Ebonics II: Privilege Boogaloo Student: I’m sorry about that. What do you think I could do to improve my performance? Teacher: Well, you could boost your socioeconomic status. Otherwise, the deck’s extremely stacked against you getting any of these questions right. The paper doesn't say "get rid of homework" it says "homework exacerbates existing socioeconomic inequality." The argument, then, would be to focus education on resources available in the classroom, when all students are equal, rather than at home, when they obviously aren't. This isn't fucking rocket science. In short, "no child left behind" and "optional homework" are not going to peacefully coexist. psssst you're saying the quiet part out loud The ENTIRE FUCKING POINT of the educational system is "to achieve class mobility." This is why the high school movement happened - you aren't going to take over the world with agriculture, you're going to take it over with manufacturing until you can't take it over with manufacturing you take it over with information. Your society needs to move to higher and higher specialization or else your lunch will be eaten by those countries that do. This is hardly controversial. Somehow suggesting that no, the whole point is to achieve striation is the baldest bullshit the New York Times has ever published. This might be why people write papers looking for ways to improve it? why indeed Look, I recognize that I'm in a pissing match with three academics from 'respected scholars at top-tier universities' but I have an MFA from Columbia and used to teach creative writing at USC so listen up So practice - swimming - gymnastics - chess - drama - basketweaving - clarinet - tai chi - whateverthefuck - what the hell does this have to do with multiple choice questions about the Louisiana Purchase Holy shit what if they went to work instead? Holy shit what if that's what a lot of them are doing already ...especially if you've already argued that it's pointless make-work... ZOMFG dude the whole point is that only rich kids do that ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I did a fuckton of homework. First through sixth grade. Sixth grade? Mrs. Krantz made us do two hours of homework a night and sixteen hours of homework over the weekend. I would have up to three five-paragraph essays in Sixth. Fucking. Grade. Why? "because middle school is hard! You need to be ready!" Seventh grade hits and you know what? No fucking homework for one and a half semesters. By the time that homework rolled around, I wasn't about to put up with their tedious bullshit makework so I did the absolute fucking bare minimum. I calculated, thanks algebra, the number of assignments I could completely blow off in order to maintain a 3.0 because fuck you. I told the teachers the exact same because fuck them, too. I was thrown out of at least one class per quarter, permanently, because no really, FUCK YOU. Fortunately my aunt was the registrar so I had absolutely no problem changing around what classes I was in whenever a teacher decided to play who run Bartertown. Because that's what the "homework debate" is about: "do this bullshit makework BECAUSE I SAID SO." Students should do the bullshit makework BECAUSE THE TEACHER IS IN CHARGE. You want poor kids to be swamped in homework so they learn early and often that whitey runs the table and that if you don't play the game you get fouled out. My kid? My kid's in private school. She doesn't have homework. Fuckin' teachers don't even have lesson plans, really. They've got a basic outline of what they're covering it, how they intend to cover it, but if they get sidelined by questions from the students, they deep-dive into those questions in such a way that the necessary education and lessons are covered in such a way as to foster the investigation of the students. Private school kids I hung with in college knew fuckall about the rote shit us public school kids were required to learn. They were hella better at synthesis and analysis, though. Divorced from the "eat a stack of bullshit and then squeeze out some pearls" methodology of public school, they actually learned things. What do you think - can poor kids learn stuff in school if it's more than an avenue to teach them The Man is forever in charge? Well we sure as shit did up to WWII. Because, again, that was the point. Why a rich expat from a wealthy dictatorship with a dad who went to Harvard gets to have an opinion about this is beyond - oh, no it's not, it's the New York Times.Teacher: Hey there. You got half the questions wrong on your homework.
In short, teachers can’t even be trusted to give out optional homework because they’re too meritocracy-brained and will still judge the students based on the results.
From a theoretical standpoint, I mostly agree with Calarco, Horn and Chen’s diagnosis of the American educational system. It does largely function as a way to sort and stratify children into different socioeconomic bands, which, again, in theory, means that it would be helpful for teachers to approach their work with that in mind.
Many richer kids go to private schools that feed into elite colleges that will more or less ensure their alumni will be on the glide path to staying rich. Many poorer kids go to poorer schools that provide them, in many cases, with fewer opportunities that might help them advance socioeconomically. Some portion of middle-class and working-class people, including a lot of immigrants and children of immigrants, pragmatically use the school system to achieve class mobility.
When you break it all down, the amount of class mobility our education system can grind out each year falls well short of what most people expect.
The spoils of academic meritocracy, then, aren’t particularly widespread, which does bring up the question: If we all agree that everyone should go to school and if the class mobility part is working only for some families and not at all for others, why do we structure it in such a competitive way?
But there’s a defense of homework that doesn’t really have much to do with class mobility, equality or any sense of reinforcing the notion of meritocracy. It’s one that became quite clear to me when I was a teacher: Kids need to learn how to practice things.
Even if we could perfectly equalize opportunity in school and empower all students not to be encumbered by the weight of their socioeconomic status or ethnicity, I’m not sure what good it would do if the kids didn’t know how to do something relentlessly, over and over again, until they perfected it
A defense of rote practice through homework might seem revanchist at this moment
but if we truly believe that schools should teach children lessons that fall outside the meritocracy, I can’t think of one that matters more than the simple satisfaction of mastering something that you were once bad at.