I sympathize with this.
As a kid, I’d do the homework, put it in my backpack (thanks to my Mom), yet I’d completely forget to turn it in, despite the whole class getting up to do it, and get a 0%. Turning it in later for ~50% (thanks to sympathetic and confused teachers) saved my butt.
…And yes, I’m definitely neurodivergent.
I’m dealing with this exact situation with my oldest son who has ADHD. He scores great on tests and most assignments but the 0’s kill him. Now that he’s a freshman they are being even more strict about the busy work. He’s getting better but still at risk of not getting credit for one class this year because of a terrible first quarter that he’s having trouble clawing out of even after having a B and A in the following quarters. It was really hard getting him to turn things in regularly and it has nothing to do with him knowing the material, they just give so much damn work outside of school that it overwhelms him and I feel like nobody actually gives a shit about how different his brain works. It’s not like he doesn’t care, the way they deal with it doesn’t accomplish anything besides making him feel worthless and then I have to put in extra duty to combat that along with helping him be successful in ways that work for him. This ignorant meme or tweet or whatever was triggering for me and I was so happy to see your comment as one of the first ones ❤️
Good luck! You sound like an awesome, caring parent just from that.
Let me emphasize this is just my open thought and not a criticism, but in hindsight, what I’d wish I’d done in school is set more reminders.
Post-it notes? Bracelets? Phone alarms, more sophisticated apps? Maybe something auditory if that’s more his thing? Basically I wish I had set up some more structured notification system to beat me in the head. Of course, as a kid, I hated excessive structure, but that’s exactly why I needed it. And it gets more and more needed later in school.
And these days, there seem to be some excellent apps/systems for helping.
It’s not just forgetfulness or procrastination though, like people stereotype with ADD. Sometimes it’s just being “overwhelmed” that leads to a bunch of zeros. This is hard to deal with, and yeah, the “busywork” parts of school don’t help at all.
Thank you! That is exactly the kind of stuff we have worked on, post it’s in his pocket specifically have helped a lot. They were trying to force things at the school that was counter productive for him, like docking him points if he didn’t write all his assignments down in a daily planner and other nonsense that did nothing other than increase his mental load and anxiety. Fortunately he’s really been able to start turning a corner as we’ve worked on coping skills over the years and he knows I’m willing to go to bat for him when the school tries pushing things that make things more challenging for him. It’s like they want a school of little compliant robots rather than taking the time to get to know how the individual kids can be successful. I also realize a lot of that is due to under funding, lack of resources, and checkboxes for federal funding so I don’t blame anyone but all I can do is vote and advocate for my kids.
I had a math teacher that would assign 100+ long division problems every night and then give you a 0 if you skipped more than 3 of them.
That’s cruel!
Yeah that lady was a real bitch.
That’s horrible. Especially since I guarantee you and everyone else in that class had it down after the first 50 problems.
It astounds me how many teachers honestly think that teaching/learning is about drills, rote memorization, and slavishly grinding away to get results. While I have no doubt that some people absolutely need to do this in order to get things to stick, I think it under-estimates the intelligence of most kids in the classroom. I would argue it’s not exactly learning and more like programming.
For instance, I can recall “the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell” like some kind of Manchurian Candidate sleeper-agent. But that tells me nothing about how that organelle metabolizes ATP to fuel other activities, what happens when it breaks down, and so on. Memorization and drills are great for algorithms, formulas, and basic foundational things. But the real learning happens in other ways.
Yeah, my test scores were good, not perfect because I lost a lot of points due to penmanship, but good. More than enough to demonstrate that I understood the material. My grades were bad from not doing the homework. I had 2 study periods every day and whatever I couldn’t get done in that time wasn’t getting done. I didn’t care, I had better things to do after school. Having more than 2 hours of homework a day is totally unreasonable.
I ended up getting put in the remedial math classes the next two years because of her. Which ended up being kind of okay because basically all the hot girls were in there with me and I was good at math so they had reason to talk to me for help. So in the end I still won lol.
And what if they try and get <50%? This means the system is promoting those who invested nothing and don’t even try.
the system is promoting those who invested nothing and don’t even try.
Yeah, that’s how the entire capitalist system functions.
But somehow people are mad at kids who have no control, instead of the billionaire leeches literally destroying the planet.
Tbf it’s true. Grades should not be a tool to hold anyone down, in fact there’s very little value in grading - it’s just a patch for incompetent education.
Grades are for administration, not students. Students would receive far better education if schooling was focused on them learning and thinking and developing important skills. But after the industrial revolution, schools were designed solely as thought terminating obedience teaching places
COVID fucked up my kids education so badly they are still trying to catch up. They were in 3rd and 4th grade in 2020, so they lost those prime reading comprehension lessons. But at the same time the schools failed to catch the students up and now they are struggling and instead of helping them they just push them along and pass the buck to the next grade.
I’m really sorry to hear that. I think a lot of parents are in the same boat, and we’re going to see the effects of it for years.
My son was in 8th grade, he lost prime socialization time. It really pains me to see him struggle to make social connections now.
If your kids are fucked up so badly that they can’t handle the next grade then they shouldn’t be in the next grade. Who cares if they graduate high school at 18, 19, or 20? None of that matters anymore. But you got to be right for your own kids and hold them back if they need to be held back. If you think the school is doing the wrong thing then you got to step in. Don’t just let it happen and complain on the internet.
It is infuriating seeing Parents complain that schools are simultaneously doing too much, and too little for children. Be a Parent, help your kids succeed and stop blaming everyone else for not doing your job for you.
It reminds me of another thread on here from weeks ago where someone made a meme about ignoring their kids when they talk about their interests. What the heck? Why did you have kids just to ignore them?
Be a Parent, help your kids succeed and stop blaming everyone else for not doing your job for you.
When people stop understanding child care and education is everyone’s job societies collapse
They (public school) convinced us that they would take extra time with all the students after COVID. The school was fighting parents trying to hold back their kids. We did change their school to one of the charter schools and they are doing much better.
Yeah of course they’re going to fight because they have rules from no child left behind that say they must graduate children or they don’t get money. But we’re 20 years into that now and parents have to realize this or their children will suffer. It’s a personal family problem now. We can advocate for better public schooling in government and help our kids individually at the same time. Don’t just wait for the system to fix itself before your kids get fixed.
Had a test graded on a curve in college. Actual score divided by two then add fifty. There were absolutely people that got a fifty. You’d think by dumb luck you’d get at least one right. It was multiple choice.
Meanwhile here in Croatia, some multiple choice tests actually have negative (penalty) points for choosing wrong so you can’t just guess.
When I was a kid they just forced you through eventually because no about of education could offset the damage done be breathing in leaded gasoline exhaust.
Can I have 50% of my salary for doing 0% of my work?
that’s what landlords do
False. They get much more than 50%.
And they work hard, it’s not easy thinking of bigger numbers every month /s
Are they discworld trolls per chance?
Go ask your master. It’s what school trained you to do.
I grew up in an era when they didn’t pass kids to get rid of them. This is why I had a friend in the 8th grade who had two kids.
They made Federal funding for education based on the yearly standardized test scores, and graduation rates. One of those is much easier to fudge than the other.
No, sorry, actually teachers have always done that occasionally. It’s just that now administrators are forcing it to be done in bulk.
The other thing is grade inflation. A D is passing, right? But many bosses pressure you to give your worst students Bs. And that has definitely gotten worse, too.
Yeah. Massive societal and environmental issues behind that reductionist meme. Poverty, food quality, parent(s), neurodivergence, and even the simple fact that some people are shitty students but might excel at a job despite poor grades.
Your IGN score is a 7, you see the game has many flaws. Your IGN scors is also a 7, your game is well made and optimised, with great plot elements and good graphics.
The first problem is that we’re conflating Executive function with Knowledge.
If you get a 50 because you didn’t understand the material, that’s different from not doing or turning in the work.
I’m dealing with this now. The kid turns in his work, gets A’s and B’s, takes his test, and gets A’s. His actual work in school is all A’s, B’s and 0’s
He’s learning, he knows the material. He can’t hold focus, loses the paper, gets embarrassed if it gets a wrinkle, doesn’t turn it in, and won’t keep an organized folder.
He gets behind enough that he starts staying up late to finish the work and ends up falling asleep in class. We mediate with the teachers, stand over him to get him to do the work. Try to get him to keep it up once he’s out of our sight. We get back on even keel again 2 weeks later, and some teacher who’s behind on their grading does batch grading a week before the end of the semester, and we have 10 more assignments that weren’t listed in the portal the day before.
Some of his teachers will take a late paper and give him a 50 on it. That’s a huge advantage because coming from a 0 is hard.
And in before someone bitches at me that you can’t not turn in work in real live, yeah, I know what’s why we go to school and that’s why we’re working on it. Doctors, counselors, teachers, and parents.
Very true. I think there definitely needs to be a framework for accepting late work in these cases, which is much better than calling it 50% out of thin air.
Because no child left behind worked out so well… Here we are having the same idiotic argument 25 years later.
Now ask, what a student should get, who did their assignment but only got 30%!
I was placed in the remedial track and when I tried to get out, they tried everything to keep me in them. From telling me to wait a week to reconsider, only to miss the change class deadline, to gas lighting me into fearing failure, to telling me that the classes were full. I recently found out that they lied to me about my honor’s placement test to keep me in the remedial classes. I hated my experience with that school so much.
