Homework Is Bad Quotes

Want to make out?” “With who?” she asks, not bothering to look up. “Me.” She lifts her head from her book just long enough to give me a once-over. “No, thanks,” she says, then goes back to her homework. She’s fuckin’ with me. She’s got to be fuckin’ with me, right? “Because of that pendejo Tuck?” “No. Because I don’t want Madison’s leftovers.” Wait. Un. Momento. I’ve been called a lot of things before, but . . . “You callin’ me leftovers?” “Yeah. Besides, Tuck is a great kisser. I wouldn’t want you to feel bad when there’s no way you can compete.” That guy hardly owns a pair of lips. “Wanna bet?

You know that half the girls in school would have been after you." He gave a soft laugh. "If they were into someone who was flunking out...I don't think I'd do too well with having to go to class when a bell rings or caring about homework..." "A bad boy--even better. You'd have done well in Spanish class." "If I ever went to it." We lay in silence for a awhile; Alex's arms felt so warm and safe that I was starting to get sleepy. "Say something in Spanish," I mumbled. He kissed my hair. "Te amo, Willow," he said quietly. I came awake, smiling into the darkness. "What does that mean?" I whispered. I could almost hear his own smile. "What do you think it means?" I hugged him, kissing his collarbone and wondering if it was possible to actually die of happiness. "Te amo, Alex.

Don't you ever feel like, what if the world really IS messed up? What if we COULD Do it all over again from scratch? No more war. Nobody homeless. No more summer reading homework. 'm listening. Annabeth: I mean, the West represents a lot of the best things mankind ever did--that's why the fire is still burning. That's why OlympusIs still around. But sometimes you just see the bad stuff, you know? And you start thinking the way Luke does: 'If I could tear this all down, i would do it better.'. Don't you ever feel that way? Like YOU could do a better job I'd you ran the world? Percy:Um...no. Me running the world would be kind of a nightmare. Annabeth: then you're lucky. Hubris isn't your fatal flaw. Percy: what is? Annabeth: I don't know, Percy, but every hero has one. If you don't find it and learn to control it...well, they don't call it 'fatal' for nothing. Percy(thinking to himself): I thought about that. It didn't exactly cheer me up.

Morning." "What do you think you're doing?" "Hey, you aren't the only one who had a bad night. Fourth grade is rough. I had two hours of homework.

Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things better than anyone else... even the gods.' 'You feel that way?' She [Annabeth] looked down. 'Don't you ever feel like, what if the world really is messed up? What if we could do it all over again from scratch? No more war. Nobody homeless. No more summer reading homework.' 'I'm listening.' 'I mean, the West represents a lot of the best things mankind ever did - that's why the fire is still burning. That's why Olympus is still around. But sometimes you just see the bad stuff, you know? And you start thinking the way Luke does: "If I could tear this all down, I would do it better." Don't you ever feel that way? Like you could do a better job if you ran the world?

And I could see this boy doing his homework and thinking about my sister naked. And I could see them holding hands at football games that they do not watch. And I could see this boy throwing up in the bushes at a party house. And I could see my sister putting up with it. And I felt very bad for both of them.

I melted easily into him once again—our homework still lying on the floor forgotten and neither of us seemed too inclined to start it again. Too bad we didn’t have a class on physical anatomy together, then maybe we could’ve passed this off as studying.

I have never been to Japan. I have never been to India, or to Morocco, or to Germany, or to most of the places Arthur Less has traveled to over the past few months. I have never climbed an ancient pyramid. I have never kissed a man on a Paris rooftop. I have never ridden a camel. I have taught a high school English class for the best part of a decade, and graded homework every night, and woken up early in the morning to plan my lessons, and read and reread Shakespeare, and sat through enough conferences and meetings for even those in Purgatory to envy me. I have never seen a glowworm. I do not, by any reckoning, have the best life of anyone I know. But what I am trying to tell you (and I only have a moment), what I have been trying to tell you this whole time, is that from where I sit, the story of Arthur Less is not so bad. Because it is also mine. That is how it goes with love stories.

Here is what I think now, reading what I wrote down for the police at age fifteen, right after I was raped. I was a good girl. Always a good girl, even when I was bad. I did my homework. If I can only be good enough, someone will eventually notice that I am trying so hard, exhausting myself with my effort to be good. This is true even today.

there are just two activities that are significantly correlated with depression and other suicide-related outcomes (such as considering suicide, making a plan, or making an actual attempt): electronic device use (such as a smartphone, tablet, or computer) and watching TV. On the other hand, there are five activities that have inverse relationships with depression (meaning that kids who spend more hours per week on these activities show lower rates of depression): sports and other forms of exercise, attending religious services, reading books and other print media, in-person social interactions, and doing homework.

Go ahead and eat while I take a shower. I left a pen and paper on the table. Your homework for today is to write down all the things you'd do if there were no consequences." "Why should I do that?" she asked belligerently. "Because I said so and I'm the boss." (...) After my shower, I found Gianna sitting on the couch with an amused, self-satisifed look on her face. I sauntered over to the dining room table to read her list. 1. Punch Caleb in the face. 2. Steal Caleb's car and go for a joy ride, which may involve crashing into a brick wall. 3. Find a way to get Caleb expelled from my school, so he'll have to live somewhere else. I glanced up at Gianna to take in the smug grin on her face. "What?" she asked innocently.

Back in August, my stepdad Paul had tried to help me organize my schoolwork when he saw that it was way too much for me to keep straight on my own. He suggested I think of homework as triage. “Look at your assignments like they’re wounded patients,” he’d said, “and handle them in order of severity. ‘Okay, you need immediate attention, or you’ll die. You can wait a bit. You aren’t that bad—go home, take some aspirin, and call me tomorrow.’” I gave my homework a lot of aspirin.

Calvin and Hobbes are chatting. HOBBES: Aren't you supposed to be doing homework now? CALVIN: I quit doing homework. Homework is bad for my self-esteem. HOBBES: It is? CALVIN: Sure! It sends the message that I don't know enough. All that emphasis on right answers makes me feel bad when I get them wrong. CALVIN: So instead of trying to learn, I'm just concentrating on liking myself the way I am. HOBBES: Your self-esteem is enhanced by remaining an ignoramus? CALVIN: Please! Let's call it 'informationally impaired.

Every day, there are a handful of moments that deliver an outsized impact. I refer to these little choices as decisive moments. The moment you decide between ordering takeout or cooking dinner. The moment you choose between driving your car or riding your bike. The moment you decide between starting your homework or grabbing the video game controller. These choices are a fork in the road.

Twenge finds that there are just two activities that are significantly correlated with depression and other suicide-related outcomes (such as considering suicide, making a plan, or making an actual attempt): electronic device use (such as a smartphone, tablet, or computer) and watching TV. On the other hand, there are five activities that have inverse relationships with depression (meaning that kids who spend more hours per week on these activities show lower rates of depression): sports and other forms of exercise, attending religious services, reading books and other print media, in-person social interactions, and doing homework.

But it didn’t help that I skipped six grades and had a bad habit of reminding teachers to collect our homework.

Do not oversleep and miss the school bus- you'll be late. That's a habit teachers generally don't appreciate. Never tell your friends at school that you still wet your bed. They are sure to tease you, and you'll wish that you were dead. Never call your teacher a name when she's not near you. Teachers' ears are excellent, so they can always hear you. Do not read a textbook when your hands aren't clean-it's tricky to separate the pages when the pages get real sticky. When you go out for a team it's always wise to practice. When you are a substitute, the bench can feel like cactus. Do not copy homework from a friend who is a dummy. If you do, I'm sure that you will get a grade that's crummy. And if your report card's bad, don't blame it on your buddy. Kiss up to your parents quick, or they might make you study.

Bill Lazier’s advice means that you ought to do your homework before taking a job. Find out if you are about to enter a den of assholes, and if you are, don’t give in to the temptation to join them in the first place. Leonardo da Vinci said, “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end,” which is sound social psychology. The more time and effort that people put into anything—no matter how useless, dysfunctional, or downright stupid it might be—the harder it is for them to walk away, be it a bad investment, a destructive relationship, an exploitive job, or a workplace filled with browbeaters, bullies, and bastards.

And when the boy left, my dad said that this boy was becoming a fine young man who could carry himself. And my mom was quiet. And my sister looked at me to make sure I wouldn’t say anything. And that was that. “Yes. He is.” That’s all my sister could say. And I could see this boy at home doing his homework and thinking about my sister naked. And I could see them holding hands at football games that they do not watch. And I could see this boy throwing up in the bushes at a party house. And I could see my sister putting up with it. And I felt very bad for both of them.

It's one of the beautiful lies of the American Dream: that you can become anything, do anything, accomplish anything, if you want it badly enough and are willing to work for it. Limits are inventions of the timid mind. You've got to believe. All things are possible through properly channeled effort: work, work, work; harder, faster, more! ...I believed it all, drank the elixir to the last drop and licked my lips for residue. I put in the time, learned to read and write and speak more capably than my friends and neighbors, followed the rules, did my homework, memorized the tics and slangs and idiosyncrasies of winners and heroes, but I could never be quite as American as they. The lie is only a lie if you fail, and I most certainly did.

We had a strict routine that nothing could change: we'd get up at six, and it would be my job or Meinhard's to get milk from the farm door. When w were a little older and starting to play sports, exercises were added to the chores, and we had to earn our breakfast by doing sit-ups. In the afternoon, we'd finish our homework and chores, and my father would make us practice soccer no matter how bad the weather was.

- Then find other way. I learn in temple. Taught by ancient master. When trouble, always remember wise words of ancient and venerable master. - What were they? - Ancient master say: `That boy there! What you eating? Hope you brought enough for everybody!' Ancient master say: `You bad boy! Why you no do homework?' Ancient master say: `What boy laughing? No tell what boy laughing, whole dojo stay in after school!' When remember these wise words, nothing seems so bad.

And if I was seen as temperamentally cool and collected, measured in how I used my words, Joe was all warmth, a man without inhibitions, happy to share whatever popped into his head. It was an endearing trait, for he genuinely enjoyed people. You could see it as he worked a room, his handsome face always cast in a dazzling smile (and just inches from whomever he was talking to), asking a person where they were from, telling them a story about how much he loved their hometown (“Best calzone I ever tasted”) or how they must know so-and-so (“An absolutely great guy, salt of the earth”), flattering their children (“Anyone ever tell you you’re gorgeous?”) or their mother (“You can’t be a day over forty!”), and then on to the next person, and the next, until he’d touched every soul in the room with a flurry of handshakes, hugs, kisses, backslaps, compliments, and one-liners. Joe’s enthusiasm had its downside. In a town filled with people who liked to hear themselves talk, he had no peer. If a speech was scheduled for fifteen minutes, Joe went for at least a half hour. If it was scheduled for a half hour, there was no telling how long he might talk. His soliloquies during committee hearings were legendary. His lack of a filter periodically got him in trouble, as when during the primaries, he had pronounced me “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” a phrase surely meant as a compliment, but interpreted by some as suggesting that such characteristics in a Black man were noteworthy. As I came to know Joe, though, I found his occasional gaffes to be trivial compared to his strengths. On domestic issues, he was smart, practical, and did his homework. His experience in foreign policy was broad and deep. During his relatively short-lived run in the primaries, he had impressed me with his skill and discipline as a debater and his comfort on a national stage. Most of all, Joe had heart. He’d overcome a bad stutter as a child (which probably explained his vigorous attachment to words) and two brain aneurysms in middle age.

Nothing in the world ever went right for fifteen-year-old Mina. She was always late for class, her homework usually looked as if it had spent the evening being a chew toy for a pit bull when she didn’t even own a dog, her long-time crush didn’t know she existed, and she frequently spilled chocolate milk on herself whenever she became nervous. Mina was certain it was because she was the magnet for all the bad, terrible, and so-so luck that existed in the world. So she kept a notebook hidden in her unorganized sock drawer to prove it.

Yes, it was,’ said Ginny. ‘It was appalling. Angelina was nearly in tears by the end of it.’ Ron and Ginny went off for baths after dinner; Harry and Hermione returned to the busy Gryffindor common room and their usual pile of homework. Harry had been struggling with a new star-chart for Astronomy for half an hour when Fred and George turned up. ‘Ron and Ginny not here?’ asked Fred, looking around as he pulled up a chair, and when Harry shook his head, he said, ‘Good. We were watching their practice. They’re going to be slaughtered. They’re complete rubbish without us.’ ‘Come on, Ginny’s not bad,’ said George fairly, sitting down next to Fred. ‘Actually, I dunno how she got so good, seeing how we never let her play with us.’ ‘She’s been breaking into your broom shed in the garden since the age of six and taking each of your brooms out in turn when you weren’t looking,’ said Hermione from behind her tottering pile of Ancient Rune books. ‘Oh,’ said George, looking mildly impressed. ‘Well – that’d explain it.’ ‘Has Ron saved a goal yet?’ asked Hermione, peering over the top of Magical Hieroglyphs and Logograms. ‘Well, he can do it if he doesn’t think anyone’s watching him,’ said Fred, rolling his eyes. ‘So all we have to do is ask the crowd to turn their backs and talk among themselves every time the Quaffle goes up his end on Saturday.’ He got up again and moved restlessly to the window, staring out across the dark grounds.

Sometimes,” she told me, “a girl will give a guy a blow job at the end of the night because she doesn’t want to have sex with him and he expects to be satisfied. So if I want him to leave and I don’t want anything to happen . . .” She trailed off, leaving me to imagine the rest. There was so much to unpack in that short statement: why a young man should expect to be sexually satisfied; why a girl not only isn’t outraged, but considers it her obligation to comply; why she doesn’t think a blow job constitutes “anything happening”; the pressure young women face in any personal relationship to put others’ needs before their own; the potential justification of assault with a chaser of self-blame. “It goes back to girls feeling guilty,” Anna said. “If you go to a guy’s room and are hooking up with him, you feel bad leaving him without pleasing him in some way. But, you know, it’s unfair. I don’t think he feels badly for you.” In their research on high school girls and oral sex, April Burns, a professor of psychology at City University of New York, and her colleagues found that girls thought of fellatio kind of like homework: a chore to get done, a skill to master, one on which they expected to be evaluated, possibly publicly. As with schoolwork, they worried about failing or performing poorly—earning the equivalent of low marks. Although they took satisfaction in a task well done, the pleasure they described was never physical, never located in their own bodies. They were both dispassionate and nonpassionate about oral sex—socialized, the researchers concluded, to see themselves as “learners” in their encounters rather than “yearners.” The concern with pleasing, as opposed to pleasure, was pervasive among the girls I met, especially among high schoolers, who were just starting sexual experimentation.

SN: how’s your day, Ms. Holmes? Me: Not bad. Yours? SN: good. been doing my homework in listicle form, because, you know, anything to make it more interesting. Me: Do you think college will actually be better? For real? SN: hope so. but then again, I just read about a guy who lost a ball in a frat hazing incident. Me: Seriously? What is wrong with people? SN: can you imagine wanting to be liked so badly that you’d give up one of your testicles? Me: I can neither imagine having testicles nor giving one up. SN: you won’t let me use emojis, but an ‘i heart my testes’ one would be appropriate right about now. Me: You know what I heart? Nutella. And pajama pants. And an awesomesauce book. Not necessarily in that order, but together. SN: awesomesauce? 2012 texted and wants its word back. btw, do you eat the Nutella right out of the jar with a spoon? Me: Used to. Now I share a kitchen with the Others, so I can’t. Wanted to label it, but my dad said that would be rude.

My parents must have seen something in me that I missed. My teachers insisted that I didn’t apply myself… I know that I didn’t like doing the additional homework my parents gave me, so instead of being a scholar I became the class clown. Ouch! My grades, although passing, didn’t come near reflecting my potential. It was suggested that I was a bright child who just didn’t apply himself. Most of the time I received only “C” grades, although they should have been at least “B+” and perhaps by showing just a bit more effort I could have been an “A” student or better. Lazy, was the term they used, and for this reason they gave me lower grades. But nothing fazed me as long as I passed and was promoted with my class. Punishing me also didn’t work, and boxing my ears only made me more rebellious. It must have seemed futile to my parents, but they continued doing what they thought was right. Being defiant, I insisted that if they didn’t give me so much additional work, I would have more time for what was assigned. However, that was not to be.

We didn't chat much about the bad things that were happening around us--and if we had chosen to, I'm not sure that the conversation would have been very long. It's difficult to put a nightmare into words, and this is exactly what our lives were--nightmares. If someone had asked us to describe our days, we'd have talked about waking up, going to school, eating lunch, going home, church, taking a nap, doing homework, more church, eating dinner - nothing extraordinary whatsoever. The thing about nightmares is that they don't immediately appear to be nightmares--instead, they come, masquerading as benign events, all snipped apart and mashed back together, but when you wake up, you can't forget what your brain has shown you. Instead, you begin to perseverate on the short moments of the dream that aren't sitting well with you, and it's in these short moments that you realize that this dream was no dream, it was a nightmare, and it is not benign at all. It is, in actuality, milliseconds of your real life, stolen from the memories you'd put aside because they are too terrifying to acknowledge, then turned and twisted and manipulated until they are almost completely unrecognizable.

Your life is not an episode of Skins. Things will never look quite as good as they do in a faded, sun-drenched Polaroid; your days are not an editorial from Lula. Your life is not a Sofia Coppola movie, or a Chuck Palahniuk novel, or a Charles Bukowski poem. Grace Coddington isn’t your creative director. Bon Iver and Joy Division don’t play softly in the background at appropriate moments. Your hysterical teenage diary isn’t a work of art. Your room probably isn’t Selby material. Your life isn’t a Tumblr screencap. Every word that comes out of your mouth will not be beautiful and poignant, infinitely quotable. Your pain will not be pretty. Crying till you vomit is always shit. You cannot romanticize hurt. Or sadness. Or loneliness. You will have homework, and hangovers and bad hair days. The train being late won’t lead to any fateful encounters, it will make you late. Sometimes your work will suck. Sometimes you will suck. Far too often, everything will suck - and not in a Wes Anderson kind of way. And there is no divine consolation - only the knowledge that we will hopefully experience the full spectrum - and that sometimes, just sometimes, life will feel like a Coppola film.

I wish you would, because I’m not sure how long I can put up with this.” “I’ll bet you can put up with it a little longer,” I said brightly, desperate to get out from under the heavy subject. “How much do you love college in New York?” He grinned. “I love college in New York. I love just being in the city. I love my classes. I love the hospital. I wish I weren’t there at two in the morning because I also love sleep, but I do love the hospital. I love Manohar and Brian. In a manly love kind of way, of course.” “Of course,” I said, the corners of my mouth stretched tight, trying not to laugh. “You get along great with everybody. Because that’s what you do.” “Because that’s what I do,” he agreed. “Do you love college in New York?” I sighed, a big puff of white air. “I do love college in New York. Lately I’ve been so busy with work and homework that I might as well be in Iowa, but I remember loving college in New York a month ago. I’m afraid it may be coming to a close, though.” He leaned nearer. “Seriously.” “If I got that internship,” I said, “I could hold on. Otherwise I’m in trouble. I wanted so badly to start my publishing career in the publishing mecca. But maybe that’s not possible for me now. I can write anywhere, I guess.” I laughed. He didn’t laugh. “What will you do, then?” “I might try California,” I said. “It’s almost as expensive as New York, though. And it’s tainted in my mind because my mother tried it with the worst of luck.” Hunter’s movement toward me was so sudden that I instinctively shrank back. Then I realized he was reaching for my hand. He took it in his warm hand again, rubbing my palm with his calloused thumb. His voice was smooth like a song as he said, “I would not love college in New York if you weren’t there.” Suddenly I was flushing hot in the freezing night. “You wouldn’t?” I whispered. “No. When I said I love it, I listed all these things I love about it. I left you out.” He let my hand go and touched his finger to my lips. “I love you.” I started stupidly at him. Was he joking again, reciting another line from my story? I didn’t remember writing this. He leaned in and kissed me. I didn’t respond for a few seconds. My mind lagged behind what my body was feeling. “Say it,” he whispered against my lips. “I know this is hard for you. Tell me.” “I love you.” Hearing my own words, I gasped at the rush of emotion. He put his hands on either side of my jaw and took my mouth with his. My mind still chattered that something was wrong with this picture. My body stopped caring. I grabbed fistfuls of his sweater and pulled him closer.

We lived in a safe, family-friendly area, but parts of London were rough, as you’d expect from any large city. Mark had a knack for attracting muggers. One time, we were in a train station and a little kid--no more than about eight years old--came up to him: “Oi, mate, give me your phone.” We always carried the cool Nokia phones with the Snake game on them, and they were the hot item. It was like inviting trouble carrying one around, but we didn’t care. Mark thought the mini-mugger was crazy: “Are you kidding me? No way.” Then he looked over his shoulder and realized the kid wasn’t alone; he had a whole gang with him. So Mark handed over his phone and the kid ran off. I never let him live down the fact that an eight-year-old had mugged him. I had my own incident as well, but I handled it a little differently. I got off the train at Herne Hill station and noticed that two guys were following me. I could hear their footsteps getting closer and closer. “Give us your backpack,” they threatened me. “Why? All I have is my homework in here,” I tried to reason with them. They had seen me on the train with my minidisc player and they knew I was holding out on them. “Give it,” they threatened. My bag was covered with key chains and buttons, and as I took it off my shoulder, pretending to give it to them, I swung it hard in their faces. All that hardware knocked one of them to the ground and stunned the other. With my bag in my hand, I ran the mile home without ever looking back. Not bad for a skinny kid in a school uniform.

Creating “Correct” Children in the Classroom One of the most popular discipline programs in American schools is called Assertive Discipline. It teaches teachers to inflict the old “obey or suffer” method of control on students. Here you disguise the threat of punishment by calling it a choice the child is making. As in, “You have a choice, you can either finish your homework or miss the outing this weekend.” Then when the child chooses to try to protect his dignity against this form of terrorism, by refusing to do his homework, you tell him he has chosen his logical, natural consequence of being excluded from the outing. Putting it this way helps the parent or teacher mitigate against the bad feelings and guilt that would otherwise arise to tell the adult that they are operating outside the principles of compassionate relating. This insidious method is even worse than outand-out punishing, where you can at least rebel against your punisher. The use of this mind game teaches the child the false, crazy-making belief that they wanted something bad or painful to happen to them. These programs also have the stated intention of getting the child to be angry with himself for making a poor choice. In this smoke and mirrors game, the children are “causing” everything to happen and the teachers are the puppets of the children’s choices. The only ones who are not taking responsibility for their actions are the adults. Another popular coercive strategy is to use “peer pressure” to create compliance. For instance, a teacher tells her class that if anyone misbehaves then they all won’t get their pizza party. What a great way to turn children against each other. All this is done to help (translation: compel) children to behave themselves. But of course they are not behaving themselves: they are being “behaved” by the adults. Well-meaning teachers and parents try to teach children to be motivated (translation: do boring or aversive stuff without questioning why), responsible (translation: thoughtless conformity to the house rules) people. When surveys are conducted in which fourth-graders are asked what being good means, over 90% answer “being quiet.” And when teachers are asked what happens in a successful classroom, the answer is, “the teacher is able to keep the students on task” (translation: in line, doing what they are told). Consulting firms measuring teacher competence consider this a major criterion of teacher effectiveness. In other words if the students are quietly doing what they were told the teacher is evaluated as good. However my understanding of ‘real learning’ with twenty to forty children is that it is quite naturally a bit noisy and messy. Otherwise children are just playing a nice game of school, based on indoctrination and little integrated retained education. Both punishments and rewards foster a preoccupation with a narrow egocentric self-interest that undermines good values. All little Johnny is thinking about is “How much will you give me if I do X? How can I avoid getting punished if I do Y? What do they want me to do and what happens to me if I don’t do it?” Instead we could teach him to ask, “What kind of person do I want to be and what kind of community do I want to help make?” And Mom is thinking “You didn’t do what I wanted, so now I’m going to make something unpleasant happen to you, for your own good to help you fit into our (dominance/submission based) society.” This contributes to a culture of coercion and prevents a community of compassion. And as we are learning on the global level with our war on terrorism, as you use your energy and resources to punish people you run out of energy and resources to protect people. And even if children look well-behaved, they are not behaving themselves They are being behaved by controlling parents and teachers.

My name is Charlie Chucky, I am in the sixth grade, I love playing Minecraft, and I am learning to become a Super Spy. My Dad is the world’s best Super Spy, and he is starting to teach me all his tricks. Lately, I’ve been battling invisible giants, crazy zombie teachers, and super ninjas! Life has been pretty crazy, and I’ve enjoyed every second of it. My best friend Harley is different to me. He doesn’t want to become a Super Spy. He doesn’t want to battle bad guys and save the world each week. Nope. He wants to sit indoors and stare at numbers all day. Harley’s dream is to become the world’s greatest math professor. He loves school, he loves studying, and he absolutely loves math tests.  He goes mad for them. It is the one thing he is really good at. He just loves numbers.  Numbers are like candy for him – he can’t get enough of it. He even asked Mrs. Jackson for extra math homework last night. Mrs. Jackson then decided to give the whole class extra math homework. Let’s just say Harley wasn’t that popular after school.  This is Harley. Mrs. Jackson always says that someday math will save our lives, but I can’t see how it will. Maybe one day, four giant numbers will attack our school, and I will defeat them using an algebra equation… or maybe the numbers in my textbook will go bad, and start attacking all the words on the pages, and I will stop them using a calculator!

... Sid would have a snooze while Bella did her homework, and then they’d go out into the garden and practise training. Bella was determined that Sid was going to be the most beautifully trained dog ever. She had even bought a book on it with her pocket money, and in a couple of weeks they were going to start classes. Somehow, because he was a bit scruffy-looking, Bella felt that people who met Sid might think he was badly behaved. So she was determined to do her absolute best to make sure that he wasn’t. Luckily, Sid really seemed to like the training. Especially the delicious dog treats that Bella used as rewards. She was trying to teach him to sit and stay until she called him, and he was getting quite good at it.

The 1833 Factory Act illustrates how bad things had become. It was considered highly controversial to ban children under the age of nine from working in textile factories and to restrict children aged between nine and 13 to working 12 hours a day. Those aged 13–18 could legally work a 69-hour week. As well as running sweatshops, industry owners also portioned out work to unregulated, starving homeworkers in order to undercut factory wages.

I would get home from school at 1:45 and crash hard on the couch, waking up only to watch my beloved General Hospital or do homework or sluggishly walk to softball practice. I was always tired. I am always tired. I now read articles about how great sleep is and how important it is and I cry because I want it so bad and I am so mad at how great everyone else seems to be at it. I got some relief from my sleep problem once I started working at SNL (this sounds crazy, I realize that). It was truly a vampire life and one that suited my internal clock. At the time I did not have children, so I was able to stay up very late and sleep very late. I remember ten A.M. feeling incredibly early and three A.M. being my usual bedtime. This was my life for seven years.

It’s important to tie consequences as closely as possible to the actions of the child. This best replicates real life. Homework projects are another area in which parents can either help the child take on responsibility—or create the illusion of the eternal, omnipresent parent who will always take up the slack. It’s difficult when your child comes to you tearfully, saying, “I have a ten-page report due tomorrow—and I just started.” Our impulse, as loving parents, is to bail them out by doing the research, or the organization, or the typing. Or all three. Why do we do this? Because we love our kids. We long for the best for them just as God longs for the best for us. And yet, just as God allows us to experience our failures, we may need to let our kids mar a good report card with a bad grade. This is often the consequence of not planning ahead.

Are you?” he asks skeptically. “Are you really fine?” I glance up at him. He can’t just leave things alone, can he? I drop my pencil on the table and turn to face him. He’s always pushing for more truth. Always wanting to know what the hell I’m thinking. If this is what he wants, we might as well get it over with. I take a deep breath and prepare to answer all the questions he’s ever asked, and even ones he hasn’t gotten around to asking yet. “Yes, I’m fine. I’m not great. I’m not terrible. I’m just fine. I’m fine because I have a roof over my head and a boyfriend who loves me, despite the fact that he makes bad choices. Do I wish he were a better person? Yes. If I had the means, would I leave him? Yes. Absolutely. Do I wish there wasn’t so much constantly going on at my house that I could actually find a quiet place to do homework, or heaven forbid, get some sleep? Hell yes. Do I wish I could graduate sooner and get out of this mess? Yes. Am I embarrassed by the way Asa treats me? Yes. Do I wish you weren’t a part of this? Yes. Do I wish you could be the guy I thought you were the first time I met you in class? Yes. Do I wish you could save me?” I let out a short, defeated sigh and look down at my hands. “So much, Carter,” I whisper. “I wish you could save me from all this shit so, so much. But you can’t. I’m not in this life for myself. If I were, I would have left a long time ago.

I didn't know how to love a God who let Bad Things happen. I couldn't stop thinking about all the Bad Things long enough to finish my homework. I couldn't help the fact that Bad Things hit me hard and knocked me hollow. And I didn't know how to accept feeling it all, all the time.

Trading is not the path to free money; profits must be earned through homework, discipline, courage, patience, and perseverance in the markets.” – Rich Trader

Most people think I really could keep from falling asleep if I wanted to. If I just focused, like narcolepsy is some algebraic equation I could solve if I worked at it hard enough, did all the homework. I'm a bad joke, a punchline.

vacation, school starts again in September. I hate being late to my college classes, but I can’t help it, and it has become a daily occurrence. Whether it’s the dog needing to be let out and fed, Robert spilling breakfast on his shirt and having to change, the older girls having a fight, someone forgetting their homework, or bad traffic on the freeways — there is always something that seems to happen

my favorite was when the schoolgirl didn’t complete her homework on time!” Owen was saying enthusiastically. “It was a great piece of filmmaking, because the professor had this dungeon...” “Hey, buddy,” Liam said, leaning forward. “Looks like there’s a gas station at that exit up ahead. Didn’t you say you were running low? How about we stop and fill up, and maybe grab a bite to eat?” “But I’m in the middle of my story!” Owen protested. “Don’t you want to hear what happens to the schoolgirl? Helen does! Don’t you, Helen?” “Get. Gas. Now.” My voice has never been more deadly serious. “Sheesh,” Owen says sadly, signaling and pulling over to exit. “Fine, Helen; if you insist. I’m disappointed in you. Liam is a spoilsport, but I would have thought that since you’re a writer, you would appreciate a good story.” “A good story?” I repeat incredulously. “Owen, nothing you’ve said in the past three hours has been anywhere close to a good story. Listening to you is making my ears hurt. I think they’re melting—your words are like acid being poured into my ear canals.” “Hey! That’s not nice,” Owen says in a grumpy tone. It sounds like he might be pouting. “It’s medically impossible to lose your hearing from listening to someone talk about the glorious art of pornography.” I grumble to myself unhappily. “It’s possible if I buy a popsicle at the gas station, eat the popsicle, and then use the popsicle stick to gouge my own ears out so that I can tolerate the rest of this trip!” Sighing, I lean to press my head against the glass of the car window. It is cold, and I use it like an ice pack to soothe my aching ear and temple. I really do feel like if I need to listen to one more ridiculous tale of sexual depravity for no particular reason, I’m going to lose my mind. I really wouldn’t care if they were good stories. “Seriously. I think I’m going deaf. It hurts.” “Well, that’s a bad problem to have when you’re in the car with two eye doctors!” Owen says cheerfully. “Jesus, man,” Liam says to his friend in dismay. “It’s been hours. You need to stop talking.

Nobody wanted to befriend someone who was both nerdy and bad at homework.

People who are better at delaying gratification have higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, and superior social skills. We’ve all seen this play out in our own lives. If you delay watching television and get your homework done, you’ll generally learn more and get better grades. If you don’t buy desserts and chips at the store, you’ll often eat healthier food when you get home. At some point, success in nearly every field requires you to ignore an immediate reward in favor of a delayed reward.

Mr. Avery, You usually send a nightly email out to all students about homework. I didn’t receive one tonight and wanted to make sure that you were… getting along all right with everything at home. I know things can get pretty hard sometimes, especially after today. I’ve thought long and hard about my actions in class today that led to my detention. The memories of my punishment haven’t been easy to deal with, as they’ve brought me much… pressure in places. After careful consideration, I’ve decided that I have done nothing wrong. I will eagerly accept any further detention you give me because of my illicit actions while you’re trying to teach. I don’t plan on changing. Sincerely, Sakura Sato.

Sakura, Apologies for not sending you an email about homework sooner. I believed you were paying attention and didn’t need the reminder, but it seems you were distracted during class today, hmm? In case you wanted to know, I’ve been busy cleaning up the mess you made in detention this afternoon. I’ve had a long, hard problem since then that I’ll be taking care of while thinking about your punishment for tomorrow. Don’t be late to class. Sincerely, Mr. Avery.

Sakura Sato was the only student at Redwood who gave me her full attention while in my class, the only student who actually fully read the material that I assigned for homework, the only student who ever asked me for extra credit when she already had an A-plus. And, fuck, had I wanted to give her some extra credit for a long time now. But she was my student, so those fantasies were off-limits. Against my morals. Shamefully wrong. Yet so fucking sweet.

Parenting meant that whether or not your children understood you, your obligation was to understand them; understanding was the key to everything. If your children believed you understood them, or at least tried to understand them, they wouldn’t hate you when they became adolescents; what’s more, they would grow up to be happy, well-adjusted adults who would never have to squander their money (or, far more likely, yours) on psychoanalysis or whatever fashion in self-improvement had come along to take its place. Parenting used entirely different language from just plain parenthood, language you would never write in big capital letters in order to make clear that it had been uttered impulsively or in anger. So it went more or less like this: I’m sure you didn’t mean to break Mommy’s antique vase, sweetheart. We should talk about this. I know how frustrated and angry you must feel right now. Why don’t you go to your room and take a time-out and come back when you’re feeling better. If you want, I’ll call Jessica’s mother to see what her reasoning is. If you finish your homework, we can talk about the tiara. Stage Two: The Child Is an Adolescent Adolescence comes as a gigantic shock to the modern parent, in large part because it seems so much like the adolescence you yourself went through.

When we see failures as shameful, we try to hide them. We don’t study them closely to learn from them. Brown distinguishes between shame and guilt. Shame is a belief that “I am bad.” Guilt, in contrast, is a realization that “what I did is bad.” “I am bad because I didn’t do my homework” engenders feelings of shame. But if I see my actions as bad (guilt), it fosters accountability. It is thus better to feel guilty than ashamed; as Brown tells us, “Shame is highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders… [while] guilt [is] inversely correlated with those things.

Doing what? Homework. I knew that was a bad response the moment I sent it. You never do homework. Ugh. I’m sick. Which is it? You’re busy or you’re sick?

I built long tables of every space launch, Russian and American, of every probe and lander, manned or unmanned. I knew them all by heart and my teacher, Mrs. Harvey, asked me to write special reports on the subject that kept me engaged in a way that the standard curriculum simply could not. Not every teacher was so accommodating.  One year, the solution for keeping me engaged was effectively to move me ahead by one grade. Then, to “correct” for this unauthorized advancement when discovered a few years later, I was then forced to repeat sixth grade over. In my mind, this felt the same as being unfairly demoted an entire grade, and that left a bad taste that soured me on school and homework for many years to come. I’ve always been willing to work exceptionally hard at any chance to move ahead, but deeply resent setbacks not of my own making.

There is no evidence that any amount of homework improves the academic performance of elementary students.

The exceptional teachers not only tended to give less homework but also were likely to give students more choices about their assignments.

There are some tricks to staying light and getting back to that childlike play state. The writer Kurt Vonnegut wrote a letter to a group of high school students and assigned them this homework: Write a poem and don’t show it to anybody. Tear it up into little pieces and throw them into the trash can. “You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.” That, said Vonnegut, was the whole purpose of making art: “Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

So you have more of a teacher/bad student, ‘smack him around with a yardstick for not doing his homework’ fantasy.” “I actually have the opposite of that, because I’m pretty sure even thinking it would get me fired.

(I am sometimes overwhelmed by how tough it is to raise kids! You try to praise them to boost them up and all you do is make them feel bad about themselves.) Instead, tell your children that you have high expectations for them. Then, offer constructive feedback if they have poor performance. Offering constructive feedback (which is not the same as criticism) shows that you have high expectations and that you think your child has the ability to meet those expectations. For example, if your son is writing an essay for homework and it isn’t very good, instead of assuming he can’t do better, tell him that he can do better. Offer specific places where he could improve, such as “Why don’t you start with a topic sentence?” or “Perhaps you can describe this part in a little more detail.” Constructive feedback is specific and focused on how to improve, and it is the kind of encouragement that helps kids both believe in their own abilities and improve, which, in turn, helps children stick with activities they might otherwise have struggled with.

46. The future is portfolios, not transcripts. (Page 117) 29. Homework helps school systems, not students. (Page 71) 16. Embrace all technologies. (Page 39) 11. Use microcosms as much as possible in learning programs. (Page 29) 24. Teaching is leadership. Most teaching is bad leadership. (Page 59) 39. Five subjects a day? Really? (Page 99) 15. If you care about learning, start with food.(Page 37) For parents of children in traditional schools: 12. Internships, apprenticeships, and interesting jobs beat term papers, textbooks, and tests. (Page 31) 13. Include meaningful work. (Page 33) 25. Expose more, teach less. (Page 61) 43. Minimize “the drop-off.” (Page 109) 44. Increase exposure to non–authority figure adults. (Page 111) 14. Create and use periods of reflection. (Page 35) 30. Every day, adults are role models of learning (whether or not they want to be). (Page 73)

Zeus was the god of law and order. The guy who threw random lightning bolts when he got angry and couldn’t keep his own wedding vows—this was the guy in charge of making sure kings acted wisely, councils of elders were respected, oaths were kept, and strangers were given hospitality. That would be like making me the god of homework and good grades. I guess Zeus wasn’t all bad. Sometimes he would show up at mortals’ homes disguised as a wanderer to see whether folks would let him in and offer him food.

Besides, it’s not impossible that I might have missed that class. I wasn’t the type to attend classes.” “What type were you?” “I don’t know, the bad type. I used to cut school. I was always behind on homework. My teachers thought I was a nightmare to deal with.” “Is that really something you should be telling your professor?” His hands are in his pockets and his ankles are crossed. He has black snow boots with grey soles, and something about the ruggedness of them makes me smile. “But then you’re not my professor, are you? And I’m not your student. I’m just the trespasser.” “I’d be careful then. Bad things happen to those who trespass,” he says in a voice that steals my own.

To avoid getting fooled by spurious correlations, we need to consider additional variables that would be expected to change if a particular causal explanation were true. Twenge does this by examining all the daily activities reported by individual students, in the two datasets that include such measures. Twenge finds that there are just two activities that are significantly correlated with depression and other suicide-related outcomes (such as considering suicide, making a plan, or making an actual attempt): electronic device use (such as a smartphone, tablet, or computer) and watching TV. On the other hand, there are five activities that have inverse relationships with depression (meaning that kids who spend more hours per week on these activities show lower rates of depression): sports and other forms of exercise, attending religious services, reading books and other print media, in-person social interactions, and doing homework.

Then find other way. I learn in temple. Taught by ancient master. When trouble, always remember wise words of ancient and venerable master.’ ‘What were they?’ ‘Ancient master say: “That boy there! What you eating? Hope you brought enough for everybody!” Ancient master say: “You bad boy! Why you no do homework?” Ancient master say: “What boy laughing? No tell what boy laughing, whole dojo stay in after school!” When remember these wise words, nothing seems so bad.

It’s not that I don’t want to make the most of the day, or that I don’t care about getting home. It’s that I want those things so badly that I feel paralyzed. I know it doesn’t make sense. It’s just the way I’ve always been. Alyssa used to get on my case about procrastinating on stuff, but the truth is, I don’t think that what I do counts as procrastination. Procrastinating is telling yourself, I’ll do it later. What I do is tell myself, I’ll do it now, and then I just . . . don’t. When I’m on my medication, it’s better, but still hard. When I’m off it . . . well. You may as well ask me to run a triathlon as do my homework. Beginning either seems equally daunting.

Derek’s sister teaches children born with Down syndrome. “She mentioned that some parents don’t want to push their kids too much, because they’re afraid of exposing them to the possibility of failure. The parents mean well, but they’re keeping their kids from reaching their full potential when they coddle them.” It takes her a little time to get used to this idea. Ana’s accustomed to thinking of the digients as supremely gifted apes, and while in the past people have compared apes to children with special needs, it was always more of a metaphor. To view the digients more literally as special-needs children requires a shift in perspective. “How much responsibility do you think the digients can handle?” Derek spreads his hands. “I don’t know. In a way it’s like Down syndrome; it affects every person differently, so whenever my sister works with a new kid, she has to play it by ear. We have even less to go on, because no one’s ever raised digients for this long before. If it turns out that the only thing we’re accomplishing with homework assignments is making them feel bad, then of course we’ll stop. But I don’t want Marco and Polo’s potential to be wasted because I was afraid of pushing them a little.” She sees that Derek has a very different idea of high expectations than she has. More than that, she realizes that his is actually the better one. “You’re right,” she says, after a pause. “We should see if they can do homework.

If only you would apply yourself.” My teachers in high school told me that so often that they decided to really drill it in by writing it in my yearbook, over and over. I was a bad student. Still am. Busywork was the bane of my existence—those little homework assignments that felt like a waste of time, that required organizational skills like Writing Down Your Assignment and Not Losing Your Handout. These were difficult tasks for me. My locker was a pile of loose papers that got more and more crinkly as the weeks went on until it looked like the inside of a recycling bin. I discovered that if you ignore something long enough, it really does go away. Literally. The papers would disintegrate. I would pass just enough tests and do enough begging to eke by with a D. Sometimes.

It was the time of the change… no longer a little one, the time when, I was starting to see things happening, to me that I did not want to see. Like- passion pink braces on my unperfected overbite teeth along with ‘Pimples, periods, hips and boobs- oh my… I just want to cry or die.’ Moreover, I was utterly feeling all kinds of things that I didn’t want to feel. I was feeling too old for toys and wanted to feel up one of the older boys. I was an 8th grader, Yes, I was at that stage of my life… it feels strangely good and yet very weird too. ‘Oh yes- Live's through middle school all over again.’ All the days off. All the days on… all the days- I was turned off, to all of them. And yes, all the days, I was turned on! Yet, really can anyone stand to relive that day… I mean really! Let’s not forget I had to spend time with the family, on the brakes, then to come home and do all the pointless homework like advanced mathematics. When I got most of that crap done sitting in long study halls not able to move or say a sound, with period cramps, yeah- I know fun right! Kissing with open mouths, like breath sucking and tugs brushing Frenching. As well as thinking about what boy, I want to have sizzling, exhilarating, desiring sex with is all I thought about! Plus- when, where, and how! Yes, I have had some really bad kisses, make-outs, and hookups… who hasn’t? So much so, I barely survived through them the primary time it happened. Just like the world keeps going around, this was not my first go-around either. Frankly, I thought I would not have minded living through all that again. What I thought were the ultimate times of all. Like the time I made out with a girl in the hallway slammed upon her locker, she was touching me in all the right places, let us just say. Anyways her name is Jenny Stevenson. She is the type of girl that is a friend to try things with. Yes, I have been with a girl too. Mostly, I just wanted to see what being in a lesbian world feels like. It was okay, it feels just as good. Though, I knew boys were my thing. However, I am the type, I will try anything once, even sex-wise! Though I thought, my paramount triumphs were with Ray Raymond, and like when we first hooked up underneath the football stadium bleachers. I knew everyone could see us doing it with his pants down, and my bare butt sticking out and up, as the game was going on. Still, we were in the moment, we did not care. The PDA was half the fun of doing it, it was all about getting some. I remember being wasted too, with my friends like Jenny, Kenneth, and Madeline. Yet we just called her Maddie. Like- I said we got so drunk and high, that we went skinny dipping in like old man’s pool weather thirdly two degrees, and then made messed up looking snowman, and running around the street somewhat ass naked flashing whomever we would get to look at us.

Madilyn was not stupid, she was just a little sightless, and by the time she went to high school, she lost the glass and was not a bad-looking girl at all just shy. She was always tiny, at that time she had boobs and hips that would not quit. Yet she was still the one that got picked on. I do not think I had ever said more than two words to her. Though I think Maddie was hushed friends with her just, so she could get her homework done. Madilyn was the smarty- pants in our grade. Likewise, she was on the softball time too, with us yet she sits alone most of the time. Yet she did not seem too mined. One time, during our freshman, it came to one of the big parties and said that she was a virgin and did not drink. We all laughed at her. I remember Jenny- saying get down on your knees girl and see what it is like. And she did, and I got it all on my phone and posted it on my web page. Then Maddie said, to me we need to get that girl popped. Therefore, I found her a random scuzzy guy to go and do her. I had to yet I do not know why, but I feel as if that was so wrong now, yet I did it for my friends at the time. It was no different than what I went through really. If you were not given it all away by the time you were in training bras then there was something majorly wrong with you, or so the boys and some girls thought. I was the one that had her purity taken away, to some twenty-five-year-old loser. Like she was only fourteen! But like I said… I was a lot younger my first time, so maybe that makes it okay. What do you think? I remember, Madilyn doing the walk of shame, we all have been there. Yet like I said that was the fun of it, seeing all that taking place in front of everyone at the party. I am not going to go into detail, but you could see that she was ridden hard and put away wet. We all laughed at her after the fact, because she said it hurt and did not know what all that ‘stuff’ as she called it… was all over her face and body. ‘What do you think it is?’ said Jenny. ‘I- I DON’T know’ said Madilyn downright freaked out. Just so, you know I am not saying this to be gross or anything like that… No! This crap is what happens to us pre-teens and teens, I was one of them. Yet will I always be remembered for being one of them, just like that I am afraid so, I am afraid to live it all over?

There was nothing I loved more than going to a friend’s house, because their mothers were around. I loved my mother more than anything, but the house would be empty and quiet when I got home. I would help myself to something from the fridge before traipsing up the stairs to my parents’ master bedroom, pushing the door open to find my mother lying propped up on pillows. On a really bad day, the curtains would be drawn, the room in darkness. Often she’d be asleep, and I’d pad over to her side of the bed and stroke her arm. She’d rouse, giving me a sleepy smile, pulling me down for a kiss and a hug, wanting to hear all about my day, her only access to the outside world. I couldn’t stay long, though. She didn’t have the capacity for too much stimulation, and on those days, the bad days, I always saw the relief in her eyes when I said I had to go back downstairs to do homework.

I’ve copied homework because I left my book in my locker and I didn’t have time to get it before I went home and my class was literally the next period. I had a bad grade—it was a wavering A where it was literally just 90-point something. When you’re that close to getting a B you don’t want to do anything wrong. If we didn’t have the homework, [the teacher] would just give us a zero.” (Annika, middle school student)

As a rule, the point of homework generally isn’t to learn, much less to derive real pleasure from learning. It’s something to be finished. And until it is, it looms large in conversations, an unwelcome guest at the table every night.

How will this affect children’s interest in learning, their desire to keep reading and thinking and exploring?” In the case of homework, the answer is disturbingly clear. Most kids hate homework. They dread it, groan about it, put off doing it as long as possible. It may be the single most reliable extinguisher of the flame of curiosity.

In the absence of homework, “students come in all the time and hand me articles about something we talked about in class or tell me about a news report they saw. When intrigued by a good lesson and given freedom [from homework], they naturally seek out more knowledge.

Every hour that teachers spend preparing kids to succeed on standardized tests, even if that investment pays off, is an hour not spent helping kids to become critical, curious, creative thinkers.)

Ellis Paul Torrance was an American psychologist. In the 1950s he noticed something off-target about American classrooms. Teachers tended to prefer the subdued, book-smart kids. They didn’t much care for the kids who had tons of energy and big ideas; kids who’d think up odd interpretations of readings, invent excuses for why they didn’t do their homework, and morph into mad scientists every lab day. The system deemed these kids “bad.” But Torrance felt they were misunderstood. Because if a problem comes up in the real world, all the book-smart kids look for an answer in…a book. But what if the answer isn’t in a book? Then a person needs to get creative.

Meditation is, at its core, a practice of antifragility: training your mind to observe and sustain the never-ending ebb and flow of pain and not to let the “self” get sucked away by its riptide. This is why everyone is so bad at something seemingly so simple. After all, you just sit on a pillow and close your eyes. How hard can it be? Why is it so difficult to summon the courage to sit down and do it and then stay there? It should be easy, yet everyone seems to be terrible at getting themselves to do it.26 Most people avoid meditation the same way a kid avoids doing homework. It’s because they know what meditation really is: it’s confronting your pain, it’s observing the interiors of your mind and heart, in all their horror and

It may be the poorest teachers who assign the most homework [because] effective teachers may cover all the material in class.

Students will become good readers when they read more. Students will read more when they enjoy reading. They will enjoy reading when they enjoy their reading material. They will enjoy their reading material when they are left to choose it themselves, and to delve into it on their own terms.