Do people who ask for homework help know it is important to give BA?

Question

I give quite a few answers in homework help under my two screen names, and I always love getting a Best Answer from someone I've helped. A lot of older users of Answers won't give homework help because they think kids are rude and don't bother to award Best Answer when they got good help. I think homework help is about the same as the other categories, people are either rude or polite, kids or not.

If you answer this question: It's not a poll. It's a chance for you to answer why older persons who know lots of stuff should want to give homework help and stop thinking that it's not appreciated. I'll try to pass it on if you can be convincing!

Homeschooling mom: Wonderful! Keep doing it. Your kids are not the ones that need help. Sadly others do.

To the people who are opposed to giving "exact" answers: I don't do that either. I am talking about "help" in the tutoring sense, not the sense of spoon-feeding information to be copied without being understood.

Also: I really don't care about the points, either. But getting a five-star BA with a comment that says "you helped me get an A+" really makes my day.

Answer 1

im a junior in high school but im a pretty intelligent person so i help out people here on subjects that i know. its a give/take situation. when i ask a question someone usually helps me out so i feel that i should help out other people on Y!A. just my opinion.

Edit: I also feel that the help worth the BA award is not the help that just gives an answer but rather the help that people like myself give when they explain the steps required to achieve that desired result.

Answer 2

Well for me personally the reason I don't answer homework help questions is because I feel it is a parents responsibility to help the child and not strangers.

I'm a homeschooling mom of 3 & know a lot of schools may over load kids with homework these days. But how is a child learning if they are asking strangers to help them? If you need help with a worksheet the reason you need help is you don't understand what you are to learn. So someone giving you the answer won't help. What the child needs is someone to explain the process of how they are to come up with the answer.

Let's say the child needs help with a math question. Instead of telling the child the answer is: 34 They need to be told how and WHY the answer is 34.

Most people learn these days by sight and hearing instead of reading. Meaning instead of just reading the answer is 34 they need to see the steps it takes to get 34.

Does this make any sense? : )

If a parent can't help a child with the homework then parent and the teacher need to work together so the child will be able to do their homework by themselves. Homework is a way to progress the child's learning process. Or maybe the child should have a tutor or another student who understand the homework to help them. ; )

Boy do I hate sounding so teacher like. lol But it's true.

Answer 3

Well, for one, I really don't care so much about "Best Answer" ... because I think it's pretty pointless. However, it is about the only way a "student" can effectively thank a person who has helped him or her.

On the other hand, I often will NOT give a total answer -- rather tell the student how to GET the answer and/or where to find information. I'm sure THOSE students don't regard that as worthy of a BA because I don't do their work for them.

The bigger question is why should we enable cheaters? It will only encourage them to cheat more later in life and that could have disastrous consequences, depending upon their career choice.

Y!A gives all kinds of community guidelines on how we "answer" questions, but I've yet to see one that addresses kids posting homework assignments.

Perhaps you should pass on the importance of not only awarding a BA, but the importance of answering the questions in a way that HELPS kids do their own work, rather than doing their work for them!

Answer 4

Sadly, I think its not just about being rude and not helping. SOME kids who ask for homeowrk help do so because it seems they are too lazy to open the book and figure out the answer themselves. I think people don't answer not in a attempt to not help, but in an attempt to help by making them look it up and solve the problem on their own.

I don't mind helping people come up with ideas for essays or some other thing that they have to expand upon themselves, but I will not do your math homework because you dont understand it. Sometimes, with the way the questions are asked, you dont know the difference. I do think alot of kids are sincerely asking for assistance in figuring the answer out, but it comes off as just asking someone else to do your work.

Answer 5

I really don't care about the points, I just like to help :)

But those asking for help (and awarding BA) should consider that good help ISN'T an answer you can copy out without any effort. It's an explanation which helps you answer the question yourself.