Jonathan Rauch “Now for Tonight's Assignment”

According to Jonathan Rauch in his essay “Now for tonight's assignment”, the problem with the American educational system is that student aren’t assigned enough homework. The amount of homework a student gets dictates how well they will do in school especially for older kids, therefore, more homework equals better grades but the opposite is true for younger students. Rauch says American students don't spent an adequate amount of time on homework He states “In 1999 according to the national assessment of educational progress two thirds of seventeen- year- olds did less than a hour of homework on a typical night” Rauch states that Often times some students don't do any homework at all. Tom Loveless, the director of the Brown center, suggest that if the students that did no homework at night did just one hour their grades would greatly improve. Even though educational reform is a big issue more homework as a solution to the problem is overlooked “It seems peculiar that in a country that chatters obsessively about it educational shortcomings the word 'homework' goes all but unspoken”. According to Rauch there are many reasons why the solution of more homework is overlooked “perhaps because people resent politicians' and schools' intrusion into home life”. Rauch mentions in his essay that “ In 2001 seventy one percent of high school and middle school students agreed with the proposition that most students in their school did the bare minimum to get by” Laziness can also be blamed for the limited amount of homework students do per night. The problem will be on the right track to being fixed when Americans are willing to admit that the problem isn't just with the school system but with the lack of homework assigned the students. I agree with the Rauch's point that something need to be changed in the school system in order to improve grades but I disagree that assigning more homework to students will fix the problem in the educational system. In his essay he said