Reply to Typical nightly homework load at various Upper Schools?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, it is all about time management.  There are study halls and free periods, flex time - whatever you want to call it.  Built into the day.  Many kids will utilize it.  Many won't.   So the same school can say 1.5hrs and another poster will say 3.5hrs.  Learning to focus and cut out the distractions is key to surviving high school.  [/quote]

But it shouldn't be.[/quote]

I know what you are saying, but isn't time management and learning how to balance commitments one of the top skills a student can take going into college?  I definitely hear this a lot from independent school grads, particularly those who play a sport in college and feel that they've already mastered the important skill of balancing work vs. sports vs. leisure.  I do think that it's important to let kids make mistakes in high school -- getting a B instead of an A or a C instead of a B -- as they learn these skills.  I get that people are worried about the effect on college admissions but there are so many good options that I feel like that "too important to fail" emphasis is misplaced
[/quote]

While I hear that from independent school grads and while I understand why they say it (because HS workload is heavier than college), I don't think that they're necessarily right or even in a position to know.  Basically, workload management was a non-issue for me (and I didn't see classmates struggling with it either.  Nor did I see undergrads who seemed stressed out over the amount of work when I taught while I was in grad school.  In both cases, the school in question was an HYPS.  I certainly didn't have the HS workload my DC had and most of the kids I knew weren't from prep schools.

College workload just isn't that extreme.  Typically there are fewer courses, MUCH less class time, no family obligations and very little daily life overhead  (someone else does most of the cooking, shopping, and cleaning for you if you live in a dorm, and everything you need is typically within walking distance -- including most ECs and all of your friends).  And you get to choose your schedule and your courses, so you can structure your life so that you can work when you're efficient, sleep when you're tired, balance the types of assignments you'll be responsible for and when.  Seriously, why do we make life much worse in HS to prepare kids to deal with college when college is almost inherently easier to deal with than HS in the first place?

Somedays I think what we're really doing is preparing upper middle class kids not for college but for a lifetime of soul-crushing but lucrative/high-status work.
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+1000
High school should not be harder than college.

I went to a competitive suburban public school, then harvard. In HS I did maybe an hour a day of homework, rarely more. And HS was still more work than college. Idiotic. I'd rather have happy, curious and relaxed kids who end up at a less "good" colleg than miserable, stressed kids who go to harvard.[/quote]

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