Anonymous wrote:Cont'd

Reading period could be a real crunch, especially if you chose one-big-paper-at-the-end courses, but that was generally prdictable/avoidable and when it wasn't, you knew what was coming.

The all day in class and multiple daily deadlines, weekly quizzes, etc. regime we're seeing in HS is very different and, to me, seems much more stressful than what we dealt with in college.

Reading period is much shorter now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

But it shouldn't be.

Yes it actually should be because 1.5hrs of night is very easy to do and still have a good life. 3.5hrs is not. And honestly it IS the parents and not the school pushing all the AP and honors courses along with sports, drama and an instrument. There are kids in private that do 1-2 sports and maybe one more elective off their 5 classes. So everyday they have at least one study hall with occasional days with 2 study halls.

If your kid wants to bring their phone and goof off during breaks/study halls then they will come home complaining about how much homework they have when they go upstairs having to do 5 subjects with frequent social media breaks. Of course it is going to take over 3hrs. What do you want teachers to do? Give 10min of HW in their subject? Most schools give 30min of HW a subject. If you have an hour study hall and focus you can knock out 2 subjects in one study hall. If you stay offline and social media, you can get done 3 more subjects in 1.5hrs. Time management is a key factor in life.

Anonymous wrote:My older child is in the upper school at Basis, and taking 3 AP classes, and this thread made me feel much better at least initially, especially because Basis does not require (and therefore colleges do not expect) kids to do sports....

and my child has 3-4 hours of homework a night........

3-4 HOURS? WTH are they (not) teaching them at school?

My older child is in the upper school at Basis, and taking 3 AP classes, and this thread made me feel much better at least initially, especially because Basis does not require (and therefore colleges do not expect) kids to do sports....

and my child has 3-4 hours of homework a night........

Anonymous wrote:My daughter reported college was much easier than her uber competitive High School. I agree that this doesn't make sense. The Big 3 need to really think about this issue.

And parents need to think about wanting their kid to take all of the top level courses if the child is then overborne with work load.

bump

My daughter reported college was much easier than her uber competitive High School. I agree that this doesn't make sense. The Big 3 need to really think about this issue.

Cont'd

Reading period could be a real crunch, especially if you chose one-big-paper-at-the-end courses, but that was generally prdictable/avoidable and when it wasn't, you knew what was coming.

The all day in class and multiple daily deadlines, weekly quizzes, etc. regime we're seeing in HS is very different and, to me, seems much more stressful than what we dealt with in college.

I also agree about club sports in college. A sports scholarship sounds wonderful until you look at the schedules of these athletes plus the time they have to spend with weird boosters, etc. I also don't like the way Division I athletes are segregated from the general population. College should be about experiencing new things/ideas/people. Of course if our son is recruited we will let him decide.. but just saying it won't break my heart if he isn't.

Not the PP you're responding to (actually, I'm the one that PP was agreeing with). As a Harvard undergrad (similar majpr to yours), I had the kind of workload you've described. But that that translated into less than 20 hours of reading and 12 hours of time spent in class. Most weeks, I didn't have more than 5-10 pages of writing due, and often not even that. And the reading was basically discussed (by students) once a week, so you had the whole week to do it rather than daily deadlines. When it was 1000 pages, IME, that meant 4 books, each of which was skimmable in a pinch.(50 twenty-page articles would have been a very different proposition! But it's just not that hard to read/understand 4 scholarly monographs per week, especially when you had lectures to provide context. And you weren't going to be writing anything major about most of the things you read).