Keep calm and do your homework

     So I'm reading an article today about cities all over America pushing to ban homework, the basic argument being that there's no evidence that homework below the high school level does any good. The article stated that homework causes frustration, exhaustion and even kills a child's passion for learning.
    Just listen to how that sounds. If a child's frustrated by homework....isn't that a reflection of a lack of understanding of the material? Isn't that why he or she should be doing MORE homework. And what about the parents responsibility? If a child's frustrated by homework, Shouldn't the parents be doing more to help? If they can't help, shouldn't they be bringing it to the teachers attention; maybe hiring a tutor! Ya know...being a parent? Sure, not everybody will have the resources to do that but without homework, how will parents measure how well their kids are grasping material before tests or report cards? I guess each parent could hold weekly parent/teacher conferences. That's much more convenient! And when did we become a society that decides that anything frustrating is wrong? I'll bet it was pretty frustrating trying to put a man on the moon, I guess we should have given up on the whole thing the second we realized that the moon was soooooooooo far away.
    And exhaustion? Really? You know who's kids are exhausted? China's. They assign three times the homework as us and that's why our kids look like glue eaters by comparison. They regularly outscore our kids in Science, Reading and Math. (I read somewhere that all three of those were pretty important) Maybe our kids are just lazy. Maybe the feeling of entitlement among our precious babies is so crippling that we're coddling them right out of a good education.
    The knowledge that you're receiving an education that billions of children around the world would give anything to attain should create all the passion a child needs to push through a few take home modules each night. But I understand that a third grader doesn't think that way; and so here again I blame the parents.....and the teachers. A parents role is to maintain that passion. Create that passion if necessary. And teachers, well it's their JOB to create that passion!
    We have to to get over this increasingly American notion that things should be easy and that anything not easy is not worth it. That is such a backwards view of how to achieve success. As a society, we have to push our kids. To have to dispel with this notion ( Thanks for the line Rubio) that  frustration and exhaustion are signs of failure. They're the signs of future success! That frustration will give way to epiphany. That exhaustion will pay off with rewarding career. Keep calm kids....and do your homework.