French president wants to ban homework as unfair to poor kids

By David McElroy · October 17, 2012

France’s Socialist President François Hollande made French students happy this week with a proposal to ban homework.

Is this just a clever ruse to win the votes of those students when they’re old enough to vote? Apparently not. It’s ideological — an attempt to make things more fair by preventing educated and affluent parents from helping their children. No, seriously. I’m not making this up.

Hollande and others who think the way he does believe that homework isn’t fair because kids from affluent families can get help from their educated parents, but kids from “disadvantaged” (poor and uneducated) families don’t get the help they need. So the solution is to make sure the kids from the better families can’t take advantage of their parents’ help anymore. According to Hollande’s proposal, all school work will have to be done at school. To be fair.

To implement his sweeping plans, Hollande plans to hire thousands more teachers and increase the number of hours that kids are in school each week. It’s unclear whether he’ll actually be able to implement the plan, but it’s what he’s pushing.

I have to tell you honestly that I don’t have an opinion about whether homework is a good thing for kids or not. I have no idea whether it helps them learn. When I was in school, I rarely did homework. I was pathetic, actually. Sometimes I’d slap out some semblance of the work during homeroom or between classes. Other times, I’d make up elaborate “dog ate my homework” lies. (I actually remember having to stand and explain to the class in the second grade why I didn’t have my homework. My story was creative, but probably not believable.)

I never found homework useful, but that might have been because I was academically lazy or perhaps because the work seemed too simply. I just know that it seemed useless. So if anybody would be inclined to ditch the whole idea, it’s me. But I know people who are far more qualified to comment on that than I’ll ever be. I’m just an overgrown kid who hated homework, not an expert.

If homework is useless busywork, let’s ditch it. But if it’s useful to educating children, then keep it around, even if kids with better-educated parents are more likely to get help at home. Despite the socialists’ dreams, we can’t make everybody just alike — and we can’t create “equality” by dragging some people down to a lower level.

Let’s be honest. Life isn’t fair. It’s not ever going to be fair.

It’s not fair that some men are better-looking than I am. As an unattractive man, I demand that we surgically alter the faces of the model type of guys — so we’ll be equal. It’s not fair that the genes I got from my mother make it really easy for me to gain weight and make it hard to get rid of it. So I demand that skinny people be forced to gain weight. Or at least wear a “fat suit” around all the time. It’s not fair that some people are born smarter than others. How about if we perform lobotomies on the smart kids to make sure they’re just as slow as the worst in class? Or give them “stupid drugs,” maybe. (Wait. We have television for that, don’t we?)

Some people are smarter or prettier or more athletic or more something than others. People aren’t all the same. We can’t make them all the same. And it would be horribly mistaken to even try.

This isn’t just a French issue. In its coverage of the story, the Washington Post mentions that some in this country oppose homework for the same reason. The obsession with creating artificial equality crosses border, but it seems to be found in those of the socialist or progressive mindset — people who are more interested in imposing a fantasy version of equality than in giving people equal opportunities and letting them compete.

I don’t have an opinion about whether to keep homework or ditch it. I’m definitely in favor of ditching the socialist mindset from which this particular idea springs, though.

Reality isn’t fair. It’s never going to be fair. The best thing we can do is help everybody to live life as well as possible with the cards that have been dealt to him — even the poor schmuck who has to live with a face like mine.

Share on Social Networks

I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

Related Posts