The reason for this is pretty simple: you get free public education in these poor countries, but only if you pass the entrance examinations.
For a lot of families this is the only way for their kids to get out of poverty. Moreover because of the way the school system is structured, your kid could easily fall behind at age 7 and never recover. The reason for this is because of stratified classes, where they group kids into classes, by their performance on yearly examinations.
So there is simply much more incentive for families in poor countries to put more effort into homework, which BTW, is nothing like the homework that American kids get.
It is nonsensical to try to compare what parents in India and parents in Finland are doing.
> For a lot of families this is the only way for their kids to get out of poverty.
By contrast, in countries that have been industrialized for over a century, the preceding several generations found that they could relatively easily find low- to moderate-skill factory jobs that secured a reasonably prosperous lifestyle.
There are also industrialized countries with stratified school systems, and I see that some of them fall toward the bottom of the graph.
Yes, this exactly. Your kids’ education is the way out of poverty. In some families, one child with a decent job will provide a lifeline for the whole family.
Even if the system is broken, even if the quality of education is bad, you have to play along because private education is too expensive.
Very surprised the article doesn’t mention a few things:
1. Some places just have more homework than others. Chinese kids have mountains of homework aged 7, vastly more than British kids. Chinese parents spend much more time either managing or literally doing their kids homework for them.
2. Efficiency/productivity - What are kids doing in school if their parents are still spending hours and hours after school helping them with homework? How is this a productive use of parents precious work/leisure time?
Guess I'm late to the comments game but I agree with you the title is a hasty and poor conclusion. As you have pointed out, the first problem was that the results are not normalized. Second, they have not studied what it is that the parents helped the kids. Maybe homework in some countries are more demanding (do those countries use a nationwide set of textbooks?). Who knows.
The third, I suspect that the time spent on helping children with homework has more to do with how education is viewed culturally than income. I can imagine if you ask the question of the percentage of income the parents spend on their children's education, the ranking is going to be very similar as well. Asian people and countries seem to devote a lot of time, and money, and they tend to steer to their kids more than other groups. That is even a stereotype now. I bet in America, rich Asian parents also spend more time to help their kids with homework. It just happens to be that Asian countries tend to be poorer so they float on top.
You can actually already see it in Singapore, which is not a poor country, being well above the average in terms of time parents spent helping kids.
Ha, I think that argument is made by people who don't have kids (with homework). It's not leisure for me at all. While I worry about being branded a terrible father for this comment, I will admit that I am a terrible teacher. I have no patience for it.
My kids mess around, constantly want breaks ("Well I've written a line! time for a 10 minute break!"), waste hours doing shit that should take them minutes... When they start "accidentally" dropping their pencils on the floor because they'd rather be faffing around picking it up than working, I often just lose my temper. Man, I'm getting slightly pissed off just thinking about it now! xD
There are brief moments of joy/relief where you can see they've grasped a concept or improved and you can be proud of 'em. But most of the time it is a frustrating experience, slow going, and a slog to get them to do anything. The worst of learning, with the worst of kids messing around, with a massive feeling of wasting everone's time.
It's really too bad the inverted classroom model hasn't become any more popular.
In a nutshell, the idea is to take the traditional breakdown of what is done in class and what is done at home, and swap it: Kids do their readings and watch recorded lectures at home. And then they work on problem sets and projects in class, typically in groups.
It's a really clever idea. Compared to the traditional model, it has so many interesting advantages: It levels the playing field between kids whose parents have time and inclination to help them with homework and those who don't.
It makes the teacher much more available for questions and any necessary 1:1 assistance. Having kids work together (even on math problem sets!) helps them to learn better, and has the side benefit of giving them more opportunity to develop social skills.
I've heard it criticized for expecting students to have better access to technology at home than they necessarily do. In the case studies I've read about, though, the schools supplied equipment to students who needed it, and the most dramatic relative improvements were seen among the kids from less wealthy families.
It's a beautiful idea, it really is...except that I doubt it will ever work in my lifetime. I can't even convince my students at the University to complete assigned readings in preparation for classroom discussions. I can't imagine trying to invert a HS or middle school class (and I've taught those, too).
Most kids won't do the home part - unless parents force them. Simple as that. Moreover, traditional model defined as "kids only lis ten in school and only do exercises at home" is a strawman not really done in practice. (That is how we know they don't read if they think they can get away with it.)
Ha ha, same issue with me last night. My 3rd grade boy brought home some horribly long reading comprehension homework. He HATES English homework. I do too. Fortunately my wife took over as I was becoming frustrated.
I do enjoy helping with math & science homework, but that’s it.
My 6th grade daughter is total opposite; never had a B student, science fair winner, violin & cello player. My son a video game & skateboard slacker; just like me. The joys of parenting.
As the parent of a child in a poor South American country, the daughter was getting 2hours of homework most days from 7yr onwards and I Can assure you it was not leisure. The kithen table resembled a battlefield with screaming and cries every night.
Some reasons why there was so much home work
1) large class sizes so a lot of the time in the day the teacher is just controlling the kids not teachinig them. So teaching of new things was assigned for homework, then in class they would just do excercise based on what learned at home
2) No money for resources.I have read about issues with US schools and no money for text books and teachers having to buy them. Here you have to buy your own, nothing is provided, so a lot of the home is "prepare the materials that will be needed for class".
3) and honestly, the daughter didn't want to do it, so what should have taken 40 minutes would take 2-3 hours. It was turn off from learning. So much homework is self defeating, that at times I would just do it for her to save the battles and I just didn't have 2-3 hours to talk her through the concept. We also learnt how to use a calculator
In some contexts, that's true. In most, people can and do distinguish between ao and midori (and for that matter, sora-iro, kon, mizu-iro, and various other shades of these two colors). If you said "sora wa midori de aru," literally "the sky is green," nobody would nod their head yes.
I did not used Japanese words, I used English words. And unless you are strongly colorblind, they are diferent looking no matter what your maternal language. So no, it is not true that they are same, that is frankly incredibly bullshit statement.
For that matter, light green and dark green are shades too, but they are not the same color and are not used intercheably.
By "homework" i mean specifically comparing cohorts of students in high-school that do and do not do the homework they're set, and connecting that with long-term grade trajectories.
I dont have the sources to hand, but i recall an economist talking about large studies in this area.
I think some of this might be that high school tends to be quite easy for the brightest students. I did close to none of my homework all the way through high school because I didn't have to (paying attention in class was sufficient for me to graduate with mostly A's and get into the university of my choice).
Well, yeah... sure, in high school the material is so easy and the pace is so slow that someone reasonably "smart" can do very well without doing homework.
Just because that's the case it doesn't follow that "homework doesn't improve grades."
Writing, to take one example, requires practice. The amount of practice you can get in a single academic year maxes out at 180 hours without homework and you would have no time to actually teach.
I can imagine that 5 hours a week of writing homework in English rapidly exceeds the amount of time you could ever spend in class.
If children aren't receiving sufficient formalised practice in 30 hours of school per week then the curriculum is too crowded.
Imagine a manager saying "you need to brush up on your C++. But we're too busy to arrange training. An hour a day after work should help instead"
Children need time to develop in ways other than rote education. Homework steals that time from them. I am quite happy to write "did not have time to complete due to Scouts / swimming / x " on assignment sheets.
As a teacher, I can confirm that state standards are generally overcrowded. This naturally leads to (for instance) high school students who don't know their parts of speech, but - you know - gotta keep moving.
The discrete goals that schools are expected to fulfill are excessive, poorly defined, and politically vulnerable. It's a odd game.
Linking to a single study is useless unless the topic is something very specific and the linked study happens to be a match (for the specifics being discussed).
That said, OPs comment is overly broad and devoid of specifics, so okay, you refuted his "never".
> Isn't it OP's job to present proof for his claim?
No, it’s not his job. I’m guessing programming is probably his job.
He’s not a researcher and this is not a peer reviewed journal. This is a place where amateurs of conversation come to discuss things that are of interest, but most of us know nothing about, in our spare time. It started out differently but that’s basically what it has evolved into.
Providing citations is nice, it helps, it’s useful and constructive. But it’s not a job, it’s not a duty. You are a capable person with a working, sceptic brain who can do your own research if you so please. Anyone is free to make baseless claims, just downvote them or kindly ask for more info if you don’t like it.
But I’m tired of this “provide 3 different citations from peer reviewed journals to get a passing grade” attitude. It’s getting so bad I’m seeing it in daily life now, and it’s killing all sense of colloquial conversation. You do some work if you don’t like what people are saying. Everyone will thank you for it.
Or just ignore them. Or downvote them. Or be amicable, at least. But nobody has to do anything. I disagree.
This is so spot on, and I guess sometimes people forget that internet forums are to be taken with a grain of salt and you should do your own research.
The one thing I dislike the most is the IANAL - "Don't take this as legal advice" disclaimer that I see abused. I mean, really, who is naive enough to take random legal advice from strangers?
> I mean, really, who is naive enough to take random legal advice from strangers?
Having recently read some stories over at darwinawards.com, I can think of quite a few people who would seem a lot less naïve, if all they had done was taking legal advice from strangers...
Not true at all. There's a large part of brain development that comes from simply practicing handwriting.[0] Putting pen to paper is a huge part of language mastery. In most educational situations, that practice is going to occur outside of the classroom as there is simply not enough time in the typical school day.
Even in the study mentioned in a previous comment [1], the authors disagree as, "we find additional homework to be most effective for high and low achievers".
Interesting also that Finland has a good reputation for its education, and its WAY down the bottom of that list, which seems to agree with your statement.
There's a difference between the measurement "how much homework a student have" and the measurement "how much parents help with children's homework". The article is about the latter, while the GP discusses the former. I'm pretty sure Finnish students have homework.
I also think the "poorer countries" is a red herring (e.g. Singapore scores quite highly on the list), I think it's more about cultural differences and competition about a much more limited number of places for higher education.
My own (very limited) experience with the education systems in several Asian countries is that the focus is more on feeding students facts. Whereas the education in the Nordic countries generally focus more on learning how to solve problems, either by yourself or in groups.
How did they distinguish parental involvement specifically in education from the fact that supportive, encouraging parents are likely to engage with their child's education? I ask because my instinct is that emotional stability and encouragement are probably more important than homework.
> emotional stability and encouragement are probably more important than homework
I'm not sure if there is any work directly comparing the two, but it's true that emotional stability and encouragement are very important.
"The most determinative factor in parental involvement appears to be what could be called: good parenthood in the home situation (Desforges & Abouchaar, 2003; Fantuzzo et al., 2004; McWayne et al., 2004). This factor is characterised by the establishing of a safe and stable home
setting, stimulation of intellectual development e.g. by discussions between parent and child, modeling, disseminating the importance of education and fostering high expectations about children’s school success." [0]
National income is correlated with percent of population in workforce. Poorer countries are correlated with lower levels of total employment. Assuming all else being equal then parents with less time involved in employment will have more time for other activities, including spending time with children. Is this right?
> National income is correlated with percent of population in workforce. Poorer countries are correlated with lower levels of total employment.
How did you draw that conclusion? Do you have any data for this?
Intuitively I'd expect poor people to work more since they still need a baseline amount of money (food, rent, etc.) and it takes them longer to get it.
Two parents working have more income counted in GDP than one parent. Higher GDP is thus correlated with more parents working. More parents working means less parent hours available. In the table the bottom countries have highest number of parents working and the top countries, lowest.
please don't think about it in terms of first world problems of time management. it is more like, they are poor and they want kids to get a solid education and get good jobs and lead a happier, fulfilling life compared to them. fyi: username is a function of yours'.
please don't think about it in terms of "the virtues of unfortunate". Everyone wants "kids to get a solid education and get good jobs and lead a happier, fulfilling life".
please, rather, try to think about it in terms of what best-explains the difference.
this data seems highly inversely correlated with productivity, in countries with lower productivity, people spend more time with their child. Time available seems to be the best explanatory factor.
> Everyone wants "kids to get a solid education..."
No, this is not universal. There are parents who had a bad experience of education and think that is universal, and those who fear that their children will move away if they become educated. It's one of the challenges of teaching in particular areas.
Does reduced productivity at work correlate with more available time though? Take subsistence agriculture, which is very common in poor countries - it is usually done inefficiently, and yet it is very time consuming. In my experience, it's more the leisure time that gets sacrificed - parents have almost no social life while their child is growing up.
By poor I mean lower GDP rather than poverty. The countries up top have lower cost of living and the bottom ones higher, the countries at the top of the table have less parents working, and the bottom, more. Therefore the countries at the top can afford to spend time with children, and the countries at the bottom, can’t afford it.
“Rich countries” are time poor that’s why they produce time related articles like these. :)
India is not Sub Saharan Africa poor but has ~20% of their population living in poverty which they define as something like 50 cents a day.
This is a bit of a numbers/definition game.
I don't know if there's an official definition of poor but if over half of the population lacks indoor plumbing and makes only a few dollars a day, I'd say most people in the 1st world would call it a poor country.
By poorer I mean less income counted in GDP. The lower cost of living make it more viable for parents spend more time with children. I could also argue India is rich compared to, say, Japan, who don’t have much resources to spend on having children.
It's 156 in the world by GDP per capita PPP (purchase power parity) with under USD 8000 (USD 2200 nominal), so cost of living is taken into account, and a HDI of 0.624 (131st in the world).
Many positive things might be said about India, but the notion that it is not a poor country is objectively quite mistaken.
Hmm...a bit different experience by me growing up and graduated from high school in a poor Southeast Asian country.
There, a lot of parents (esp. from lower and mid-middle class) invest a good chunk of money/resources on their kids' education. BUT, unlike this article claims, they aren't that heavily involved in kids' homework. The parents in my country seem to believe that once they pay money to send kids to after-school classes, the progress in students' learning is up to the teachers in those after-school programs.
Most of them don't have time or mental energy left to tend to their kids' homework because they are too busy working (both parents working is typical in poor countries too) and/or running errands (thanks to inefficient bureaucratic system and insufficient infrastructure such as frequent power outages, life's chores take enormously more time than they would in developed world...)
Third thought: I'm glad my parents didn't devote too much time to my homework.
I was the no-effort-good-grades type. Maybe if I dedicated myself more I would've left my country and got a prestigious degree. Who cares. I'm glad I was taught independence and responsibility by my parents instead of them trying to control me.
Ideally, parents shouldn't spend any time on their children's homework. I can understand answering occasional questions and giving encouragement but nothing more. Children learn by figuring out homework on their own. Otherwise, why have homework?
I would guess that you've never been a teacher. The problem is that any teacher has a classroom with students with abilities and aptitudes that range between some Low and some High. The teacher must always teach to the middle kid in that spectrum. Going slower/lower bores the kids in the top half and going faster/higher completely loses the kids in the bottom half. Half of the kids may just "get it" and not need help but the bottom half will need help that the school system can't provide. Note: I don't condone the parent just doing the homework for their kid.
The problem here is that the parents best able to help their children are more likely to have kids in the top half (who don't need help) and the ones least able to help have the kids who need help the most. This can be solved with a restructuring of our school system but very few schools are willing to try. Instead we stick with the ridiculous age == learning level method.
I am not a teacher but I did volunteer in my children's classroom when they were young. I do understand what you mean by the range in comprehension.
I am not counting the other things a parent does to enhance a child's learning experience as homework time - so we all might be saying the same thing.
I will give a small example which might illustrate having an enhanced learning experience. One of my volunteer assignments was to teach children math using coins. My son and daughter were naturally motivated to understand how much money they had because I had them save money buy things at a very young age. I was shocked that some classmates did not understand denominations and others could not do the math. My husband made coin dice for the classroom kids. They rolled the dice and added the values to figure out how much money they had on the coins. This was a big hit with the kids.
What I didn't want to do was do homework for my kids or give answers. Discovery is how children learn. My kids ended up proud of what they could do on their own. When they failed - we discussed taking ownership of failure.
That assumes that child will do homework if left alone and that the homework is within child skills. Which often is not the case - many kids will start to play simply because there is too much of it and their attention span is not there yet. Homework also often basically expects parents to contribute, because the child is not able to fully do it.
You can spend time on homework in many ways: Getting your children to think about problems from different angles; Understanding where they struggle and should spend more time; Understanding where they are fine and let explore on their own; Learning how to set the appropriate guidelines to foster good study habits.
It is amazing how even two kids from the same parents can vary greatly in personality and how they learn. It takes time and energy to find the best way to nurture each child.
Oh yeah, and it feels good too. Remember that time when you spent hours explaining something to your kid and he suddenly got that "Eureka!" look? It's hard to quit that.
I grew up in a poor SE Asian country, and felt the same as you (that my experience with parents' involvement in education is quite limited). I think most of what we read about in the US are biased toward China or developed Asian countries for better or worse.
Results from two countries should be generalized to every country in the world?
If you travelled a little bit like I have, you'll discover a few things.
E.g. The poor are usually uneducated. Meaning they can't help with homework.
Even in poor black American communities, house work is often more important than school work.
More important, the poor tend to work longer and harder on mental jobs.
They most impoverished behave like reptiles (no insult intended) give birth to many children and abandon them to varying degrees. (Fulani people actually, literally abandon their kids and may never see em again)
> E.g. The poor are usually uneducated. Meaning they can't help with homework.
> Even in poor black American communities, house work is often more important than school work.
You pretty much nailed what I wanted to described earlier. My mother works from home and although she has a bachelor's degree, since the education system (esp. in her times) was poor, she is not even at the level of a high school grad in terms of knowledge regarding math, humanities and science. This is not to mention that she (nor my more educated, late father, who was a doctor) wouldn't be able to help her/his children with their homework due to lack of knowledge/education or time.
One thing I remember though is that after finishing homework, my mom would expect us to help out with house chores like sweeping the floor, collecting clothes from clotheslines, buying small grocery items, etc.
Possible explanation - parents in rich countries have enough power to pressure on schools to assign homework that requires less parental involvement. If you are "suspect parent", you are less likely to argue that there is too much homework because that might badly influence how teachers perceive your kid. If you are rich parent with good social standing, you are free to say so and while teachers might complain at home about "spoiled rich kids", you are likely get your way.
Also, I am more involved where I think school is not sufficient to fix the issue. Where I trust the teacher and school, I am involved much less.
This article is rather poor. So many things not considered:
1. Perhaps people in some countries get a lot more homework than others. This does not look like a normalized plot.
2. Perhaps some countries see helping their kids with homework as a positive, whereas others do not.
3. What is the pressure to do well? We already have another HN submission on the pressures students have in India to do well. Maybe people in developed countries don't help them as much because they know their kids are not at risk of not being able to get into college.
Spend an hour and you can probably double the list above.
This is also assuming that parents know how to help children with their schoolwork. What is the rate where children in school are past their parents' education level?
For a lot of families this is the only way for their kids to get out of poverty. Moreover because of the way the school system is structured, your kid could easily fall behind at age 7 and never recover. The reason for this is because of stratified classes, where they group kids into classes, by their performance on yearly examinations.
So there is simply much more incentive for families in poor countries to put more effort into homework, which BTW, is nothing like the homework that American kids get.
It is nonsensical to try to compare what parents in India and parents in Finland are doing.