What's your opinion on "drill and kill" math homework?

@Mamapolo2016 it's important that people be innumerate I guess

@Mamapolo2016 That's a supposed unintentional effect. The intended effect is increased fluency with applying understood concepts to certain commonly occurring problems.

@33person The only further comment I have is science teacher Mr. Mowry in 7th grade had us stand and recite scientific definitions to the flag. Over and over. Endlessly.

That was 55 years ago.

Osmosis is the process by which a fluid of a higher concentration passes through a semi-permeable membrane into a fluid of a lower concentration.

@Mamapolo2016 Hmmm, so you're demonstrating that it may have cemented the definitions into your brain for longer

@33person I would say it did. I don't think anybody has asked me for that definition since the 7th grade final exam but it's still there.

@Mamapolo2016 My fifth-grade teacher used to give lots and lots of math homework compared to my other teachers. We usually had like 3 or more worksheets. I can do arithmetic by hand pretty well.

@33person Basic life truth. No kid likes to be done good - as in "It'll do you good."

@Mamapolo2016 That's interesting, because when I was that age, I actually thought that I would do the same thing as my fifth-grade teacher if I were a teacher.

@33person In grade school, I taught myself modular arithmetic, radixes, complex numbers, boolean algebra and also how to program a computer. Nobody taught me any of that, but they could have and maybe I wouldn't have been one of about 3 people in my school who understood these things by the time they graduated. That stuff landed me the best summer job ever and let me pay my way through university and graduate debt-free.

@33person You weren't a real kid then. You can't be reasonable and a kid at the same time.

@SW-User Self-teaching is honestly one of the most important skills in life, especially if you have a teacher whose teaching style is not good for you.

@Mamapolo2016 Who says? And now I am planning to be a professor, and when I become a professor, I am considering whether or not to be like the college version of my fifth-grade teacher.

@33person I agree. I don't usually get grave and serious until the sun is fully risen.

@33person To me? Most important teaching skill is getting and keeping the young mind engaged in the topic. The rest will follow.

Instill and nurture the need to [b][i]know[/i][/b].

@33person There's not enough time to drill in college math, there's just too much material and it's a struggle to keep up at the best of times.

@33person I was and am a language person, because I could see clearly that books were where the knowledge was.

If some teacher had made me see math was how spaceships were built and ocean depths explored I might have become a physicist.

@SW-User I mean for homework on key things that just don't go away.

@33person A good teacher can create a student who does one page of exercises (or reading or writing ir ANYTHING) because it's assigned and two more because it's FUN.

@Mamapolo2016 One policy I would have, for sure, is that if they do exercises beyond what I assign, they are allowed to turn it in for feedback because if they go above and beyond, I will too.

@Mamapolo2016 Like, literally all of our modern world and technology and science is made possible by math, it's like the Atlas that holds everything up and it's what attracted me to it.

@33person I thought and think it's far more motivating to be rewarded for doing an assignment (and going above and beyond) than it is to be penalized for not doing it.

@SW-User I get that now. I didn't then. No math teacher ever fired me up.

@33person My linear algebra prof had a great system. We'd get weekly "exams" that were much more difficult than the real exam, but we were allowed to "cheat" and talk to each other to try to collectively solve them.

That way, when the real exam came round it was easy by comparison to what we had been doing, and everyone did extremely well.

@SW-User That's a great approach on more than one level.