Homework’s Detriment

Imagine yourself in a situation where, no matter what you do, you’re stuck doing things that are repetitive, just to prove to someone that you’re actually doing the work that they set for you to do. Now, imagine that you’re faced with a choice: the work they told you to do to prove that you’re doing your work, or doing the actual work. It’s a choice that students make all of the time, to their detriment.

In a wonderful article written by Alfie Kohn, he discusses the subject from a side of the story from which students are not allowed to be on: the lack of benefit. He makes claims in this article that, with the research that he’s done, that homework has very little practical value because it’s a kind of “shotgun approach:” designing one assignment for a variety of people, when these same people learn in as many ways as the class roster count. It’s a true shame.

He also brings up the concept of homework as robbing families of their time together, which is a valid concern. I, being a college senior myself, understand this fully, as my homework would gladly eat up three quarters of the time I have to myself every evening for family time, dinner, and personal projects, let alone my job on the side. I think that the problem that Kohn wants to illustrate is that we are not allowed to think freely after class; we are forced into a strict pattern of thinking like someone who we cannot think like, and as a sacrifice, we must give up our loved ones.

At the elementary school and high school level, I can personally see a potential argument for homework: it focuses a group of students who are forced to be there by law, and by providing these assignments they create a culture where doing your work can earn you the extra grade necessary to get a higher grade. However, Kohn again addresses this: homework can add to the frustration that school provides them and makes it so that they may not want to do the work. This is a definite concern, as most of the younger people I run into on a regular basis express their lack of concern about their education, or worse, their feelings of inadequacy to complete the work assigned, and therefore get discouraged or give up.

At the college level, it gets worse. It is as though teachers do not understand that we have paid for our education, and deserve to get a better level of care than is being provided for us. As another counterpoint, some college students work for a living, and have no time for fifteen assignments per week on top of research and readings. We have to sacrifice something on the altar, and for the people who don’t want A’s, it’s the homework. For those of us that do want A’s, it’s the readings; we don’t have the time for all of it, and Sparknotes makes it easier for us to defeat this problem without sacrificing too much.

I ask this question: if homework creates a culture where nothing gets done, and it’s not a district or school requirement, why give it?

Alright Chap, Just Let Me Check My Twi…WHAAAA?

Alright folks, here’s your homework: read this, and then check back here.

Done? Ok. Here’s my diatribe for the day. Everyone must understand the ramifications of not having free speech, correct? We’ve been indoctrinated with these ideas since our early childhood, and most of these ideas are correct. It’s free speech that has freed quite a few countries from their tyrannical overlords, and it’s free speech that allows me to write this very document. As someone who has studied and read a lot of things, some of which the world might find very unsavory, I appreciate their existence and would like it to continue.

However, it seems that every conservative government in existence would like to keep us incredibly stupid and naive, and that’s a shame, really, because an educated public in a fair democracy leads to the production of some great ideas and practical applications of those ideas (Look long and hard at the monitor you’re reading this on, or the phone you have in your hand at the moment, and you’ll understand this). The point that I’m trying to make here is that the British government is commiting an atrocity on its own people, that being to threaten the restriction of their free speech for their own protection.

The consideration this idea has recieved is enough to scare me, but it’s not just the idea of censorship and restriction of speech. That right is a fundamental one, and it has been proven time and time again that censorship doesn’t work. In this particular case, the PM posits that social media is to blame for the organization of the rioters in London, and therefore having the ability to unilaterally cut their access to these services is something to be desired by the government. The article also cites that BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), an encrypted messaging service, helped the rioters and asked Research in Motion to help them censor and monitor those posts, as well.

Here’s the problem: it’ll never work, no matter how safe it makes David Cameron and the British public feel. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, BlackBerry Messenger, the future iOS application iMessage, AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, IRC (Internet Relay Chat) rooms, Usenet, imageboards, vBulletin, and yes, even good old email, are all currently available methods, both from a desktop platform and a mobile platform. Even if we censor them all, there is no guarantee that these people will use these services, or that a suitable alternative might be used in their stead. Ultimately, people wanting to do bad things desperately enough will find a solution that fits them. It’s a diverse world, and there have been a lot of solutions designed.

Considering this, what good can Prime Minister Cameron hope to do by censoring these public outlets? None at all. In fact, the free exchange of information can be used for the betterment of society; in this case, Twitter might have been used to organize an attack, but people might be able to use these services to warn others about locations in particular danger, or otherwise assist a frightened public.

I affirm freedom of speech, to everyone, for everyone, at every time. That remains our most important freedom, and I hope that those of you in Britain work against any bans. Take your example from America: we traded our freedoms for security and have neither. Don’t follow us on this one, trust me.

Filler Material

This, my friends, is the beginning of a new idea, a new place for my musings. I’ve gone other places and done other things, but ultimately, I want this to be the place where I ramble and muse and create. Finding a specialized place to post just one thing is largely irrelevant to my poor, addled sense of theme and topic. Hopefully soon, I’ll have some content up. I may choose to re-release older material that was once hosted here, but that’s for me to decide later.

 

Onward, my friends — to the future!