More parents, students saying 'no' to homework - <AUTHOR> http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20151026_More_parents__students_saying__no__to_homework.html#c5m34J1fBGIPuuwg.99 <comment><USER11> Let's not forget that the inhabitants of this website are almost certainly the kind of people who saw through the noise and got their education on their own terms. As we raise our kids we help them tip-toe around all this garbage, but most parents have no tools at their disposal to review and revise and push back against bad practices in their child's education. The issue of education in this country needs to be addressed, but the system has to serve all types, including children who's parents are unable to provide alternative structures and insights and 'hacks' to get by.

That didn't add much (I wasn't trying), but these threads always seem to turn into an echo chamber of "I got by without doing any homework!" because, let's face it, here we are. What is the 98% solution, I wonder, versus the 2% version? Of all that I've seen, it starts with better, smarter, well-paid, un- stressed, empathetic teachers. Students too afraid to think? Too pinned down to discover how best to learn for themselves? I just want to give all these poor kids a hug and tell them how smart they really are--it makes me so sad.

<comment><USER12> I disagree with your comment about better teachers. Teachers are simply a conduit for learning. They don't scale, which is why there is still a power- law distribution in educational outcomes despite tons or research and data and training and testing that should combat that. Basically rich people get richer because all rich people who are generationally consistently rich have one thing in common. They are autodidacts. If you can learn on your own, and have the capacity to recognize when the assumptions underpinning the status-quo are no longer correct, you can consistently remain wealthy relative to everyone else. True rich families understand this and teach it implicitly/explicitly to their children. Who end up being the fertile ground on which 'good teachers' have a multiplicative effect. This does not work for the poor as they lack the necessary base skills and knowledge to benefit from good teaching. Poor people still break through because circumstance often teaches people, like everyone who came from nothing on this message board, how to learn on their own without help or assistance from others. Advocating more assistance from others is not the solution. And for the same reason that sending $1T in aid to Africa has had mixed results.

Knowledge cannot be taught it must be learned.

<comment><USER12> And just to be clear. The answer for children is to make learning to love learning play. And the way to do that in a way that scales is through a video game. That is the future of education. Games for children that teach them how to learn, that they then use to set their own educational path. With teachers, schools, mentors, and advisors helping along the way.

<comment><USER13> I blame video games for making me into a history buff. And maybe Legos, combined with the History Channel before it was the RedneckAliensJesus Channel.

Civilization, Lords of the Realm, Caesar II, Robert E. Lee: Civil War General, Close Combat, Total War, Pirates!, Anno 1602, Europa Universalis/Crusader Kings/Victoria/Hearts of Iron, Age of Empires

Or to go way back, Math/Word Rescue, Treasure Mountain, Midnight Rescue, Carmen Sandiego, Oregon Trail, the crazy game that was part of Encarta, Dr Brain, Maxis Sim games all taught me math, geography, history, logic, physics, etc.

<comment><USER14> Same story, nearly the same list. I'd throw in Shadow President, which taught me the names and locations of all the (cold war era) countries by third grade or so, and gave me a good sense of global and regional balances of power.

If you haven't played "Civil War Generals 2: Grant, Lee, Sherman" you should. It's Robert E. Lee: Civil War General but with the brokenness fixed—there's a victory point system that's in part based on locations held, which keeps you from just turtling on the nearest high ground and waiting for the enemy to come into cannon range—and a much larger campaign. It's kind of tricky to run these days, and is a bit unstable even under ideal conditions. Best solution may involve a Win98se VM. :-/

The Encarta game was awesome. I'd forgotten about it. Thanks for the memory.

<comment><USER15> Might be worth people voting here - [http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/civil_war_generals_2](http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/civil_war_generals_2) \- although it's way, way down the list at the moment.

<comment><USER13> I love GOG, but that list is frustrating, when so many of the top items on that list are games that they will _never_ get rights to.

Blizzard is never going to give away their back catalog (they'd sell it themselves). Neither is Valve. Nor, most likely, is EA, with their awful Origin service.

Then there are all of the newer games that you can find anywhere... Obviously, they've got to make money and focus on what pays the bills, but it makes me happier when I see abandonware and unavailable games get legitimate releases on there, compared to when its something already on Steam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is crazy, I don't know where I would be today if I hadn't done homework. Homework was where I really and truly learned. Independent work is so important, and it's totally different than doing something with a bunch of students in a classroom setting. Sure, the education system probably could be improved a lot. But you can't just remove homework from the current system and expect there will be no negative consequence to that.

My daughter is in Grade 1 French Immersion in Canada and she is assigned a few sight words every week in French to memorize in addition to some French sounds (2 letter sounds). On top of that we try to do a bit of math here and there and some English. The teacher tells us to make it as fun as possible, so we try, sometimes I turn her sight words in to a quick board game. For math, we try to use the Bedtime Math books or the app. For reading, we read princess readers which she loves. Sometimes we try other readers and we push it, only to find out she really hates them, and sometimes the French sounds memorization is tough and painful. Can't imagine asking the teacher for less homework though, it seems like just the right amount.

<comment><USER17> You and your daughter will end up as people that can contribute something great to the society; most of the ones skipping the homework without innate talent not, and they will complain about how unfairly are they treated because they are smart.

One of my piano teachers was forced to practice through tears as a kid because they saw the talent she had. She went on to becoming a world famous child prodigy playing grade 8 pieces by sight-reading with unbelievable ease.

Work is required if you want to achieve something. You just need to find the right balance, and it's neither "no work" nor "work all the time".

<comment><USER18> > She went on to becoming a world famous child prodigy playing grade 8 pieces > by sight-reading with unbelievable ease.

...and did that get her anywhere as an adult?

It seems to me that so many people are excited when their children are ahead of the curve, doing "adult"-level things at a young age—and just assume they'll stay ahead forever, forging on beyond the norm, rather than reverting to the mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am in total agreement that children have better things to do than homework.

Such as learning how to play and interact with others. Learn how to deal with adversity. How to deal with the sadness of a break up or not being included. Learning how to lead a team via Counter Strike or WOW. Learning computers by writing a mod for a favorite computer game.

These things taught me far more than a worksheet on a very idealized version of the events that led to the American Revolution.

And on a different note the idea of a lecture in class followed by homework at home seems silly to me. Lectures are easy to scale so a child can learn from the best of the best in the world(With explanatory graphics). Tailored tutoring to the issues a child is having while trying to solve problems and understand a concept is very hard to scale. It seems to me it would make more sense to watch lectures outside of the classroom and do homework in the classroom.

<comment><USER20> Repetition is an important part of learning. Expecting all children to understand what was taught in class is unrealistic. This is why homework is assigned - so the student may take their time to review the parts they themselves didn't fully grasp in class. The time spent doing homework varies from child to child and this is important - kids who need longer to accomplish the same task will have that time because they are at home.

Arguably you could cover everything again the next day but thats hardly a graceful solution and doesn't cater to that variance of time needed for homework across different children as contact hours are very limited as it is.

Homework also offers the opportunity for parents to engage with kids in their formal education - this helps the parents as well as kids.

<comment><USER21> > Arguably you could cover everything again the next day but thats hardly a > graceful solution and doesn't cater to that variance of time needed for > homework across different children as contact hours are very limited as it > is.

Repetition is important. But kids are already at school for 7-8 hours a day. If that is not enough time to engage in adequate repetition, the solution is not to shift work to home hours. It is:

1) Do less, by cutting less important subjects;

2) Do more with the time given, by cutting students who disrupt class.

<comment><USER22> What do you view as non-essential? STEM? Arts? Social studies? Recess/PE?

And how much time do you actually think is wasted on dealing with disruptive students? 10% of the day? 35%?

To me, this sounds like a recipe for creating an upper class of uncreative, poorly-rounded conformists and a lower class of people who are undereducated and permanently pissed off at the society that fails to serve their needs.

I think it's pretty unlikely that this would be a substantial improvement in modern American society or many others.

Kids misbehave at school for a huge number of reasons (many of them socioeconomic but definitely not all), and it's not really the public school system's responsibility to fix that, but it _is_ the school system's responsibility to give them an education so that they can properly integrate into society as an adult. Shoving the problematic students to the side exacerbates this.

Bonus points if the education system can encourage more independence of thought and action, creative and analytical problem skills, and the tenacity and wisdom that come from actually having gotten some hard things done.

A better system would be one that is more capable of demonstrating the value of education to the students (incentivizing them to learn, and making learning at any level more rewarding), as well as one that can accommodate a larger degree of student interests and learning styles. I don't really know how to do this without having more internships and so forth, which aren't necessarily feasible for younger children but may be for teens. Maybe somewhere in the world or at some point in history this has been practiced more?

<comment><USER21> I don't think K-8 needs to teach more than writing, reading, and math. Not even science--kids don't really get it and the dumbed-down version you learn at that level probably makes it harder rather than easier to learn "real science" later on.

Misbehaving kids should get an education--they should just get it in a class with other misbehaving kids.

<comment><USER23> >Misbehaving kids should get an education--they should just get it in a class with other misbehaving kids.

What specific criteria is there so that we segregate fairly, not based some delusion that normal behaviour between genders are identical?

Teachers (which are overwhelmingly female) overly punish normal behaviour from boys compared to girls. I wouldn't trust their judgment for my children of what misbehaviour is given their obvious discrimination that I've witnessed and experienced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Homework is an abomination. It steals time a child could be spending with their parents, siblings, friends, etc. You spend all day in a classroom, sedentary, which isn't healthy to begin with, and then when you go home, you're expected to sit more. Children need to play and explore the world. Schools are failing if they have this overflow of work that must be sent home.

<comment><USER25> I get (and agree with) your sentiment, but to call homework an abomination is misguided. I don't want the totality of kids' academic learning to be in the class room, I want them to have to do thing by themselves, unsupervised -- which is what homework is meant to achieve. As you say, though, that shouldn't come at the cost of their play time. Personally I feel more inclined to say that we should aim towards fewer classes and more homework.

<comment><USER26> If they are in school all day and then pressured with all sorts of homework at night, when do they actually get to learn something they want to learn? Something they are really interested in, but isn't assigned by a teacher?

I think there is value in giving kids time to learn things that at outside the subjects that a school teaches. Eliminating homework gives kids more of a chance to do that, not to mention the other things that people have mentioned like spending time with family, playing, etc.

<comment><USER25> Like I said: I agree with the general sentiment of giving kids more time to be kids, to play and to learn non-academic stuff.

What I'm advocating, though, is that this should be, at least partially, at the expense of structured lectures, rather than homework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> One evening my wife, daughter and I were sitting in the living room. My wife and I were reading and my daughter was doing her Math homework, when all of sudden she asks "Did Heath Ledger commit suicide?"

I said "that's a weird question, what brought that up?" and she said they were talking about it at school today with the Dare Police Officer. I said "Oh you had a Police Officer in your class today?" and she said "Yeah, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays."

No one I've ever told that story to has ever commented on it.

<comment><USER28> Why was there a DARE officer at that school three days a week?

<comment><USER29> School-to-Prison pipeline, maybe?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "the notion that America can close the learning gap with China or India..."

Indian and Chinese students in America do as well or better than Indian and Chinese students in their home countries on any measure you'd like to name.

For that matter the same is true of Mexican students in the US vs. in Mexico, European students in the US vs. in Europe, etc.

<comment><USER31> Chinese and Indian students in America also have the benefit of being from some of the highest socioeconomic groups in America [0]. It is more a factor of the group's average wealth rather than the fact that they are foreign.

[0] : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income)

<comment><USER32> > _It is more a factor of the group 's average wealth rather than the fact > that they are foreign._

How do you know that for sure? Maybe their higher average wealth is a function of their success as immigrants, not the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I am not to the point of saying 'no' to homework. But I am starting to question a few things.

First off, my situation is not the norm anymore. Not only am I the single earner in my 5 person household, but I work from home full time. I am extremely active in my kids lives.

My kids are very fortunate in that they always have one and often times both parents to help out with school work.

My oldest is 9 - 4th grade. I have a 5 year old in Junior-Kindergarten. Both have homework. (My 2 year old doesn't count here, except when he's literally eating their homework.)

I coach little league, and I talk to a lot of the parents. Some of the parents have kids in the same class as my 9 year old. These are households where both parents work and have more than one child in school.

There is a drastic difference in support that the children receive. Now, I'm not smart. I have a high school education from Arkansas, which is always fighting with Mississippi for the worst rank in education standards. However, I consider my problem solving skills outstanding. I am not doing my kids homework, but I do look at my kids homework. Every night. I help them sometimes. I get on the white board and we go over things. I have them teach the methods back to me.

It's a difference that just last night, a mother of one of the kids came up to me and was talking about the math homework they had today. Her daughter had spent an hour on it before the game and still doesn't get it. I hadn't even looked at the homework yet, so I asked my daughter what was going on with the math homework tonight. Her response? Oh yeah, that's super easy. You can look at it when we get home.

So you have something that takes at least 1 hour (I'll find out more about it later if anyone cares!) for one student compared to something that is a nonissue for another student. In 4th grade. That isn't really sustainable. And I'll go out on a limb here and say that her friend who is having a bit more trouble isn't dumb by any means. I've coached her for two years in softball. And we're not special in the other direction, either.

Oh yeah - my 5 year old in Jr K - she has monthly homework assignments. Things like gather fall leaves and glue them to a piece of paper. Trace your hand and stick leaves on it to make a bird. Fun things like that. Not real homework. But she does have things to do at home to gear her up for the future.

Anyways. There are my personal experiences with this stuff in California's central valley.

<comment><USER34> It's not easy for low SES students to learn much from homework.

Schools are designed by upper-middle-class people who care a lot about school. The problem students are from a very different background.

It's nice to say that teachers should be doing parenting for kids (building their self esteem, helping them develop as people, etc), but that's just glorified daycare. The poor students need to be taught to read, write, and do math, because that's what their parents can't help them with.

Education is meant to give every child a chance. I really think poor people have decent general cognitive skills (problem solving, relationships, etc), but really need a leg-up when it comes to formal academic work.

I don't think schools are really helping kids, when they shunt the fundamentals off to parents, as homework. 6 hours a day should be plenty to develop basic numeracy and literacy. But that's often not a priority to educators. It's more fun for teachers to tell themselves they're being parents - teaching kids how to develop as people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I see several issues with the ideas presented here. Firstly, the idea that a parent should have control over homework in any capacity seems like a misguided idea. Secondly, the article dances around ideas but never touches on the importance of the content of the homework. Not all worksheets are created equal and it follows that neither are all hours spent at home working. There are big differences from a pedagogical standpoint between homework designed to expand knowledge, evaluate proficiency, and provide mechanical practice (just to name a few).

In my opinion the whole issue stems from lack of standardization in education in this country. The huge variance, even at a regional scale, in the tools available to teach coupled with the lack of standardized methods for addressing the needs of a wide variety of students presents a system that is often going to regress to the lowest common denominator (often mechanical drudgery given the ease in creation and evaluation) .

<comment><USER36>
         Firstly, the idea that a parent should have control over
         homework in any capacity seems like a misguided idea

Full disclosure I'm a parent so biased. However with that said I know more about my child's workload than the teacher. The teacher knows how much homework they assign for "their" class. They don't know what the other classes assign. What extra curricular activities require or what chores the child has at home. Asking a Teacher to figure out the appropriate level of homework for a child is asking someone with inadequate information to make a decision on priorities. The person _best_ suited to make an informed decision here is the parent.

EDIT: unbiased to biased.

<comment><USER35> I'll preface this response with the acknowledgement that the world is not ideal, and there are some fundamental problems underlying how classes are structured (largely due to the fact that evaluations are based on the achievement of the lowest performers) which poses institutional obstacles to efficient work assignments.

That being said, given the (in practice flawed) assumption that the work being assigned is something your child needs, it's a disservice to say some other home life takes higher priority than education. This is especially true given the additive nature of many topics. Imagine, in a contrived example, you veto the addition worksheet despite your child needing practice. How is he/she supposed to keep up in the next week's topic of multiplication?

In practice this falls apart if you have a high performing child, but, campaigning for funding for gifted programs or ,if you're particularly lucky, working with the teachers to get customized work is a far better investment than lobbying for the ability to just ignore the work.

<comment><USER36> You are assuming the education of a single class takes precedence over other classes, the education of extra curricular activities, and the education of chores at home. That is a large assumption that I'm pretty sure is invalid.

The crux of this problem is that time spent in school is poorly spent for a host of reasons. If you child spends close to 7 hours at school and none of that time was available for the work that is expected to be done at home then that imposes an undue burden on the child and the family.

Rather than insisting that the needs of a schools poor use of time should supersede the families needs perhaps the solution is to fix the poor use of time instead.

<comment><USER35> The metaphor that resonates with me as a musician, would you expect someone to get better at piano only by attending lessons but no practice at home?

Im not sure where you get the idea of poor time use from. Out of that 8 hours you need to fit lunch, recess, cumulative transition times, and at least 4 major academic topics (Math, Science, History, Language) plus hopefully a rotating time dedicated to the arts. And you want that to fit into 8 hours on top of the practice required to achieve mastery?

Finally, this is me making a value judgement. Just picking one class, math, I'll go out on a limb and say mastery of basic arithmetic is going to resonate much farther in a child's life than participating an extra hour in extra curricular or chores.

<comment><USER37> "The metaphor that resonates with me as a musician, would you expect someone to get better at piano only by attending lessons but no practice at home?"

If they were at lessons for 7 hours a day, five days a week... _yes!_ Yes I in fact do.

<comment><USER35> Except children don't sit down at school and begin a "school lesson". Basic education is going to cover Math, Science, Language, History and hopefully Art. So in a given subject there might be 5 hours of lesson time week. When framed that way, asking for another hour or 2 of practice time for mastery doesn't sound so unreasonable.

<comment><USER38> Assuming that the homework is "practice" and not "instruction". A good bit of my older kid's homework is continuation of the instruction at home without the benefit of the teacher. Not that I fully blame the teacher for this, I blame the district for it as much, if not more.

But to continue the metaphor, I would expect a child receiving five one-hour lessons a week on piano to be proficient enough to show they have received lessons within a decent amount of time. Without extra practice. But what's the criteria to consider it a success? What amount of time? Do we consider whether the child has a natural talent for it in the equation? Personally, I don't think it's a good metaphor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The problem with homework is it's used as a form of accountability. My French teacher used to joke when collecting papers : "Ou est votre dette a la societe?" (Apologies for missing accents.)

Of course what it should be is like at university. The professor can't spend all his time with you, so you get a rough list of what you should know about. It's then up to you to judge whether you need to read a bit more or a bit less.

The point is judgement. You can figure out when you understand something. You don't need a whole page of quadratic equations, in fact you don't understand it if you get to the end and think you need more. OTOH, if you only do the first two and you think you get it, you might be enlightened when you look at some further questions.

As a parent, it means instead of asking the teacher for more homework, which will annoy them, you can simply ask your kid some enlightening questions. It's probably a lot more interesting for them that way.

<comment><USER40> > ... _you can simply ask your kid some enlightening questions. It 's probably > a lot more interesting for them that way._

Part-time (law) professor here. Thinking of enlightening questions is often quite difficult.

<comment><USER41> > Thinking of enlightening questions is often quite difficult.

And this is a big piece of the problem with homework. Enlightening questions could be asked as homework, but various forces create an emphasis on quantity over quality.

As someone who's taught arithmetic to lots of adults, I use 'enlightening' in a broad sense. I hope most of us agree that grasping arithmetic requires practice (in or out of class), but that's not the same as repetition. Even simple arithmetic problems can be varied in deliberate ways that draw students' attention to those variations and at the same time reinforce the underlying pattern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I graduated from high school recently. Homework was the true bane of my existence. It gnawed at my every waking thought and put a tinge of anxiety to my every moment. Am I doing it? Did I forget some? What do I need to be doing that Im not? The entire school experience is a depressing prison of course but homework is how it goes from an seven hour affair to a twenty four hour project. More than anything else it makes sure youre always at school, always worried about the evaluation of unrespectable teachers and disgusting sadists.

You start to wonder if theres a way out, like any prisoner examining the prison with obsessive dedication. You follow the vine to its end and back pacing your room going through the mental anguish of knowing youre trapped and theres nothing you can do about it. ([http://steve- yegge.blogspot.fr/2008/10/programmers-view-of-u...](http://steve- yegge.blogspot.fr/2008/10/programmers-view-of-universe-part-1.html)) I used to have this fantasy where Id go down to the school building in the middle of the night when nobody is there with a barrel of kerosene. Id douse the schoolhouse walls with the fetid substance and light it ablaze, laughing as the walls go up in smoke before throwing myself on the tickling flames crying and screaming and laughing in agony as I burn.

Im so glad to be free.

<comment><USER43> I'm with you. I'm 28 now, working as a software engineer, and I'm loving my life. I roll into work at 10:30 and yesterday I got a raise without having to ask or negotiate for it. I have the time and money to pursue hobbies, but I also genuinely enjoy my coworkers.

But high school was _rough_ for me. My grades weren't especially good, but I did a lot of AP classes. I constantly had the anxiety of homework looming over me. Looking back, I realized that I got into the state where I'd be behind on a lot of things, and once I had 5 different things on my plate it'd be really hard to prioritize them and I'd just stress myself out trying to balance them.

I'd like to have children someday, but I know that there's a chance they're going to inherit my style of thinking. (My dad is the same as me-- he also graduated college just barely, also procrastinated too much in high school.) I'd really like to find some alternate form of school that still challenges my kids, but does so in a way that doesn't explode their stress levels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The best thing my school did was moving to the 'block' system. Instead of having 6 or 8 classes to go to every day, I had 4 classes a semester. It also meant that my algebra class, or biology, was twice as long as your 'standard' class at another school.

The block system meant that the instructor had twice as long with the students and could really dig into a subject. It also meant we didn't usually have homework because it wasn't necessary-the instructor taught, we learned, we drilled on it in class.

<comment><USER45> We had block schedule with 4 classes per day, but alternated days for 8 classes total. Long, 100 minute class periods allowed for lecture+homework/help time during the day.

Fridays were an alternate set of interesting classes, from SAT prep, to bowling, to computer programming. I couldn't recommend this system more. If you must have public school, this is a great way to structure it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Why the all or nothing approach? At my high school, I think we have a great policy for math homework (I am the teacher). It is assigned every day but never checked or graded. At the beginning of each class we go over any problems the students had trouble with, then move on. Students eventually reach an equilibrium where they figure out how much time they personally need to spend each night on math homework. For students who are failing tests and doing no homework, we generally suggest they do a little more.

<comment><USER47> This is totally the way to go. In my experience (I was in high school '92-'95 so this is dated), this method worked great in the advanced classes, but a lot of the remedial and "normal" track classes still focused heavily on rote memorization and quantity of work, for whatever reasons. The fact is, the best students will succeed no matter what, either because they have supportive families & social groups or because they're autodidacts, so the challenge is tackling the other 80%.

In your experience, does this method work equally well no matter what the class is or who the students are?

<comment><USER46> It seems to work equally well for advanced and non-advanced students, it's just that the normal track students take a little longer to figure what the "right amount" of homework for them to do is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Saying 'no' to homework doesn't go far enough, IMHO. They should be saying 'no' to the entire abominable structure of schooling.

</comment><comment><USER49> Hmm. The article alludes to some studies that back up their point, but, anecdotally, I think I got more out of doing homework than I did out of sitting in class...

<comment><USER50> This right here is the core of a world of problems. _Data_ contradicts gut feeling. _Data_ must be wrong.

<comment><USER50> PS: In response to a deleted post.

 _As a counter argument, doing homework can easily train people to do thing wrong thing which takes a lot of effort to correct.

That does not preclude doing. In many cases mixing in 'homework' with class work is probably a much better use of time. AKA ask everyone what 57+49 is give them 30 seconds. Collect answers. Fix errors. Repeat._

<comment><USER49> I deleted the post because after 30 seconds I thought it was insufficiently well thought out and written. :-)

 _In many cases mixing in 'homework' with class work is probably a much better use of time. AKA ask everyone what 57+49 is give them 30 seconds. Collect answers. Fix errors. Repeat._

Agreed. My school classroom experiences were mostly passive listening. The few that mixed listening with reading with doing, right there in the classroom, were marvelous. Little if any extra homework needed.

If that would be done? I think that'd be great. But if the proposal is just passive lectures in class and that's it, I remain unconvinced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This sounds again like a problem of a system that is trying to educate a thousand different kids with a thousand different lifestyles and a thousand different home lives and a thousand different living situations all the same way, because it still operates on the basis of the organization system of the industrial revolution. Hell, we still organize our kids by their date of manufacture.

Every time I read one of these it reads like "We're trying to make this 1940's era system work but it just keeps sucking more and more" and yet every time someone says we should just obliterate this thing and come up with something better, they always get shouted down by the educational establishment.

unquietcode up there has a great thought, and I know I'm deep in it, but yes, I got successful in howling opposition to, not because of the education system. We sit our kids in tiny desks and have them do clerical work for 9 hours a day while high school dropouts drive Bugatti's and we wonder how our kids intrinsically know that school is worthless.

</comment><comment><USER52> "Let kids be kids" means something different for each household. In mine, that meant video games and sports, but mostly the former.

Not sure what's going to come of any no-homework generation while this happens elsewhere:

"Teens in Shanghai spend 14 hours a week on homework" [http://qz.com/311360/students-in-these-countries-spend- the-m...](http://qz.com/311360/students-in-these-countries-spend-the-most- time-doing-homework/)

<comment><USER53> When I was in elementary school in the 90s, they used to try to scare us into working harder by telling us stories about how Japanese kids went to school half a day on Saturday.

When my parents were in school it was about keeping up with the Soviets.

These days, it's kids in Shanghai doing 14 hours a week of homework.

<comment><USER54> I remember half-day Saturdays!

It was more of a global thing in Japan. Many workers actually did half a day on Saturday, so naturally were schools. Most of companies adopted 5 working day per week perhaps around the end of 80th.

School was a bit late on this one, when I was in Japan (1st year in middle school; 1992) was when they were start transitioning from 5.5 to 5. Although, I have only experienced having only second Saturday of a month off.

After I left Japan, in 1995, they've transitioned to 2nd and 4th Saturdays off, but It was not until 2002 schools in Japan transitioned to complete 5 day a week schedule.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I figured I'd share a relevant anecdote: throughout most of my school (at least by seventh grade) I did virtually no homework. Not with the blessing of my teacher, nor of my parents. But I knew that my parents wanted to shut their eyes and pretend that my grades were improving for as long as they could until the report card came home. I knew that most teachers could be convinced into letting me make up some work at the end of the quarter to turn my Ds into Cs if need be. And I knew that without doing the homework, I could still swing a 90% or greater in the remaining assignments.

I could sit down in class and be fully engaged an learn everything I need to and more. While I avoided some higher-level classes because often they were just the same as the regular classes with more homework, most of the classes I took were of the advanced level. I wasn't just coasting.

I repeatedly tried throughout high school to change my habits, but for various reasons, many personal, these attempts were doomed to fail.

I know I'm not the average case, but clearly homework is not at all necessary for every kid to do well in school. Other commentors have given the opposite anecdote, saying they did only homework and did well. I think maybe we should accept that these grading policies should be tailored to the student. At the risk of just rambling off my life story, I'm going to continue to show how these homework problems affected me beyond high school.

Despite these problems, I was admitted to a good state university. I had a 3.0ish GPA because I brought it up with easy A classes like band, and because I had several classes that where homework comprised only 5-10% of the grade. I guess that. combined with my above-average extracurriculars got me in. I then essentially flunked out after two semesters.

It's not that I didn't have the study habits. They were probably lacking a little for the academic environment, but I definitely knew how learn independently. I was just so completely used to ignoring my academic responsibilities that I couldn't stop. When you've been saying "I don't need to do this homework" for years, it's very easy to say "I don't need to study this thing" even though you know very well that you have a lapse in understanding.

I'm convinced that I would have done at least somewhat better in college if only not doing homework in high school didn't feel like not doing something that I had to do; if my parents and teachers hadn't treated not doing homework as a bad thing. Obviously it _was_ in fact a bad thing, but it didn't have to be.

<comment><USER56> Did you happen to have a job during high school?

<comment><USER55> No, I wanted to work, but my parents wouldn't allow it because they felt it would make my academic performance even worse.

<comment><USER56> I get the feeling it would have actually improved your academic performance. It worked for quite a few people I know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I was extremely lucky in my work life, I am successful as entrepreneur and I believe it is because of the way I was raised as a kid in Spain.

When I went out of the school I was free to do whatever I wanted to do. I never did homework but was good student, not brilliant, because I considered the extra effort was not worth it, as the extra effort for better grades was not linear but exponential.

I took school seriously when I was in the school but when I am out, I am out. I rode my bike, I played soccer with my friends, I did swim in lakes or pools, I climbed mountains, I camped in the forest.

All those experiences gave me probably as much as the school and trained me for free environments.

I see the world as an environment I can change and I do routinely. Most people can't and I believe it is because they were trained to be good in controlled environments but just can't "think out of the box" because of their education that was so controlled.

I have seen miserable kids with not a single moment of freedom in their day. A girl of my class graduated with honors in the University, got tenure and suicided. She was miserable if she did not made perfect exams, her parents were like crazy "life is work and sacrifice" nazis.

They were not expected to choose their own paths, to make decisions, but were expected to follow others to be good guys.

Most of the best entrepreneurs I know of had problems in the school. Most of them wanted to do things on their own early on and the adult response was repression.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm really not sure if abandoning homework is a good idea. I went to school in the Soviet Union/Russia, we had ca. 5 hours school a day and around 2-3 hours of homework, 6 days a week. I surely can't provide solid scientific evidence linking homework to results in learning, but I don't think it was unreasanable.

I have to admit, I mostly remember math homework, I loved math and loved math homework, it was always great fun to hack those problems and then problems with * and __and __* (stars for the higher difficulty). We learned concepts in the class, but we also needed to train mechanics with pure repetition. Some commenters wrote about scaling - I think repetition is exactly something which scales well in the homework, you don 't really need to do this in the class with a teacher.

The same for foreign language, for instance. You don't really need a teacher a classroom to memorize new words, that's perfect for the homework.

So I don't think homework is unreasonable, I think it's a valid approach to "outsource" mechanical/repetitive tasks which don't require classroom or supervision.

Having said that, 7 hours of school PLUS 2-3 hours of homework is definitely too much.

</comment><comment><USER59> It seems like the only skill that homework really builds is tolerance for being micromanaged, which I'm not sure is a good skill anyways.

I recall (with angst) the ridiculous way that homework was graded in school (x% of credit taken away for every day the assignment was late). This sets people up for a terrible relationship with work by making them focus on short- term rewards/penalties instead of longer term goals, while disadvantaging individuals who don't respond well to such a micromanaged model.

If we really want kids to develop well-rounded skills, we should make work about longer term projects, whose goal is very well articulated and its purpose is clear to students.

At the least, we should provide multiple paths for students to make the grade, one based on homework for those who naturally do well with that environment, and another based on long term projects for those who are naturally more "bursty" in their learning process. You can still administer tests/quizzes for both types of learners to gauge their progress.

</comment><comment><USER60> We opted out of a 9/10 greatschools.org public school by second grade due, in part, to excessive homework in early elementary school (and also because of an obsession with standardized tests).

My son had 15-20 minutes a night of homework in kindergarten and even more in first grade. He was a "late" (by US standards) reader, which meant that he could not be responsible for reading the instructions doing his homework himself. These nightly homework sessions were pure misery for our family. After 2 years, we felt that all they were achieving was to drum any love of learning out of our son.

After 2 years in a Montessori-like school, he's reading well above grade level, doing well at math, loving science, and has transferred to a new school with a Spanish immersion program. I feel that if he'd stayed in public school, he'd be well on the way to having "learning problems"

</comment><comment><USER61> I am a sophomore in high school. In fact, I attend the same school as Zach Masterman in the article (Harriton High School), and he is in one of my classes. My one refute to his complaints is that perhaps he would have less homework if he played less games in class. Quips aside, here are my two cents.

I certainly do not agree that all out of class work should be abolished. However, I do think there is a threshold at which it becomes too much. As I presume many of us on this website can relate to, there is lots to be gained through personal study and developing good individual working habits. Many students tend to complain about being forced to go to bed late, however I am willing to bet that many of these students (myself included) sometimes push their assignments back to later in the night and could go to bed earlier with more efficient scheduling. This certainly does not always hold true, sometimes there is just that much to do.

Being a three season athlete I have a little less time than others, however I have found academic success. In general an HN appropriate modification of the "time triangle" ([http://cdn1.theodysseyonline.com/files/2015/09/02/6357682979...](http://cdn1.theodysseyonline.com/files/2015/09/02/6357682979153755441561145936_tumblr_m071aegWRy1r5dp6f.png)) has held mostly true:

Pick 3 for the day: Sleep, Academics, Sports, Programming OR Social Engagements

Also, a note about my school. It is in the notorious Lower Merion School District, which is known for collecting lots of money in property taxes from the local old money who send their kids to private school. Thus, they have lots to spend per student (every student is given a new Macbook Air at the beginning of freshman year to rent for 4 years. They receive the exact same laptop every year, to incentivize keeping it in good shape. Only cost to student is $80 insurance deposit per year. The program is extremely successful.), every teacher is paid very well, great facilities, and they perform very well as a school. There is also a competitive academic culture: you are expected to do well at Harriton, and many do. Where homework plays in that equation is unclear, but take it how you will.

My final point is that not everyone who isn't doing homework is sitting around watching TV or playing on their phones. Some have found a passion in something like programming, and actively pursue those passions in their free time (working on side projects, or perhaps even trying to build a company). Our district even provides a mini incubator with small amounts of seed money, free mentorship, and summer office space.

<comment><USER62> > Where homework plays in that equation is unclear, but take it how you will.

Sure, in the enriched environment you describe students are more likely to have the motivation to make the effort to learn and succeed. I'd guess you and your classmates are engaged with the educational process, ready, even eager to learn. Doing homework would seem the natural thing to do.

By all means it's right to take advantage of such favorable circumstance. The issue for schools and students not so blessed is creating this kind of benefit. The goal won't be achieved by strengthening the factory approach to education. Piling on bureaucracy, "performance" testing, etc. will not help, rather just lead to more discouragement.

I think great examples, like the one you present, give a clue. Find talented teachers (I've known a number of them, they do exist) and leave them unencumbered, let them teach. They will reach some students, and it will begin to inspire others. Perhaps they will assign homework, but then if we offer help to parents and students so they can cope with it better, homework would serve constructive purpose in augmenting learning.

Technology can add to the cause, but by itself is no answer. Used wisely it may play a useful role in evolving solutions, that is, realizing it's a means to an end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I am continually shocked by how willing people are to opine, completely sans any data except for their own (worthless) anecdotes, when it takes less than 5 seconds to google "homework meta-analysis".

Believe it or not, scientists have studied whether homework is worth doing before. You know, using science. Here's one example of such a meta-analysis: [https://larrycuban.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/review-of- edu...](https://larrycuban.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/review-of-educational- research-2006-cooper-1-62.pdf)

Unsurprisingly (to me at least), homework is positively associated with improved academic performance.

Was that really so hard? Was it really easier to bloviate, as nearly everyone seems wont to do, than to actually pursue the evidence?

</comment><comment><USER64> The main benefit of homework is instilling the habit of working to a deadline without direct supervision, instead of giving in to distractions.

<comment><USER65> So I guess maybe my schools were too easy on the homework - I managed to slip through doing as little as I could, electing for self-driven learning instead (known to me as "whoa, this thing is cool!" when I was a kid), and the end result is that I absolutely can't do bullshit work on a deadline without direct supervision. It makes me feel at the same time both smart and totally unfit for the contemporary workplace.

<comment><USER64> Me too, my friend. I've spent too much time here this week because I have something important I'm putting off. Sigh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> As a current high school student (at a private high school that is consistently ranked as one of the top in the country, so AMA if you want), homework sucks. That is true.

But the benefit to homework is that it teaches time management skills. Thanks to having hours of homework every night, I have learned to manage my time very well. For example, I spent the summer working in a University Lab. While there I spent ~10 hours a day at work, yet this still felt like a vacation to me. So yes, being busy sucks--but it ensures that students will learn how to manage their time effectively.

</comment><comment><USER56> School starts at 8AM around here and ends at 3:30PM with a 30 minute lunch break. 4 classes in the morning and 3 in the afternoon of 55 minutes each with 5 minutes between classes to get to the locker and to a different classroom. Around 32 hours of instruction and work per week. That's close to a full time job, and some people want the students to do 2-3 hours of homework a night?

If schools must, increase the school day by 30 minutes or an hour, but that's enough. Other things are just as important as school.

</comment><comment><USER67> The real argument is not about whether we need homework or not. It's more about can you learn more than 7 hours or so a day? Kids are at school from 8-3 being taught by the teachers and then they have to spend an another 30min to 1hour at home. This is just too much.

Homeworks are important. It's the only time that they can think by themselves and put what they learn in practice. But after being taught so long at school, kids are tired to learn. They want to play!

<comment><USER68> 30min to 1 hour of homework is too much? If they have seven periods a day and we assume they only average homework from each class once every few days, then the kids only have 20 minutes of homework per class. That should be the minimum for a homework assignment, not the maximum. Less time that than and no knowledge reinforcement is happening because the homework is too easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I HATED homework. I can honestly say that it's one of the main reasons I didn't have a fun time at school, since these things tend to snowball out of control.

Don't do your homework -> get into trouble -> teachers thing you're * -> etc.

When universities started to doing the same (in my country) I just quit. Now I work in tech, I love my job. And the best part is that I thought all the skills I needed to myself without the huge (wasteful) drains on free time.

</comment><comment><USER70> I never did homework in school.

Got a lot of hate from the teachers, but it only lowered my grades one mark.

Finished school with C+ so with homework I'd probably got B+

When I got home I played video games and later surfed the Internet and chatted all day.

This changed massively when I started my undergrad studies. I didn't have to come to university, like I had to go to school, so I stayed at home. After I failed all my Math classes in the first semester I started working at home really hard in the second semester to get all the Math done. After the first year I knew how to find out what was expected in the exams, something I was missing in school. I stopped showing up at classes and just created a list of stuff that was needed for the exams. I learned this at home a month or a week before the exam and kept working/partying the rest of the semester.

For my post-grad studies I switched to a remote university entirely and saved a bunch of time and money with this.

Since I had to work with remote teams on group projects in the post-grad studies, I also decided that I wanted to work remote in my 'regular' job also.

Long story short, I hated homework as a kid, now I only do "homework".

<comment><USER71> The thing that sucked about homework wasn't the fact that it was doing 'work' at 'home'... it was that it was often rote, boring, and time consuming work that did little to stimulate the brain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> This issue seems to go back and forth. Here's an argument in the Atlantic a few years ago arguing for more homework (for kids who struggle in school).

[http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/poor- st...](http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/poor-students- need-homework/279566/)

</comment><comment><USER73> I didn't see anything from the side of parents who want more homework. Why are some parents asking for more? Are their children misbehaving? Are their children not learning the material? I am guessing that homework doesn't automatically make up for a school's or teachers' shortcomings.

<comment><USER74> I've seen parents argue for more homework so that homework would make up a larger percentage of the students grade in an attempt to make up for the fact that their child is a "Bad test taker".

It always bothered me because a grade should reflect the percentage of the material you actually learned. Not be just an accounting of how many hours you spent trying to learn it.

<comment><USER75> _It always bothered me because a grade should reflect the percentage of the material you actually learned. Not be just an accounting of how many hours you spent trying to learn it._

Well, the argument in those cases is that tests aren't always a reliable indicator of the material being learned. Speaking from my experience, I was a great test taker in high school, and they rarely indicated my actual knowledge of the material. It's not hard for me to imagine plenty of students having the opposite problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I learned the most from _good_ homework assignments. These assignments were always multi-week (1-2) affairs. They were big, complicated, and covered a lot of things. But, since they weren't due within a day, they gave me the time to really work at them. To rack my brain against their problems and discover, on my own, how to solve them. Of course, I almost always needed to talk with my TAs, professor, and fellow students multiple times throughout the assignment. And this made me become pro-active about seeking help, which I use on a daily basis in the real world.

Worksheets? Yes, I never learned a damn thing from these time wasters. I feel that mini-projects are the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER77> > An elementary school in Gaithersburg, Md., has banned homework altogether in > favor of 30 minutes of nightly reading.

Is this reading that's supposed to go on at home? I'm now confused as to how the article is trying to define homework.

But yeah, when I was in school there'd be 8 hours at school, then 3 hours of homework. And the homework was all busy work and the time spent in school was mostly pointless as well. School probably killed my innate desire to learn more than anything else in my life. It took me a while after I graduated enjoy it again.

</comment><comment><USER78> I know a family in South Korea with children, who wakes up at 7 am for Grade school until 1 PM. Go to English academy the next hour, then goes to several other academies of Math, Science, Music. Comes home exhausted at 7-8 pm but has to do online tutorials for English. Plus the homework after that. The parents pity their child. But they said they don't have any choice. The classmates are too competitive. If they stop doing that their child may look stupid in school. This is pathetic. But how to stop?

</comment><comment><USER50> The vast majority of homework has little direct value.

The real problem is many classes are poorly structured and need to crutch of outside work to cover the material. Even in college I often found reading the textbook was more useful and faster than attending class.

PS: I still remember many math classes where attendance took 5 minutes, then 30 seconds of (new idea! yay), followed by 40 minutes of mind numbing boredom.

<comment><USER79> I really hate how so many of my classes in college have mandatory assistance. In a lot of my classes the professor just poorly summarized the textbook.

I think some courses could take inspiration from my English classes. In them, we had to read (novel or literary criticism paper) by ourselves, but in class we only asked questions, discussed the works and got help with our writing. I don't know if this can be applied to Computer Science classes, but I liked it a lot.

<comment><USER80> Oh it can definitely be applied to computer science classes. At my college, most computer science classes had optional lectures and were heavily project based. Some of the slower or less experienced students went to lecture (usually less than 1/3 of the class) but most students skipped it. Instead, we would work on our projects and go to office hours for one on one assistance with a ta or prof if we needed help. This was expected behavior and they made tons of hours open to the students so it worked great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> If you want to get good at something you have to put in the work. I wonder what would have happened if MJ didn't put in time into practice.

<comment><USER82> A lot of kids that show promise in something outside of school get a free pass on homework. I wonder what would have happened if MJ was too buried under homework to get in any practice time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I'm good with a bit of homework when the kids are not too little; there's something to say for sitting down by yourself and trying to focus and figure things out or memorize a little bit (it can be done at school too or instead of at home); if students don't have a minimum of study habits, how are they going to go about hard STEM courses in universities?

</comment><comment><USER84> As a SCRUM teacher, I do 2 hours of talking, with Q&A, and then 3 hours of practical where we put the LEGO version of the Daily Bugle together.

I learned LONG ago that my students learned so much more by DOING than by lecture. As children, why would it be reversed with homework? If anything, I should reduce the talking and add more Lego fun for kids.

</comment><comment><USER85> I think homework is necessary for some subjects, like math and physics, because practice is where the learning comes from IMHO. In other subjects, homework is anachronistic. I think we should extend the school day like Japan, and build homework and social networks into the school setting.

<comment><USER86> You want to _extend_ an 8 hour day even further?

<comment><USER87> I don't know about the U.S. but in Toronto school ran from 8:45am to 3:15pm which is 6.5 hours. My poor dad had to shift his schedule to work 7:15 to 3:15 to pick me up. It would have made a lot more sense to extend the school day by 1.5h to a standard 8h day and not assign homework.

<comment><USER86> When I was in school (admittedly, 15 years ago...), I got on the bus at 7am and got off at 3pm. This was in upstate New York.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> If we're talking about high school, bring back study hall. Kids can't absorb information from lectures 7 hours a day, so why try?

7 hours a day 5 days a week (most of the year) for 13 years is surely enough time to prepare for college/trade school/apprenticeship/unskilled labor.

</comment><comment><USER88> For everyone here saying "no homework": do you think that math homework is also a waste of time?

</comment><comment><USER89> I always just did my homework at school in middle and high school. I graduated high school in 2009, so I imagine kids get a lot more homework now?

</comment><comment><USER90> The problem with homework is the proportion of busywork assigned.

A typical math textbook consists of several columns of fifty nearly identical problems, of which the teacher typically assigns thirty.

I don't need to solve thirty quadratic equations by factoring in order to demonstrate that I know how to solve quadratic equations by factoring. The first three or four will suffice.

And don't get me started on the astonishing number of assignments consisting of crosswords, word searches, paint-by-numbers, and similar activities with zero academic value.

</comment><comment><USER91> After refusing them to get proper vaccination, let's prevent them from getting proper education. Evolution baby!

<comment><USER86> "Vaccinations are effective at preventing disease, with minimal side effects."

"Hours of homework (after 7 hours of school) is 'proper education'."

Are you really claiming that those two statements have a remotely similar body of evidence supporting them?

<comment><USER91> They both tend to improve our ability to adapt in a hostile environment: real life. Like I said, evolution.

<comment><USER86> I don't dispute the fact that education and vaccination are both good things. The flaw in your argument is that you are assuming that "education" and "hours of homework" are equivalent.

<comment><USER91> Parents weeping about their kids' "hours of homework" is the educational part here. I'm really shocked about the article and truly enjoying the comments.

<comment><USER86> So just to be clear, you feel that 2-3 hours of homework is appropriate for a kid, after they spent 7-8 hours in school?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> I learned the most from doing homework and studying for tests. In class I mostly daydreamed and didn't pay attention to much.

<comment><USER79> This was me in high school, and even now in college. I couldn't get myself to do work during class and read or daydreamed (one time I brought a pillow to school). At home I did most of my learning and doing.

I don't know why I was this way, but I think I was just more comfortable in my room and thus more likely to learn.

<comment><USER93> I think it makes sense. In a lecture you're having to learn at the pace of the lecturer. If it's too slow or too fast you lose interest. At home on your own you go at your own pace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> Seriously, parents are complaining about 10-20 min of homework a night? Kids should be spending 1-2 hrs on homework every night, and if they run out of homework they should be working on a personal project or reading. That doesn't have to encroach on their fun time; I'm talking about 2 hrs max. Every night. That's not asking a lot.

It's about learning how to manage your time and developing a productive routine. Kids will be expected to do plenty of homework once they get to college, I don't see the point in not assigning it before then.

<comment><USER95> Let's look at my first-grader's schedule. Kids need more sleep than adults, so we aim for about 11 hours. (For teens, they recommend 10, last I checked.) School is 7 hours. 1.5 hours for gymnastics, sports, or some other extra- curricular activity. An hour of transit. Another hour for breakfast and dinner (assuming all they do is sit down and eat, and don't help prepare anything or do the dishes). An hour for a bath. About thirty minutes to get dressed, brush teeth, pack bag, etc.

        11   - <USER8>
         7   - <USER3>
         1.5 - <USER4>
         1   - <USER5>
         1   - <USER9>
         1   - <USER7>
         0.5 - get ready

We're at 23 hours, and there has been _zero_ unstructured time (outside of playing in the bath). This is a first-grader. When she's older she'll be in school longer, have more extra-curricular activities, and more socializing.

You're telling me two hours isn't asking a lot?

<comment><USER96> Since I appreciate seeing someone else's schedule, figured I would post ours. I have 6 and 8yo. and we live quite close to school.

      10.5 - <USER8>
      0.75 - morning routine (teeth, dress, find lost things)
      7    - school
      0.5  - <USER9>
      2.75 - free time
      0.5  - <USER10>
      0.5  - evening routine (pjs,teeth, don't take bath every day)
      0.5  - workbooks & parent tutoring or school homework
      0.5  - independent reading of chapter books
      0.5  - stories read to them

By time they get to workbooks, they are quite tired. But they are used to being tutored in small doses so they get through it. At this point, all structured activities outside of school are on the weekend (e.g. girl scouts, soccer). Also, ideally they would go to bed 1/2 hr earlier.

Because we personally tutor our kids, I'm sure we will resent an increased homework burden as they get older, especially as we are able to tutor to a relatively high level for most subjects. Unfortunately the school does not coordinate with us on the learning objectives, so we more or less rely on Common Core standards to know what's expected.

<comment><USER53> >Because we personally tutor our kids, I'm sure we will resent an increased homework burden as they get older, especially as we are able to tutor to a relatively high level for most subjects.

Yep, just wait a few more years and you're tutoring will consist more of helping your kids figure out the instructions for ridiculous homework assignments than actually teaching subject matter.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


WeWork's fiasco validates investors who criticized SoftBank's aggressive funding - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/9/24/20882174/wework-adam-neumann-softbank-ipo <comment><USER2> fake title - real title is: How WeWork's "fiasco" could threaten Silicon Valley's rich and powerful

<comment><AUTHOR> The title was taken from the HTML title automatically from HackerNews script. It seems there is a discrepancy.

<comment><USER2> My apologies, you're quite correct! It grabbed the contents of the <title> element, not the actual headline.</comment></comment></comment>


Stop Crying: The A-List works harder than you do. - <AUTHOR> http://www.1938media.com/stop-crying/ <comment><USER2> I suppose if you use the term A-list more than like, hardly ever, and especially if you worry about not being "on the A-list", you have much bigger problems than how many hits a day your app/site/blog/whatever gets.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know, I work pretty damn hard. At 3am I'm writing code. I've been getting less than five hours of sleep a night, and have had no free time. Then again I'm dedicated to my company.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the same boat (in that I work my butt off), but I found it inspirational nonetheless. The primary message I took away wasn't really to "work harder." For me, it's a great reminder I can look at every now and then to remember that we all make our own destinies plus or minus the particulars of our own circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the guy's got a valid point, although perhaps not related directly to the "quantity" of work that you do. The real message here is "Follow this rule if you want to succeed: Whenever you're about to complain about something you haven't acheived, do something productive towards achieving it".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the most inspirational thing I've seen all year, no joke.

<comment><USER5> all of 2008 eh?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's why I knew I could say it without reservation. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This guy is wearing too much white - makes it hard for me to take him seriously.

<comment><USER7> lol, I thought he was wearing some sort of baby suit at first glance. I do love his videos though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this guy trained in telehypnosis? He's good at it.</comment>


Typing Transducers (as Kleisli arrows) - <AUTHOR> http://tel.github.io/2014/08/10/typing-transducers/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd really love to see someone use the correspondence I describe here to write a Clojure Arrow notation macro for creating transducers! I think it'd be a very neat project.

[http://www.haskell.org/arrows/syntax.html](http://www.haskell.org/arrows/syntax.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a way to change your username? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> ...and keep your karma?

I'm pretty sure "no" unless you had good enough of a reason (and reputation) to warrant pg actually changing it for you in the database. I'm not sure he's ever done this.

Your rep is similar to mine, though, and I consider myself still in "newbie" ranges -- I mostly lurk, and have only had a handful of popular comments along the way. So just grab a new username and start from scratch.

Karma doesn't buy all that much for you, anyway, on HN.</comment>


Google's top results for 'Did the Holocaust happen' now expunged of denial sites - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/google-holocaust-denial-site-gone-266353 <comment><USER2> This is very tricky moral and philosophical ground. Sure, from a practical perspective most educated people believe the evidence that the holocaust did happen and Google ranking conspiracy sites highly in a way lended Google's credibility to those sites. The holocaust is a case I think most people can agree on. But isn't it kind of a dark road to go down to silence a dissenting opinion even if it is "crazy"? First this, then maybe people start demanding they down rank the global warming deniers and then before you know it a political party that is not in power, porn that is too weird, etc. Does Google really want to be the one that has to decide what the truth is? Then again, do we really want average people to be the ones to decide what the truth is? That's the simplest course but is not working that well right now. This is a tough question I don't think we have the answer to yet.

<comment><USER3> >But isn't it kind of a dark road to go down to silence a dissenting opinion even if it is "crazy"?

No, it's not. This is what google does. They rank pages and present the most valid search results for a given query. Returning easily falsifiable nonsense as the first result for a common search is a bug, not a feature, and they've now fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Even though I am convinced that the holocaust did happen, I'm not sure that Google should be tweaking their algorithms until they show the results Google wants you to see...

<comment><USER5> On the other hand, if you think about it, working on improving the quality of a search engine's results is tweaking its algorithm until it shows the results you think are better. A search engine that presents you with relevant, true information on a subject you don't know about (or about which you might be misinformed) sounds more quality IMO than one that doesn't. I hope the algorithm is generic (instead of one-ofs for specific subjects).

<comment><USER4> For this specific example it's alright, but when Google starts responding to public pressure by tweaking the algorithm to get rid of specific results, it's not that big a step going from something like this to something more questionable.

<comment><USER6> Did we forget what page rank was? A way to find relevant and accurate information on the internet. This is why edu pages and pages with many (reputable) citations were ranked higher. Remember this is not twitter where popularity = truth.

I do agree that it's dangerous but it's not new; this is built into the DNA of google searching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Result of query _arguments against holocaust denial_ are much better. It's hard to constantly defend against misinformation put out by deniers which then can get viral and pollute the search result. As one website put it,

 _Holocaust deniers often mimic the forms and practices of scholars in order to deceive the public about the nature of their views. They generally footnote their writings by citing the publications of other Holocaust deniers and hold pseudo-scholarly conventions._

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand what the outrage around this is. Google's goal has always been to organise all knowledge around a query box, and that's exactly what it's doing. If it understands that the holocaust did happen, why should it display that it didn't?

<comment><USER9> From a business perspective this is a bad choice. I'm not advocating showing holocaust denial either, but this got them in a very bad spot: they've set the precedent that they curate the truth. This opens them up to all sorts of curation demands.

<comment><USER10> Might some truths be incontrovertible beyond business reasons?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any normal person searching for 'Did the Holocaust happen' wants a denial site.

For Google to move it, would be not giving people the results they want for political reasons.

I'd hope this is just due to the site having technical difficulties as some have suggested.</comment>


Graphics and UI/UX Designer wanted - <AUTHOR>

-THE CONCEPT
We're an upcoming peer-to-peer car club for sports cars and luxury automobiles that allows members who own high-end cars to loan or rent them out to other members of our service on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Our mission is to bring luxury and sports-cars rentals at bargain prices to consumers by eliminating the overheads of operating a commercial fleet and distribution network, and allowing members to rent from each other directly online.
-THE TEAM
We are based in San Francisco CA and you will be part of the early founding team that brings this product to market. The founders are seasoned entrepreneurs and have had multiple successful exits in the Internet space. This is a rare chance to get involved really early with a startup with a great founding team and reap the benefits that come with it.  And did we mention, we have A list investors on board.
-THE ROLE AND OUR EXPECTATIONS
The position involves doing key web design and graphics for the website/product. As you will be the first and only UI and graphics designer, you will have a lot of flexibility and freedom in layouts and design. We're looking for a designer who can think like a product manager and is comfortable wearing both hats.
We're going to assume you're a bad-ass at Photoshop, CSS and HTML. We're going to assume that you have a keen eye for design, usability and product. Past experience building Web 2.0-style products with slick interfaces, AJAX and similar technologies will certainly help, but is not required.
-HOW TO APPLY
We respect your time and therefore are going to make this very simple. Just send us a short email with the following: 1. Quick Intro and why you're interested (aside from the obvious "I need a job...") 2. At-least 5 Links to your portfolio or previous work. 3. Anything extra that will help us see how awesome and swashbuckling you really are.
If we like your work, you'll hear from us within 24 hours.
-MOOLA!
Competitive compensation, with all the standard bells and whistles of benefits. We're also open to having you working on this on the side (if you have a day job and don't want to leave it just yet).
At this stage, your portfolio and previous work (even if it is at school) will be the most important thing we look at.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Please send your resume and portfolio to :
firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><AUTHOR> Posting this here for the start-up I work for because the community is awesome, and I'd love a chance to give back to HN.</comment>


Rape of the Mind – Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, Brainwashing (1956) - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/stream/RapeOfTheMind-ThePsychologyOfThoughtControl-A.m.MeerlooMd/RapeOfTheMind-ThePsychologyOfThoughtControl-A.m.MeerlooMd_djvu.txt <comment><AUTHOR> Downloadable formats (epub, kindle, pdf)

[https://archive.org/details/RapeOfTheMind- ThePsychologyOfTho...](https://archive.org/details/RapeOfTheMind- ThePsychologyOfThoughtControl-A.m.MeerlooMd)</comment>


Storj: Not a Dropbox Killer - <AUTHOR> https://shitcoin.com/storj-not-a-dropbox-killer-1a9f27983d70 <comment><USER4> Unfortunately for the author of this amazing (and cringeworthy) exercise, skeptics often put in a lot of effort, but receive practically no reward compared to the con artist.

Even the people who agree with and appreciate the effort of the skeptics are few compared to the number of irrational people who gladly follow the cons.

This is a bit radical (and probably outside the interest of HN), but if we somehow could remove personal financial need from society, imagine where our technologies might be driven?... instead of where they typically get hijacked and driven.

Television was once lauded as the future best thing to ever happen to education, but we know how that turned out. Same with the internet and web. And so on. Blockchain technologies are now the hottest and most ideal way to build a scam, because the audience is greedy and the technology is well beyond the comprehension of the average person.

<comment><USER5> Not radical at all, greed ruins everything.

The more we can decrease it in society – the more freedom we'll all get.

<comment><USER6> How do you suggest we do that?

<comment> aaron-lebo Build great stuff and don't be greedy - set an example. Make those greedy over mediocrity look bad. Build for the sake of building, because that's reward enough.

<comment><USER7> Maybe that's enough of a reward for you, but personally I work because I like to get paid. The fact that I enjoy my work immensely is just a happy accident. There are things I enjoy doing even more than my work - much more so! - and if I did not need to get paid, I'd be doing those things instead.

<comment><USER8> Just wondering: If you got so rich from crypto currency that you could retire, would you retire? Start your own company? Just do fun stuff? Or keep working?

I myself work, to occupy myself with interesting problems, so I would keep doing this, regardless of my wealth.

<comment><USER7> Wealthy enough to really never work again? Yes, I'd absolutely "retire." I'd still "work", in the sense that, say, angel investors work, or people own real estate; I'd also still write software in my free time.

But for the most part, no I wouldn't continue doing what I do now because I'd stop consulting and I would never again be an individual contributor. I'd probably devote "professional focus" to investing and academic research in math and cryptography while traveling all over the world like Tom from Myspace.

I think in conversations like this the dimension people like myself are talking about is freedom. I'd still work on what I'm passionate about even if I was wealthy, I would just cease doing it in a way that I don't have total control and direction over my work. That circles back to my original point - my passion for my work is not nearly enough of an incentive for me to do it if I'm not doing it with total autonomy.

<comment><USER9> But, but what about love, friendship and the feeling of connectedness? Is freedom what people should desire?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like the Storj coin is trading higher now than when it first launched.

[https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/storj/](https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/storj/)

The level of fraud and stupidity in the ICO world is pretty shocking. It's not going to be pretty when the bubble bursts.

<comment><USER11> There was that SEC report a while back that sounded like it was gonna end the wild west era of ICOs, and though I don't keep up with ICO news I haven't heard of any big new launches in a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> Almost all crypto market action is in China. And the ICO market there is so pathological that it's the _exchanges_ asking for regulation.

[http://news.8btc.com/okcoin-ceo-host-non-public-ico- regulati...](http://news.8btc.com/okcoin-ceo-host-non-public-ico-regulation- meeting-in-beijing)

<comment><USER12> The incumbents are always in favor of regulation, it prevents competition.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think in this case it's more that they already have various governments breathing down their necks, so a show of regulation is just the thing - <USER2> trying to blame the terrible assets they're trading, rather than being blamed themselves for putting them up for trading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> bookchin: [https://www.reddit.com/r/storj/comments/6llxpn/so_long_frien...](https://www.reddit.com/r/storj/comments/6llxpn/so_long_friends/)

I followed the storj reddit for a while, since I bought into the crowdsale with Bitcoin. (Since sold. There was some kind of pump the other week on bittrex.) After the crowdsale, they appeared to be really rather disorganised. They took the $30m, sent everybody receipts, and then... nothing. No newsletters, no mails, no nothing, aside from occasional promises on reddit from one of the founders that things would improve. But they never really did. Couldn't even be bothered to wipe their noses and put their pants back on for long enough to click 'send' on a form email ;) Top marks for actually having a product, though...

BTC and ETH have appreciated significantly since the crowdsale finished, so heaven knows how much that $30m is worth now, and/or what they're going to do with it...

<comment><USER14> I wonder if there's something illegal or fraudulent about raising all that money and then doing a half-assed job on the project?

I understand there's a thin line between a failed business venture and outright fraud/lying, but stories like this seem so slimy.

<comment><USER15> I don't think so. Is that not 90% of Kick starters purpose?

<comment><USER16> No. You can't sell equity on Kickstarter.

<comment><USER17> ICOs aren't equity either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A blockchain is at the end of the day nothing else than a distributed database where everyone can run nodes.

This is a hell of an effort and everyone who is using this 'feature' needs a very good reason and use case which justifies the costs.

Every new ICO should answer the question if a distributed BFT database is required. If yes is the benefit big enough? If not then just forget it. Or invest and sell the first minute this scam is on an exchange.

About Storj and similar coins: why do I want a decentral Dropbox? If I want to host my files in the cloud, what is the benefit of having a distributed decentral BFT db?

<comment><USER19> > why do I want a decentral Dropbox?

The easiest reason I can think of is privacy and anti-censorship. From current events, some groups may experience more and more trouble hosting their content on "public" providers like Google, Dropbox, or Amazon.

Decentralization is an astute counter.

</comment></comment><comment> aaron-lebo How much storj you wanna bet that Gordon Hall guy is the only person in the world who understands the entirety of Storj? Scary.

What relation does he have with the project? He's not even listed on the team:

[https://storj.io/team.html](https://storj.io/team.html)

 _There was a $30MM ICO which ended May 25th. The price of ETH was $177 at the time. Not bad! Dropbox' first seed round was only $15,000._

I don't get it. Don't understand why people want to get a lot of money, put a ton of pressure on themselves, and then put out a shoddy half-baked, half- finished product. You see this with almost all software now but the cryptocurrency craze has made it endemic. People who have shown nothing are getting 30 million dollars in funding. Shouldn't you earn it first? Isn't that healthy?

You guys don't need $30 million dollars to do stuff like this. You're lying to yourself if believe you do. This is $30k effort. How about putting your head down, shutting your mouth, building something great, and then showing the world? Is that crazy? You can only assume these people are more about $$$ than what they are building.

<comment><USER20> hi, i'm gordon. and yeah, unfortunately i might be the only person who understands the entirety of the core library. yeah, that's scary. but i wouldn't bet any storj tokens on it because the payoff wouldn't be so great.

i'm not listed on the team anymore, because i - along with several others left the project during and after the token sale (empty handed, mind you) for various reasons.

i agree, storj didn't need $30mm (but did need more than $30k though, to be fair).

> You can only assume these people are more about $$$ than what they are > building.

a reasonable assumption, but let's draw the line between those _building_ and those _profiting_ , because this assumption is not fair (or accurate) in describing the people who actually did the building.

<comment><USER21> Hi Gordon, sorry if this is too far off topic, but what software did you use to make your awesome github profile photo?

<comment><USER20> Haha, `libcaca` FTW [http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libcaca](http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libcaca)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's worth checking out Sia, which doesn't seem to get much attention: [https://sia.tech/](https://sia.tech/)

It works, they have an active development team, and the network keeps growing: [https://siahub.info/map](https://siahub.info/map)

<comment><USER23> Agree, Sia does look very promising. But plenty of work needs to be done before it is a real product. The first-use experience isn't good right now.

<comment><USER22> How many technically challenging products have been overnight successes?

One thing that is really confounding about all the anti-blockchain rhetoric on HN is that people seem to expect these products to be finished instantaneously. Building great products takes years.

<comment><USER23> True, but if you visit a site like [http://sia.tech/](http://sia.tech/) , in my opinion it gives the impression of a product ready to use today. Though if you look at their roadmap [https://trello.com/b/Io1dDyuI/sia-public- roadmap](https://trello.com/b/Io1dDyuI/sia-public-roadmap) , you get another (more realistic) picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What bugs me the most about the whole ICO game is that it casts a long dark shadow about the whole blockchain stuff. Storj as well as other ideas in the realm are based on great ideas and I'd love to see them succeed. However, that Storj was able to obtain $30M in funding is really just awful. Sooner or later the cryptocoin market will crash and when this day comes and those projects still have no inherent value a lot of people will be pissed and leave the whole blockchain thing.

<comment><USER25> People didn't leave the Internet because of the dot com bubble burst. If blockchain has an advantage over more centralized approaches, it will bounce back as well.

<comment><USER24> In the dotcom bust investors lost their money, not the users. In the crypto world you are an user when you are invested (in smaller or larger extent). I agree, if blockchain apps really prove to be more powerful a possible bust won't really hurt, but in this state we are right now (no real world adoption for most of the stuff) a bust would be toxic.

<comment><USER26> In this ICO bubble clueless investors are losing their money too. There's enough scams to go around for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A flip side of the (crypto)coin so to speak.

I invested in Storj, and I also put some resources behind farming. First, there are lots of issues, but that's to be expected with an early product. At least there is a product. Second, this is a very different project than Dropbox, a centralized cloud storage originally built on AWS. Comparing the two is exactly fair, and the long term value proposition of Story is very different from Dropbox. Third, They are building the platform, and as it improves, the clients will get better, simpler, and a community will form; give it more time. Fourth, Dropbox was founded in 2007; it took substantial time to get the front end polished and working well. This product is more about the AWS side of the Dropbox equation than the Dropbox side.

Finally, some results on my Storj farming. Not super easy to use, not super efficient, but working, and I expect it will get better. I have farmed about 15TB of data (storage) since the ICO. Its growing too; so there are real paying users using it.

<comment><USER28> 15TB is a lot for an individual, tiny for a business. What is your current estimate of time to breakeven?

<comment><USER27> I don't think there is a path to break even for storage alone, today. The real earnings seem to be in the transfer rates, but traffic is too low to ever consider it as anything other than an experiment. I heard Storj was going to prioritize farmers by latency and bandwidth; now that I've been reading about the turmoil, I'm not confident it will happen anytime soon.

My payout last month was ~$5 and I was in the top 30 by payout, if I remember correctly, but I had only received a couple of TB of data. This month has been much better, so maybe ~$100 but mostly because of data transfer. I've seen peak bandwidth of over 400Mbps in and out (800Mbps combined).

Interestingly, a number of the top earners have been trying to game the system by uploading a small amount of data until the shard ends up on their node and then doing the massive transfer to generate more Storj than the cost of the transit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> To be fair this is how most pre-release software looks. I'm sure it works great on their test servers, but it takes time to document and fix all of the edge cases.

</comment><comment><USER30> I understand the appeal of ICOs and cryptocurrencies and distributed storage that is automatically shared, decentralized, etc etc. But a part of me says "is this complexity necessary?". The appeal of a service like Dropbox is that it is simple. Most engineer friends I had at the time when services like Box and Dropbox started popping up, laughed at the idea... "It is just a fancy ftp". Now they all use these services in one way or another.

Simplicity is often an important overlooked killer feature.

And this is exactly the polar oppossite of that!

A friend of mine that has been doing ICOs behind the scenes (there is an entire methodology that makes them successful that include some questionable marketing techniques) has been pushing me to do an ICO. But one of the requirements is that the service you provide is directly tied to the currency itself. This file storage service is a perfect example of that. A cryptocurrency looking for a service that works with a paradigm vs a service that just centers on being useful for customers. I am just not interested in doing that...

I can't deny that this has been useful and profitable for him. Here has been doing successful multimilliondollar ICOs where he charges 100k a pop. To me, it just seems like such a scam to take advantage of this bubble, that I'd rather just build a healthy successful business "the old way"

<comment><USER31> So they're basically an ICO consultant or contractor? It looks like it's just as profitable to him as it sounds.

As far as those marketing techniques go, I'm aware of a lot of them such as paying for press releases or articles and paying users to shill their ICO everywhere, buying twitter followers, etc, but I wonder how much worse it gets. I guess it depends on the ICO and those behind it, some obviously 'just' use shady tactics while others completely lie and defraud investors.

<comment><USER30> sadly much worse. Without getting into many details, part of the tactics involves writing a pseudo paper and then getting endorsements from high profile people within a specific community. It is legal, but shady as hell IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Too complex."

This. Developers really must spend a lot more time and mental energy on UX if they intend things to be used by anyone other than developers with lots of time in their hands.

</comment><comment><USER33> What's the likelihood that ISPs will levy higher rates on bandwidth for things like Storj and Filecoin? This 'next-generation' model of enabling people to profit off of cheap/unlimited internet packages seems like a juicy target.

<comment><USER34> Probably not much because Storj is effectively broken and Filecoin basically doesn't exist yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> As far as I can see their idea is to incentivise people to "rent out" hard drive space to the Storj network, and get StorjTokens in return, although it's not quite clear from the website what you can do with these coins or what value they hold.

I think it's interesting, I guess protocols like BitTorrent don't work for personal files as you need seeders to be available at all times....I'm half inclined to think Storj might suffer from the same issue if every node that is storing replicas of your blocks goes away - or will the financial "incentive" be enough for people to keep their nodes alive.

What happens if the value of Storj just drops to the floor?

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm the author and didn't notice this post on HN. I have reviewed another blockchain product! The review will be live on shitcoin.com at around 7 AM EST on Monday.

</comment><comment><USER37> Does anybody here know of a good video/tech-talk that gives an in-depth introduction to blockchain technology? Something at academic level, and good for a Sunday afternoon? Thanks in advance!

<comment><USER38> This is much more basic than academic level, for which you could maybe start with the original Satoshi Nakamoto Bitcoin white paper? - but this video is a fantastic introduction [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_160oMzblY8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_160oMzblY8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm still curious as to how is this profitable to whoever created it. There is a shit ton of code in this project - this same amount of code written for an employer or commercial project would net the author quite a bit of money - <USER3> what's the benefit creating this abomination (that doesn't even work) versus just working on something actually useful?

</comment><comment><USER40> This one has done whole lot more for their money than vast majority of other ICO 'startups' that have nothing but nice site and a water-filled, meaningless whitepaper.

</comment><comment><USER41> Seems like this competes more with the free

[https://upspin.io](https://upspin.io)

</comment><comment><USER42> Wait wait wait isn't Storj what Pied Piper ultimately turned into, plus a cryptocurrency for extra hype?

Life imitating fiction imitating life...

<comment><USER43> This was started long before Silicon Valley...

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> People that chain commands without && makes me cringe, I had an Infra guy delete a prod website once like that...

<comment><USER45> No idea how command chaining could be involved in that (would love to know though!) but if somebody mistakenly takes down a production service from lack of command chaining, let's just say command chaining would probably be the least of my concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> shitcoin.com is an inspired domain name!

<comment><USER47> I was surprised he managed to snag it. At the current rate of ICO proliferation I expected there to be at least two dozen waste reusal coins already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Ive been looking for more 'technical skeptic' posts about cash-grab cryptos, so this author better post more articles like this.

Got tired of hearing about some new amazing, world changing crypto coming out and then spending hours researching only to end up with a bad taste in my mouth. Both for the community and the tech itself.

</comment><comment><USER49> Good write up! It's great to see people testing out these projects.</comment>


In need of some peace for 10 mins? Then I give you the mountain  - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I run a site where we try and dish out inspiring content. I came across a video a couple of days ago that totally took my breath away. It is entitled 'the mountain' and as one person puts it 'A man filmed heaven for 7 days, what he filmed took my breath away.'
Many of us are living busy lives and often don't take time to reflect on the beauty around us. If you are stressed, or just want to reflect, then have a watch of this for 5 minutes.
You can watch it via my site - getinspired365.com/20140611 or if you'd prefer straight from YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk6_hdRtJOE
Enjoy! <comment><AUTHOR> Clickables Via my site - [http://www.getinspired365.com/20140611](http://www.getinspired365.com/20140611) or if you'd prefer straight from YouTube - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk6_hdRtJOE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk6_hdRtJOE)</comment>


A universal basic income could solve poverty - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/5/31/11819024/universal-basic-income-works <comment><USER2> Not gonna happen. What it will do is make poverty optional for the vast center, and stop the autogenocide of social wealth by the rentiers.</comment>


Mossad's Miracle Weapon Stuxnet Virus  - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,778912-3,00.html

<comment><USER2> Pity Symantec can't see the real threat. Why are they helping?</comment>