Published by: Washington Post
On: 10/15/12
" "Education is priority,” Hollande was quoted as saying by France24.com at Paris’s Sorbonne University last week. “An education program is, by definition, a societal program. Work should be done at school, rather than at home,” as a way to ensure that students who have no help at home are not disadvantaged."
President Hollande of France doesn’t think it is fair that some kids get help from their parents at home while children who come from disadvantaged families do not, so he wants to ban homework. This is cited as being an effort in education reform. Honestly I thought education reform was about changing the education inside the schools in order to make teaching more effective by increasing learning.
The other improvements to change the schools are massive and I can't imagine doing all of them at once. New curriculum, more days a week, more teachers, and dealing with absenteeism.
I don't think this would fly in America. In America we are individuals and as such we feel we have freedom to do things in our private time as we wish, such as by getting help from a parent, by paying a tutor, or by doing test prep at a local or a nationwide franchised business.
If homework were banned in Amercia for the purpose of leveling the playing field by not allowing private study at home businesses such as tutoring companies and publishing companies would complain. Also school teachers who moonlight as private tutors would lose income and be angry as well.
If the goal is to learn and if some kids learn by getting help from parents, that's fine. The challenge is to find ways to help struggling learners. Whether the learner is struggling due to not having help from parents or from not learning from the teacher or whatever, then the schools should try to help those kids. For example how about having free tutoring after school for anyone who needs and wants it? Tutoring could also be done in that half day that France won't be meeting under the new proposal.
Taking away some student's ability to succeed and making more kids fail is not an effort toward education reform in my opinion.