Posted on 10/16/2012 2:26:08 AM PDT by Cincinna
French President Francois Hollande has said he will end homework as part of a series of reforms to overhaul the country’s education system.
And the reason he wants to ban homework?
He doesn’t think it is fair that some kids get help from their parents at home while children who come from disadvantaged families don’t. It’s an issue that goes well beyond France, and has been part of the reason that some Americans oppose homework too.
Hollande’s reform plans include increasing the number of teachers, moving the school week from four days to 4 1/2 days, overhauling the curriculum and taking steps to cut down on absenteeism.
"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.
Despite the four-day school week, elementary school children in France spend more hours a year in school than many other developed countries because students are there all day, starting at 8:30 a.m. and ending at 4:30 p.m., with some kids staying even later.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
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Everyone must be equally ignorant, it’s only fair!
If you cannot bring the savage immigrant hordes up to the level of the French, than you must knock the French children down to the level of the immigrant, uneducable invading hordes!
This is insane!
The end of France.
In the USA, we have ‘race-norming’, another brilliant innovation of left-wing academia whereby a black student missing 50% of the questions on a test gets a higher grade than an Asian or white student missing only, say, 25% of the questions on the same test.
Now Florida is passing some stupid new law to ‘fix’ racial differences.
The left is insane.
Next he will lower French age to vote to perhaps 8? Very clever man.
This is from The Onion, right?
H/T monkeyshine
This is a truly stupid system designed by leftists to brainwash little kids. For the convenience of parents, little children, as young as five, in France put in 8 hour days, and cram it into four days a week. No athletics, no gym, no music or art, just rote memorization.
Preparing them, among other things, for a 35 hour work week.
They are taught by the parrot method: memorizing and regurgitating information, not learning critical or creative thinking.
The system needs reform, but this is ridiculous!
Is this not disordered reasoning? Should he not be working on correcting the problem with too many "disadvantaged" families?
Instead he is watering down the education of all the children.
Could it be that an ignorant populace are easier to control and manage?
Those little rug rats only go to school 4 days a week?
That is so not fair to the rest of the world’s children.
I am really glad I’m not 12 years old right now, I would be steamed!
Hollande and the Florida Board of Education should put their heads together. As a team, they’d be able to concoct some sure-fire winning education policies. Just imagine the possibilities; race-based grading combined with no homework.
That’s a sure-fire recipe to create the next generation of millionaires from whom Hollande can steal wealth for The State.
Hollande is not being true to his principles. He should be moving to pass a law that giving-homework-help parents have to spend, say, half their help time with disadvantaged family students.
This would also boost shovel-ready jobs, as they hire for a new Ministère de Devoir Aider, massive construction for new buildings where advantaged parents and disadvantaged students would meet, etc. And new taxes to pay for this would create bigger deficits, thus boosting, in a Keynesian way, the French economy. It's a Win-Win!
I never was a fan of homework for school kids....if you spend 6 or 7 hours per day in school...you should never need homework....our schools waste so much time and money if they cannot educate kids with that many hours per day/week/year/lifetime
If there is so much homework...you are better off home-schooling instead
Hollande’s reasons are wrong....but homework really needs to be reduced. In this day and age of computers...I want kids to their schoolwork in school...not at home on a computer
Holy crap, batman! Francois Hollande must have been studying Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”, even though by Hollande’s own standards this would seem unfair, the studying part that is.
When this plan doesn’t work, next there will be a law preventing parents from making their kids do anything remotely educational outside of school. No museums, no reading, no crosswords or math puzzles and all will be required to watch Jersey Shore on TV.
They have to pass an act to ban doing a math, too.
Well, Hollande is a socialist. Growing ignorance means growing vote base.
“Race-norming” is the logical extension of creating a framework where whites/Asians are legally restricted from access to higher education, jobs, and promotions through barriers erected by the government.
We’ll even have a functionally-illiterate minority as president one day just to “level the playing field”...
I agree somewhat.
The assignment of much if not most of the learning to be done at home enables the burden for learning and the blame for failure to be placed squarely on parents instead of the school.
Our most efficient schooling occurred historically when parents had no education at all, and had not the ability to help their children. Without homework assignments, parents still have the option to aid their kids in their education.
"What did you learn today?" Time could still be spent on education in the home, the absence of formal homework assignments does not prevent this.
There simply is no correlation between the quantity of homework assignments and the quality of education.
The most damaging myth however, in our education system is the belief that class size is the be-all-end-all, the critical factor. The belief in this myth gives us the constant clamor for more teachers. This meets union objectives, and has less to do with education quality than is generally believed. In Japan the average class size is 61.
De-centralizing the education system, allowing for more autonomy to set disciplinary standards, curriculi, and testing standards would do more to improve the outcomes. Teachers are ham-strung, with no freedom to innovate and adapt.
I would be willing to say that teachers SHOULD be paid more, and school districts would be able to pay more, if the teachers unions would stop clamoring for more teachers. If increasing quantity were to engender a corresponding increase in quality, then a retailer of any stripe would be able to increase sales merely by hiring more salespeople.
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