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Fortunately, by the 10th grade, I met my straight "A" student girlfriend and now wife of 40 years. She grabbed me by the ear, forced me to do the homework, and turned me from a barely passing D student into a solid C student, then on to college. I was one of the lucky ones.
We all know that homework prepares you for the next day's assignment. Children who do not have a support system at home, return to school each day unprepared, get bored, daydream, fall behind, and eventually drop out. An astonishing 50% of all public school children do not finish high school now.
Because of my experience, I firmly believe that we discriminate against underprivileged children when we send them home to one or no parent dysfunctional home and expect them to do the homework. In far too many cases, the only parent at home is their loving grandmother who may have only a third grade education.
My wife, who became an English teacher, thinks I’m crazy, and she thinks, as many others do, that the parents should and could correct the problem. However, seeing the problem go on for several decades, and after experiencing the above life changing circumstances for myself, I believe that the parents are not always able to correct the problem and no amount of blaming and pointing the finger at them will change this.
There is an old story that has forever stuck with me. A group of scientists wanted to find out why Einstein's brain was so superior to other human brains. When Einstein died, they took out his brain to compare it to normal brains. They received brains from rich people, poor people, smart people, dumb people, doctors, laborers, and even common criminals for the comparison. That afternoon they had all of the brains lined up for for tomorrow's comparison. However, in the evening when the cleaning people were cleaning the laboratory, one of them knocked over the table and all of the brains fell on the floor. The cleaning staff frantically picked them back up and tried to arrange them, as best they could in the order that they found them. Naturally, they were not sure if they got them back in the proper order, so they reported their blunder to the head scientist. Upon hearing the news, he stated, "No worry, we should be able to pick out Einstein's brain very easily. It will be the one that is vastly different from the others. Surprisingly, the next day they were not able to pick out Einstein's brain at all. They all looked exactly the same.
All children are equal and have the same advantages on the first day of school. I firmly believe that homework is the missing link between the never-ending cycle of poverty vs. prosperity. It is the support system at home that makes the difference. School children with parents who have the background to help the children with their homework will do well in school and become successful. Unfortunately, most underprivileged children do not have those advantages.
Unless we change this direction now, the poor and illiterate of this country will continue to repeat this cycle until the end of time. Homework has run its course. It was necessary 200 years ago when this country was young and there was only one teacher that traveled from farm to farm. Naturally the teacher could not return for weeks or months, and it was necessary to assign homework. Those days are gone!
How long would you work for an employer who asked you to work hard all day, carry extra work home, and then require your family to help you do it? When you think about it, assigning homework after a hard day's work is cruel and unjust treatment for the children, the parents, and not to mention the teachers who have to grade the homework after a hard day.
Keep the children in school from 8:00 until 5:00. Let the teachers teach the Children, not the parents. Allow parents to drop off and pick up their children from school before and after their jobs. Eliminate the need for busing. Cut down on latch-key kids and teenage pregnancies. Give children, parents, and teachers the night off, like the rest of us!
Tom Sullivan
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