I'm such a conformist. I did my homework because they told me to, and because I didn't want any grief about it. At least in school. At university, it was more precisely calculated.

Same here. Plus, it's not like it was terribly onerous.

When I was teaching high school, I counted homework towards the grade, because I thought it was good training for responsibility and meeting deadlines, and because some students can have comprehension of the subject but freeze on the tests. I assigned homework because I thought that a continuum of working on the subject was more beneficial to long-term retention than cramming for a test.

Laura, my sympathies to you. School work always turns into a bone of contention, ever when it is graded. It took my daughter a long time to admit that school was important. It really sank in when she found out that if she wanted to get her GED in Wisconsin, she couldn't do it until her senior class was due to graduate anyway, so she may as well finish out her last year of high school. She even managed to pull in As and Bs; I think she even surprised herself.

As for me, I did well in school to prove I was better than my older brothers. Such a competitive little creep. Once both of them were done with school, I started slacking more. But when my grade in Pre-Calculus dropped to a D, I decided to change my mind and get my grades just for me. Still, I often got As with Unsatisfactory for effort because I was rotten about doing any homework that wasn't graded.

vw, glad to hear you've made it through the day so far. Keep it up!

I did my homework out of threatened pain of death. Very serious issues in my house about education and how I'd 'never be anything.'

Just recently, I uncovered some of my father's report cards. Funny how my mostly As with some Bs & ONE C throughout my non-university grades were never enough for the fella who achieved nearly all Ds and Cs. Oh, except for a B in "Boys Cooking." Rot his hide.

I don't think I knew you could not do homework until I was in high school. I didn't know until high school that not everyone went to college either, or at least I didn't really know.

At my high school, you couldn't read at detention except homework or textbooks.

You can not do homework? Who would want to do that?

You can not do homework? Who would want to do that?

Hee. I was never bug-driven, but I can't imagine, while under my parents roof, even daring to have that thought.

I was a horrible, willful child who didn't do homework or most of the projects I was assigned. Well, the first two grading periods in middle school I had As and Bs, it got progressively worse until I barely passed. No amount of punishment could do anything to change that, granted look back some of the problem was from my crippling depression, but the rest of it was just willfullness.

I didn't like to do homework, I didn't want to do homework and I wasn't goign to do homework. any type o fpositive or negative reinforcment was met with "I don't care."

This. I had enough knock-down-drag-outs about how Dad should just ignore all those Unsatisfactory effort marks -- if I was getting 100s on the tests, why should I expend any more energy than I had to? If there had been no grading at all, fugeddaboutit.

When ita was talking about her boss's comments in Natter the other day, this (my experience with this) came to mind. In elementary school, the default grading system was E(xcellent), S(atisfactory), and M(inimal), and it was a mix of progress, achievement and effort. My mother was looking at two of the five little girls on my street who were getting more Es than I was, but couldn't (academically speaking) walk and chew gum at the same time. When third grade rolled around, she insisted I be graded by the A/B/C scale, which was offered, but discouraged.

Suddenly, I was getting all As in every catgory on my report card, and each and every A was accompanied by a 2 for effort. She told me if I could get As without trying, that I shouldn't sweat it.

I hated homework of the busy work sort, and avoided doing homework as much as possible until we got past the busy work stage and into the fun stuff, like essays and lab write ups. Not too shockingly, I hate work of the busy work sort in general.

I shoulda had Cindy's mom -- of course, the worst part of all that work ethic, don't just coast simply because you can, stuff was that dad turned out to be right.