Summer Homework
While I sit here and attempt to do some AP chem work, I ponder: what is the purpose of giving summer homework? I think I have, after hours of long thought (AKA the amount of time it took me to type that last sentence), devised a solution to my own ponderance.

Obviously, summer work began out of a giant conspiracy theory. I am gonna blame this one on the Republicans and Nixon, because they make good targets. I have no doubt that Nixon came across the idea of summer homework one day when he heard a high-school-age child state in early June "I hate homework, thank goodness it is nearly summer, because then we wont have any homework to do!" Nixon immediately realized the great potential for power and political gain in summer homework. However, as of yet, he did not have a reason to unleash his newest great weapon, so he just sat on the idea for a while. The need for the new weapon did not arise until Nixon realized that his second term as president would be cut short, for he would have to retire due to his role in the Watergate scandal. Summer work would play out into his plan thusly: Nixon, always devoted to his right leaning Republican party, sense that his party would take a great hit in the polls as a result of this scandal. He knew that, in order for the Republicans to remain a power player in congress, he would need a strategy more universal and more effective than his famed "Southern Strategy", and one which would survive for many long years to come. Nixon also knew that young voters, those under the age of 25, were, as they still are today, predominantly left-leaning. He hypothesized, however, that unhappy young people would never turn out to vote come November. And then he remembered, kids love summer because there is no homework! If he could ruin that part of the summer, he would lower the moral of 17-25 year-olds enough to make them not vote! (The moral affects of the college and high school summer work would carry over until the person reached age 25, at which point they usually had recovered) Before anyone could wink, he began to secretly enact his final actions as president. Knowing a Republican, Ford, would take over the presidency at least for the next few years, he knew that they had enough time to enact "Operation Un-vote". Nixon informed Ford of what he would have to do, and resigned the next day.

Ford began to spread the word in visits throughout the country that "summer homework really makes those kids brighter." "Oh really," they would reply. "Of course, studies have proved it," and like that, it was done. Word spread over the next two years, and by the time Ford left office, summer homework had become a phenomenon across the country.

And it worked! While it was not enough alone to make up for the ground lost by the scandal, it significantly cut the losses of the Republican party in that election, and the elections to come.

But what about the fact that summer homework doesn't actually work, you ask? The answer to this brings me to part two of the explanation for the original question. You see people, it did not take very long for the teachers to learn that Ford was wrong and that summer homework does not actually make the students brighter, only more miserable. However, the teachers all found that they gained a strange feeling from assigning the summer work. The sadistic teachers all realized that they loved the feeling of unnecessarily assigning hours and hours of work to be done during the one time which is supposed to be sacred in a child's life, the summer. It was a feeling of empowerment, a feeling of strength, a feeling of finally being listened to. The teachers grew to love the feeling. They became addicted to it. It became that all year all a teacher could do was wait and hope for summer to come, so that they could assign more summer work, and each year they assigned more and more to try and feed their addiction. And the addiction simply grew and grew, year by year. The addiction and its growth eventually became a tradition, and the teachers convinced themselves that this act was in actuality a sort of rite of passing, not that they had become addicted as one might to cocaine. With summer work being a rite of passing, and not a drug to feed an addiction to power, teachers had accidentally come across a way to procreate their habit, to give it unknowingly to the younger, would-have-been-nicer teachers. After a few generations of passing on the drug, summer homework, it became an imbedded part of the system. Administrators are unaware of its pointlessness, and teachers' wills are no match for their own addictions. Summer homework is here to stay, and only a long, hard, and massive public awareness campaign to expose the truths I have laid out for you here in this Blog, could ever change that.

Well, thats all for today boys and girls, hope you both enjoyed and learned, and had your thirst for an explanation of the origin of summer homework quenched. Have a nice last day of summer

JMAL
- posted by Alex @ 8/31/2004 11:28:00 PM