So I'm sitting at home for yet another sick day (I'm never going to get into college with this attendance record) and what's interesting is that I find myself doing more homework when I'm home from school than on a regular school day. My only possible theory for this is that I'm caught up in my guilt for not being at school, and I think that doing schoolwork at home will somewhat make up for my absence. Which can be true, to an extent.
In his essay against homework, 5th grader Ben Berrafato wrote that "Homework is assigned to students like me without our permission. Thus, homework is slavery. Slavery was abolished with the passing of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. So every school in America has been illegally run for the past 143 years."
...
So, is Ben correct? Are we, the publicly educated children of the United States, enslaved by homework? The World English Dictionary defines slavery as " the subjection of a person to another person, especially in being forced into work". So the question is, are we subjugated to our schools and teachers by being forced to do schoolwork at home?
As I sit at home today, studying the Civil War and the 13th Amendment along with all that other stuff that happened in my AP US History textbook, Ben's essay enlightens me. I am enslaved. I am an enslaved human being. I am forced to do work that I don't want to do and don't get paid for, and I am punished if I don't do it correctly or don't do it at all. Every student who is a part of the public education system is taught that slavery is wrong and that is why it is not in practice in the United States anymore. Because we are a free country, and each citizen has rights to freedom. But now we are the ones being enslaved.
And let's not forget all the work your parents make you do around the house that you do not want to do or get paid for--like putting way dishes. But then again...cell phone: paid. voice lessons: paid. car insurance: paid. Enslaved until you are 18: priceless
ReplyDelete