kids with tons of homework actually did some "living." So it turns out they weren't ._.

How you compare in your school is irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. I went to afterschool tutoring. I did more work there in 1hr than about 3 in school. The amount of homework given from this tutor class was at times crippling.

Now that I'm older and more aware of learning strategies, I couldn't agree with you more. Like a fool I resisted tutoring as kid (I thought only the kids in remedial class did them and had too much misplaced pride in my abilities to learn). I still don't like the fact that kids, after a full day in school, have to go several hours to cram school though (like how they do in most of East Asia). There should be an in-between compromise that would allow kids more free time to have fun by themselves while still having them do schoolwork.
 

Zojirushi

Member
In Secondary School in the UK I was given about 20 mins of homework per lesson with 7 lessons a day. So I would end up with about 2.5 hours of homework each night.

In College I was given about 40 min per course. I had 5 courses. This is the first time i remember thinking this was bullshit. My school ended at 5.30pm. I didn't get home till 7pm. This meant I had 3.5 hours of homework. I also needed to do about 1.5 hours of study for each course per day. I did get between 9am-5.30pm 4 free hours to study. So it was sort of manageable. However I'm not including the 2 month long coursework pieces given. That shit was bonkers.

When I hit uni I actually felt relived with the work we got. It wasn't until my last year I did anything worse than my college years. Ahh the scrum days.

Personally I don't see HW as all that useful after a point. GCSE's and onward I would say it would be smarter to do an exam and CW to prove you knowledge.

Yeah I mean who even has time to read and grade all that shit? Sounds more like a test of endurance tbh.
 

ReiGun

Member
I don't remember how much cause I never did it anyway ayyyy.

But seriously, I had homework everyday for just about every subject.
 
In 4th Grade I had it the worst. Every day seemed like 2+ hours of busy work. And if God help you if you had to miss a day.

It was so bad I could not physically carry my backpack without help. As so many textbook made it quite heavy.

Wasnt bad in High School as I always had Study Hall to get anything done. All the homework I did get dident take long.
 

Munti

Member
Quite a lot actually, I think (don't remember exactly how much). There was always many homeworks for each subject to do. Ok, I was very bad in doing homeworks and staying focused, but I took it extremely seriously. I still suffer from the stress I had in my childhood and youth. I'm quite jealous to all that hadn't such a stress
 

13ruce

Banned
Not that much but i am going to school again soon finish college and do some higher education after so the big piles will surely come still.
 
Graduated high school in 2012. Definitely didn't do half of it so who really knows. But my good kid friends seemed to be doing an hour or two a night.

In college when I grew up a bit I was probably pulling the same thing. But I mean, English degree. Not exactly one of those nightmare fields (unlike those poor engineers who are always doing homework at all times, even when it looks like they aren't).
 
In grade school, barely. Usually finished before class ends and the seldom english papers to write. In college, it was mostly lectures and exams. Grad school is a completely different beast. Each one of my classes allots your time as if that one class was the only classed you enrolled for all semester. Many hours of solving, writing, or studying every night. I had to wear a belt because my pants were falling off for finals week since I would rather spend the time preparing than eating. I've gained it all back and then some since graduation.
 

Zoe

Member
Surely I must have had a lot of homework because I was full IB, but I don't remember how I pulled it off. A lot between classes and before school in the hallways, but I don't have any vivid memories of doing it at home.

Same between classes mentality through much of college too, though failing to develop proper studying and time management came to bite me in the ass when school finally got more difficult my last couple of years.
 
I grew up in America in the 80s and 90s, so definitely not enough.

Public schools in America are a joke. I grew in a nice town with a great school system and went to a high school with a 100% graduation rate, tons of kids in AP level classes, and all that good stuff. Thinking back, it was a joke. I graduated in top 10% and I stumbled my way through and in no reality could say I had to work hard in high school.

In general American kids have it too easy.

I see my friends kids overseas (specifically in Asia) and they have tons of work every day after school. They are usually light years ahead of kids of the same age in America.
 
Not sure. I never did it.

Likewise. Projects I'd do, papers I'd write. Shit like trig homework and bullet-point questions on a chapter we were assigned to read...fuck it. I had afterschool jobs, and did work in the chicken houses.

Kind of wish I did, but the parents weren't a help. I remember Mom slapping me upside the head because I wasn't understanding something on some math homework. Sort of a turn off.
 

Pau

Member
In elementary school, I would probably be done by 7 or 8 after getting home at 4. I was not allowed to do anything while I still had homework to be done nor if I had to study. My mom would quiz me and I wasn't finished until I had gotten everything right. If I got a single question wrong a quiz or exam, I was told I was lazy and hadn't studied enough and would be made to study longer next time.

Middle school was more homework but I also was on two basketball teams. I had about an hour of free time at night to do something besides homework before going to bed.

My first semester of high school, my whole life revolved around homework. I wasn't part of any teams or clubs. I only had Friday nights when I was allowed to not do homework that day. I threatened suicide (for the work load as well as social reasons - it was an all girls Catholic school) and my parents let me switch schools.

The work load at my second high school was far more manageable but my parents wanted me to take all AP classes whenever it was possible. It quickly became unmanageable again in my junior year. I tried to take less AP courses but my parents wouldn't let me. I was only one English credit away from graduating once I entered my senior year. (I was ahead in pretty much every subject.) I cut a deal with the head of the school and my teachers that I only had to come to school for three classes (all AP). My parents still thought I was lazy as shit even though I had pretty much run out of AP classes that my school offered.

I was valedictorian in middle school and salutatorian in high school. (I would have been valedictorian if they hadn't changed how they calculated GPA and stopped weighting AP classes more than other ones. I took the most AP classes in my grade.) My parents still thought I was lazy and would not be able to get into college. If I wasn't studying or doing homework, I was called lazy and stupid. If I got anything less than a perfect score on an exam I was called lazy and stupid. I basically had no life in high school during my first semester and after sophomore year. I was barely allowed to see friends outside of school. By my junior year I was so depressed I stopped talking to other students.

College was so much easier but mostly because I no longer lived with my parents. I didn't have anyone breathing over my shoulder. I could study when I pleased and to the extent I thought was reasonable. I could decide whether or not it was actually worth sitting in class. Graduated with straight A's except for one B+ in a STEM field.
 

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
It was okay. Never cripplingly bad. Outside big projects, middle/high school homework usually took an hour or two after school on average. Sometimes less.
 
Junior high, pretty reasonable. An hour or two a night.

High school was awful. Probably 4 hours a night combined between studying, labs, and assignments. On top of working part time it was a nightmare. I basically didn't have a life for 3 years, would be up until midnight almost every day trying to finish stuff.

College was about the same as highschool but felt more manageable since there felt like less day to day work and more big projects that could be remedied with good time management and planning.
 
Bad. In high-school I would regularly spend 3+ hours on HW, almost every night.

Somehow other students managed to do most of their work during Lunch and/or free periods; I have no idea how they managed it.
 
I don't remember how much it was when I was a kid but during Highschool I had a study hall class as my last class or second to last class every year and I was able to do most of my work then.
 

Mr-Joker

Banned
At my first primary school in Scotland we weren't given homework till primary 3, we did take a book home to read in primary 1 but it was a short book.

Then I moved school where they gave a bit more homework except for Friday, they had a rule of never giving children homework on a Friday.

Then I ,urgh, moved to England and was put in a terrible shitty prep school where they gave homework everyday, including Friday...I never did them or put any effort into them not it mattered much as the homework pretty stop when the school began to put more effort into focusing in preparing the kids for SAT, despite the fact that they didn't need to take them since the school was a private school but schools in England, or at least the one I went to, don't really give a crap about their pupils well being.

I learnt nothing in my one year of Prep school mostly because they taught us nothing.

Then I went to high school, which was part of the prep school sooooo it was also crap and the homework there was okay as you would get homework for each subject on a specific day and it wouldn't be much, plus I always use to do them during lunchtime.

Then I left the crappy school and went to college I didn't get any homework, mostly because I went to a crappy college so I ended up failing my exams and got expelled.
 
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