"In the name of equality, the French government has proposed doing away with homework in elementary and junior high school."

"French President Francois Hollande argues that homework penalizes children with difficult home situations, but even the people whom the proposal is supposed to help disagree."

ADDED: Emmanuel Davidenkoff, editor-in-chief of L'Etudiant, is one of the critics:

"Poor people want homework because they know that school is very important, and the only chance — the only possibility — they have to give their children a better life is if their children succeed at school.... Mostly, wealthy people don't want homework because when the kids are at home, they make sports or dance or music. They go to the museums, to the theater. So they have this access to culture, which is very important.... In poor families, they don't have that, so the only link they have with culture and school is homework."

What?! Everyone — rich or poor — can make sports or dance or music. You don't even need as much as a ball or a jump rope to have sports. You don't even need as much as a cheap radio or a harmonica to do music and dance. The best American music, dance, and sports have come from the poorest people. Leave the kids alone, let them go out and play, and the forces of nature should do more than wealthy parents taking them to lessons. The only link they have with culture and school is homework... that's so insulting!

Let the kids out to play as long as there is daylight. Isn't that better than holding them inside until they have their homework done? And we wonder why there's so much obesity! They're incarcerated during school hours, then worked through lessons when they get home. And we wonder why there's such a problem with hyperactivity. After dark, how bad is it not to have homework? Let them choose their own books and read if you think they should have more cultural enrichment. That has so much more potential that more lessons from school (which is already appropriating too much of their youthful souls).

By the way, Hollande's equality theory coincides with my own rejection of take-home exams in law school. Students have different life situations, and one can go home to a solo environment and work late into the night. The other has a husband or wife and a couple of children making reasonable/unreasonable demands and nowhere to find quiet and concentration. So my exam is an intense 3-hour session that's the same for everyone. And when it's over, it's over.