Today’s Assignment

François Hollande (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hi readers,

Here is an interesting piece on the situation in France with regards to the abolition of homework. 

I find this piece interesting, not least for it's reference to the President being a socialist, as if that is something negative! In this day and age, who wouldn't like to address inequities? 

The author should stick to the point and not use his article as a soapbox for his political views. 

What do you think about the article?

by Louis Menand, The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/12/17/121217taco_talk_menand

Here is something you probably didn’t know about France: its President has the power to abolish homework.

In a recent speech at the Sorbonne, François Hollande announced his intention to do this for all primary- and middle-school students. He wants to reform French education in other ways, too: by shortening the school day and diverting more resources to schools in disadvantaged areas.

France ranked twenty-fifth in a new evaluation of educational systems by the Economist Intelligence Unit (part of the company that publishes The Economist).

To give you an idea how bad that is, the United States, whose citizens are accustomed to being told how poorly educated they are, ranked seventeenth.

The French President’s emancipation proclamation regarding homework may give heart not only to les enfants de la patrie but to the many opponents of homework in this country as well - the parents and the progressive educators who have long insisted that compelling children to draw parallelograms, conjugate irregular verbs, and outline chapters from their textbooks after school hours is (the reasons vary) mindless, unrelated to academic achievement, negatively related to academic achievement, and a major contributor to the great modern evil, stress.

M. Hollande, however, is not a progressive educator. He is a socialist. His reason for exercising his powers in this area is to address an inequity. He thinks that homework gives children whose parents are able to help them with it - more educated and affluent parents, presumably - an advantage over children whose parents are not.

The President wants to give everyone an equal chance. Homework is an institution roundly disliked by all who participate in it. Children hate it for healthy and obvious reasons; parents hate it because it makes their children unhappy, but God forbid they should get a check-minus or other less-than-perfect grade on it; and teachers hate it because they have to grade it. Grading homework is teachers’ never-ending homework. Compared to that, Sisyphus lucked out.

To read further, go to: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/12/17/121217taco_talk_menand