So what exactly qualifies as busy work? Wouldn't one suppose that all assignments a teacher gives serve some higher purpose, whether it be applying the skills you've learned, reading to expand you general knowledge, or practicing what you already know in order to get better?
Students claim they don't want to do "busy work"--but isn't the majority of the life we lead filled with busy work? From making our beds to brushing our teeth, pushing buttons at a fast food restaurant or running errands, we constantly fill our minutes with mindless activity.
Aren't the opportunities given to you at school the chances to escape from the tedium and mundnaness of day to day life? Don't we give you something new to ponder?
BTW--I had to DELETE the entire last post (and all comments) due to the unprecedented filyh that filled my screen. This blog is currently UNMODERATED, giving you the opportunity to post and instantly see the work of your efforts. If the profanity and insults continue (Sam and Alex), I will have to turn on moderating--and you all know how long it takes me to read your writing! And for goodness sakes, use spell check!
Education
15 years ago
12 comments:
Busy work is the work given by lazy teachers who don't want to make up meaningful assignments that better a student’s understanding. Busy work usually consists of book assignments and worksheets created by someone other than the teacher. They take little to no brain power other than to copy down matching textbook answers. As to the comment about adding practice it really does not serve that purpose either. When students do bookwork it is consistently at the last minute or while they are doing other things such as watching TV. If I was asked what I had done in my busy work the night before I could not tell you.
It is true that much of life is busy work. It although mundane is mostly necessary. However in the school context busy work is not necessary it serves no important purpose other than for the teacher to not read it and place a grade on it and for the student to receive the grade.
Most of my classes at school mainly consisted of busy work and I must admit that I learned very little that was interesting or important. It is the easy way out for teachers and gives the students easy access to good grades as long as they do it. Often students may write down total gibberish and the teacher hands them back an A. This further proves that busy work has no value as practice but is merely something to fill up our time and make us feel as if we are doing regardless of how meaningless it is.
Although I do enjoy a word search every once in a while,it does not serve an educational purpose. The busy work that teachers give are just to waste time for example when a substitute is present. Most often when there is a substitute I have had to do assignments that exceed the normal classwork load so that students stay busy and don't act out. Mostly answering endless amounts of questions. Then you turn in those answers and you never find out if they are actually right! How is a student supposed to learn this way? Its just a distraction so that teachers don't have to create actual assignments in which will give them even more to grade.
Faith is right. Most teachers dont even read the work they assign to their students. Even if we were "applying the skills you've learned, reading to expand you general knowledge, or practicing what you already know in order to get better" how would they know?
If the stereotypical high school classroom were to have an anthem, it would be the chorus of miserable groans emitted by the students after being given yet another inconsequential series of questions designed by the textbook companies, rather than a meaningful assignment invented by the teacher that actually knows what topics their students find interesting, in reference to the subject. The accompanying rolls of the eyes and facial expressions reminiscent of sampling the sour milk hiding in the refrigerator could even serve as built-in choreography for such a sacred song. These negative reactions are the result of a system of education that is more interested in the quantity of classroom work, rather than the quality of it. The “busy work” assignments, such as pre-devised worksheets and study questions, may allow the educator more free time, but they do nothing to inspire the student to further their absorption of related knowledge or discern what information has truly been retained by the mind in question, and therefore serve very little purpose in an institute of learning.
An interesting twist in the monotonous cycle of schoolroom imprisonment lies in the fact that the teacher assigning the busy work generally dreads its completion as much as the pupil. Though the student wishes to avoid answering questions that hold no deeper meaning, the teacher wishes to avoid grading papers that will inevitably look the same. This being the case, what has been gained? The instructor has gained no insight whatsoever into the mind of the child, since they have done nothing but regurgitate the required information, and the student has not made a lasting addition to its arsenal of information. A grade may have been cushioned by an easy assignment, but it is not a true reflection of how much the person being graded has learned. With this system everyone loses.
One could argue that busy work is assigned with an actual purpose in mind, that it provides the student with the motivation to look over required information outside of a classroom setting, and that the teacher is simply attempting to instill a greater understanding of the area of discussion within an unreceptive brain, but this is not usually the case. When one truly scrutinizes the activities of a classroom drowning itself in busy work, more times than not, they will find busy writing utensils, wandering minds, and blank expressions on the part of the learner, and a teacher catching up on grading, while emptying their e-mail. This is a testament to the fact that busy work is completed for no reason, outside of keeping a class acceptably quiet, and creating the illusion that a surplus of scholarship occupies the room in question. If the purpose of schooling were to answer questions correctly and immerse oneself in silence, this would be an acceptable practice, but it is not. The school’s purpose should be to educate, and inspire, but it does not.
The fact that such an interest is taken in homework when the students are free to share their own opinions is a testament to the reality of a pupil’s willingness to expand what they already know, and the potential within their possession to freely pursue their own education, without the mournful sighs, but, instead, this love affair with busy work--at least by one of the parties involved--acts as a boundary between what IS achieved in the classroom, and what COULD be achieved in the classroom. If teachers would simply take the time to concoct more assignments that their students would actually benefit them from, the school building would be a much happier and effective place, indeed. Maybe then the anthem would be a little more inspiring.
So how much of your work assigned is busy work? Does all work have to be read in order for it to be meaningful? What is the sound of one hand clapping?
What would be the alternative to busy work? And would you actually prefer "real" work, or again is this a thinky veiled excuse for senioritis?
Busy work is not the same as pushing the button to an elivator or the buttons at a fast food resteraunt. those things surve a beneficial purpose to your job and to reaching you destination. Busy work is something that as faith stated "lazy teachers" give to fill time. although beneficial to the fact they either werent prepared or didnt want to prepare a lesson. busy for is not stimulating to the mind and often puts us back to the mental level of kindergarden which to me is extremely isulting as though to say "here simpletons play for a while while i rest." not all of the assignments are so such as book work is atleast on the subject but no busy work i have ever done was even book work. most of the time it was lets color this page that happens to have a cartoon character tooking through a microscope. Busy work is soemthing that i have literally seen teachers give us then throw it away and give everyone the grade anyway. This is not preparing us for anything in the real world except for the thought that not everyone is going to think the most or maybe anything of you. Most people have a grasp on that factor anyway. as Brittany stated most of the time when a substitute is around the busy work comes out and most people dont do it anyway because they see it's busywork. ive heard people say "this doesnt even look like it could count for a grade legally in high school." and lindseys chorus of groans is the result of continously being the opposite of motivated by that which is being given and called and assignment.
christen valentine
To answer you question Mrs. R in my day's as at school all around i had at least 4 classes that were nothing but busy work on a daily basis and thier projects and real assignment were asking so little that i would finish what was supposed to be a three week project in one class period and it usually didnt take the whole class period unless i was slacking.
not all work has to be read to be meaningful at all. Things such as seminarying group work, presentations and teaching the class for yourself are meaningful because they teach you how to put a presentation together good speech skills, how to stay calm when speaking and all around good comunication skills.
i belive that thier is an alternative such as having that class be a time to prepare a project for presenattion or reading something that has to do with tomorrows lesson. it is not the teachers responsibility to make sure everyone does it becuase you cant force them if they wont do it. It is the teachers responsibility to make sure that the students how ever few that are doing it are getting the biggest and best that they can get out of it out of it.
the sound of one hand clapping is the sound of one thankful child who finally fells like they've been taught something for once in high school that they can use and didnt already know. the question is will that hand clap be nough for teachers to take notice and change something so they can hear two hand claps? CLAP!
Eh, I don't mind busy work, it isn't as meaningless as everyone is saying it is. A word search (hate them by the way) helps burn vocabulary in your brain as you are trying to look for the words. Doing something completely meaningless and irrelevant to what your doing in class, just for the sake of doing it. My brother, who goes to MWMS told me that his MATH teacher made the whole class research stuff about the weather because they were loud in class. That boggles my mind. Math=/= science. Wouldn't you have them do some math problems instead?
Ugh now back to this test, which is keeping me busy for sure (head explodes). -_-
(Does a quick spell check, k good. :D)
For some people "busy work" is anything that takes up more than 30 minutes. This is so because after 30 minutes many people get bored with the topic. Their are two components that make up busy work.
First, is the amount of time put into it. If it is going to take you 15 minutes for each class then thats not busy work. Busy work is anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour on one class. This is actually normal. Students don't realize that a good 40 minutes doing homework is not bad and will help their grades. People who work and go to school would say that they always get busy work because it takes a while and they do not have as much energy to complete it after working.
The second component is the level of difficulty. If you have to look up every answer in three different places and do that for 10 problems, people will not want to do it. Doing research always puts any work into the busy pile because no one wants to think outside of their box (mind).
I personally think most of the work we get is busy because it takes a lot of my time and no one wants anything that they don't want to do taking up their time. I don't think that it is pointless but it is very time consuming, which means it is busy and can be a turn off.
i don't mind busy work but i do believe that it should be given less. if it honestly serves no purpose at all then why give so much. i've had teachers that have given me 2 pages of text book work every day all week, then i've had teachers who give one page every so often. either way i felt it served the same purpose, although i did do the pages with less work so maybe i actually learned more from having less 'busy work'
as for the spell check and the cursing, i said 'hoe' one time after that i didn't cuss. sam was the one who sounded like south park. and i thought in a government class i didn't have to use spell check? you're not supposed to grade me on my spelling! plus i dont know where spell check is...:(
Busy work is the laziness of the teacher. If the teacher does not want to teach, they hand out busy work and sometimes give it for disciplinary reasons. I don't enjoy busy work; it is a waste of time and does not really teach you anything. I'm a TA, and whenever the teacher gives busy work, I end up grading it and I usually grade it for completion (under teacher’s orders). But, the few times the busy work has to be correct and I actually have to grade it, the students don't work hard. They usually give half butt answers and don't even know what they wrote, it is in the brain for two seconds-just enough to write it down-and then is never thought of again. Whenever I get busy work I just want to rip it up, if I’m in school to learn from a teacher then that teacher should teach, not sit on her/his butt.
Casey(Sly)
Busy work is work given to give the teacher a reason not to pay attention or teach a class. I don't mind doing work, but I don't like to constantly have to do work every night when there are other possibilities in presenting the lesson. FOr example, lectures, class actvities, seminars, etc. Eventually doing alot of work can get tiring and as time goes on people will just stop doing it. Busy work and alot of work are similar to me.
busy work sucks anus honestly......there is absolutly no relavent point to even have it....our proposal and class project (MOVE) is to "GO GREEN" but how do we expect to accomplish that with teachers assigning busy work wasting exta paper(TREES)that most students dont even waste their time doing anyway?!
in stead of it being called and considered busy work i think teachers should make it extra credit instead to give the students the opportunity to get their grade up if they dont do so well on an exam or something of the sort.......
~4ng!3~
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