Comment Keep the kids longer and don't send homework (Score 5, Insightful) 161
Keep the kids longer and don't send homework.
For many children, success in school depend on 1-on-1 help with homework. In many households, parents are not able to provide that help due to work schedule or their own lack of education. Depending on homework seems to disproportionally affect children living in poor, uneducated households. Those children grow up less educated and end up with a lower paying job, so when they have children of their own, the cycle continues.
A great example of this is the very debate over "the core curriculum". The debate's loudest voices are from parents that just don't understand what the new methods are trying to accomplish. The parents all agree their child should be taught math, so the debate should be between educators on *how* to do it. I guarantee you that there would be next to no debate if parents were not asked to help with homework. If we limit what we teach to what all parents understand, then we're done. Turn the lights off and crawl back into our caves.