While the case of a student suing his school on the grounds that summer homework ruined his vacation might not be the best use of the nation’s overly burdened court system, the lad does have a bit of a point.
On what grounds, exactly, do schools have the right to compel students to complete assignments during those times of the year when students are not under the school’s legal authority?
The school claims these requirements are not an undue imposition since they only apply to honors courses in which the plaintiff volunteered to participate.
While that might apply to this particular Wisconsin jurisdiction in question, it does not settle the matter on a broader philosophical level as some schools such as those in Prince William County, Virginia I wrote about way back in the mid 90s do not make it an honor’s only requirement but rather mandate that all students do book reports and such over the summer.
In the same spirit as that motivating Bill Clinton when he said he opposed tax cuts on the grounds Americans would not know how to spend their own money properly, educrats claim students not given assignments to do over the break would otherwise allow their brains to whither. What of it?
Since the brains belong to the students and under the custodianship of their parents, arent they free to do with them as they see fit when school is not in session? Besides, other than basic reading, who uses most of what they learned in school anyway?
Maybe if schools did not devote so many resources to intellectually dubious pursuits such as diversity appreciation, environmental awareness, and indoctrination in evolution, schools would have more than enough time to teach those essentials education propagandists insist there isnt enough hours in the day (and hence the year) to teach.
For students still ensnared for whatever reasons in the clutches of the public education leviathan, these institutions for whatever reason, these institutions serve as centers of indoctrination in the ideology of total state control. For what other lesson do students learn from summertime homework than that, even when not on duty, their lives belong to those running the New World Order?
Copyright 2005 by Frederick Meekins
