Three years ago, President François Hollande of France shocked millions when he proposed abolishing homework nationwide. France, once a global forerunner in educational standings, had gradually dropped in rankings to become merely average. Hollande believed that homework was part of the problem, and that eliminating it was the first step to reinvigorating France’s student body.
His reason? Hollande, a socialist, emphasized that homework was causing disparity between the performances of the rich and the poor. Students with more frugal backgrounds or difficult home situations were believed to perform worse in school due to an inability to seek help from their parents. With the doing away of discrimination at home, an area the educational system cannot directly influence, everyone would be treated equally in the classroom. “Work should be done at school, rather than at home,” Hollande said.
Other discussed benefits of homework’s elimination include the freedom to participate in more extracurricular activities and spend time as one wishes.
Homework has always been a thorny issue and discussion topic for students and teachers alike, but an executive-level addressing on the topic is nearly unheard of. Hollande’s announcement generated a lot of buzz in the following weeks concerning the radicalism of the idea’s scale, and frankly, how he had no idea what he was doing. He really didn’t.
The advantages of homework’s existence far outweigh those of its absence. While extravagant piles of homework do encourage students to slack—according to researcher Harris Cooper, any more than 10 minutes per grade level of homework a night will have diminishing returns—such a scenario can easily be averted with effective implementation by teachers.
Homework tests students’ abilities to manage time and their level of responsibility. It is a memory aid, reviewing both material covered in class and its applications. Students who neglect homework in a more rigorous course are throwing away opportunities to learn, and will inevitably have worse results than the ones who follow along.
Hollande suggests that all learning can occur in school. More schoolwork, however, will replace the independence encouraged by homework, resulting in more concentrated and less varied methods of learning.
Meanwhile, a more conventional benefit of homework’s elimination—free time—is in direct contradiction to Hollande’s stated purpose of homogenizing academic potential. The rich have significantly more cultural opportunities outside of school, and with the elimination of a time commitment, they receive a far greater boon than the less well-endowed. To many socially disadvantaged students, performing well in school is all they have, and homework is a conduit to achieve their goals.
Hollande’s claim that socially disadvantaged students are unable to take advantage of homework’s benefits is not only unsupported, but does not account for a personal drive to succeed. Parents in a difficult situation should be more, not less, likely to aid their children because their success in academics comes as a great joy to them when other successes are rare. Although families in disadvantaged situations are exactly the target of France’s homework reform, they were some of the strongest voices against it.
Hollande’s proposal is still in limbo, and it remains unclear if it will ever pass, despite the president’s fervent promises.