Edwynn
Posts: 4105
Joined: 10/26/2008
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We have to go by academic results here.
Did the homework help or hinder you in making a good grade on exams? Are you more well informed now, not just in 'facts,' but awareness of the world and your own self?
In my own experience, the over-doing of homework and essay writing thing has done both (been cause for better grades and worse grades, that is). As example, I had to spend a huge amount of time on an assigned task of reading 56 torturous pages of why exchange rates do not track CPI (consumer price index) and PPP (purchasing power parity), and then write a 600 word 'summary' on it.
I hate writing. I am not cut out for it. And the fact that the issue spoken of has been a moot point for over 20 years now since the text book itself related that currency exchange is about 3% involving actual trade of goods and services, the rest being from speculation, did not help my worn out brain here. The assigned reading was at least 20 years out of date, it took time away from other likewise extensions of my time in other classes, and I didn't get as good a grade as I would have liked in anything.
I learned a heck of a lot about PPP though, I'll say that. And a lot about the Chinese domestic economy from another similarly imposing (though at least a bit more up-to-date and relevant) assignment in the same class. My German classes suffered accordingly. The assigned papers about why I thought Switzerland (Die Sweiz) was correct or not correct about their WWII neutrality, in one class, written in Deutschesprache, and another large treatise on fusball (soccer) and 'kontroverse' artistic displays and whatever nonsense with which this instructor was so enthralled about, again written in Deutschesprace, did not come at the best time, shall we say.
But I'm not a genius, and never deluded myself into thinking such. I am getting the utter crap beat out of me by academia sometimes, yet this 50-something ping-pong-brained seriously ADD afflicted individual has finally figured out to just do what he wants, screw the grades. The GPA is 3.4, after all that.
I've done a heck of a lot for myself in the way of education on my own. But not quite enough, until now, to figure out that academia might be the only conduit for where I would like to go at this time.
Academia is no more perfect than government agencies or corporations. This was well explained in another post (by a college professor, not me, so there we have the broadened perspective thing going on here).
I might suggest, however, that the focus of your concern in the issue you speak of might be slightly misplaced. I don't think that we'll ever evade the piles of homework (some warranted, some not, etc., blah blah), but some sort of greater commitment, by all of academia and the government and the corporations, and the student, might be in order here.
< Message edited by Edwynn -- 1/28/2012 8:35:19 PM >
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RE: Rick Santorum says don't send your kids to college - 
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