Culturally normalized cheating. Also gives advantage to those with rich parents who can afford the time.
Should schools offer extra tutoring and support for kids and families that need it? Sure. Should people limit what they learn at home or out-of-school? No.
You'd be even more surprised to learn that learning can happen anywhere, anytime and from anyone in any kind of form.
Helping kids at home with school work as a parent is not only accessible to rich families. You should help your kids when they really need it regardless of your socioeconomic background.
Now if you're talking about personalized/paid tutors outside of school, then yes - it's much more accessible to richer families but there is fundamentally nothing wrong that. What you decide to do with your kids outside of school is your choice.
I'm not going to deny that schools can probably do better, but telling people you need to be rich to help your kids with school is, in my experience, not true. I think the bigger problem for many is relationship dynamics - most parents I know lack the patience to help their kids with homework.
Very well; I grant it. Now, does that invalidate the rest of my point in any way? Some kids are still going to have a large advantage over other kids, whatever the cause. If teachers are aware of this, would this be a reasonable way for a teacher to handle education? To just dole out homework, and leave any help or not to the vagaries of chance depending on that kid’s home situation? And any kids getting help would probably getting this consistently over other kids, giving some a huge permanent advantage over a long period of time. Why would teachers do this? I chose, instead, to charitably assume that teachers meant for homework not to be done with assistance by parents or tutors. In which case “helping” would indeed be cheating.
My father died when I was five. My mother never finished high school and worked in a medical factory. She still found an hour to try an teach me and help me learn (even when I was beyond her upper skill limit).
Nothing about helping someone better understand something is cheating. Helping your own child? That is just natural. I find what you said revolting.
If you want to argue that the teacher understands that parents are helping their kids with the homework, then:
1. Why aren’t teachers sending study aids, pedagogical material, etc. to the parents, on order to aid in the further education of the kids? Why are teachers universally acting as though kids are supposed to do the homework on their own?
2. This would still only help kids with rich parent who can afford the time to be a part-time teacher to their kids.
In summary: If teachers assume that kids do all their homework themselves, unassisted, then “helping” is (culturally normalized) cheating. If teachers instead assume that kids get help from their parents, it would be burdening kids with poor and/or busy parents with a severe disadvantage.
I'm sure you also know that not all school districts, teachers, and children are equal. Some are funded better than others, some are better trained than others, and some learn in different ways than others. If my child is struggling for one reason or another, I am going to be engaged in several ways. First, I may speak to the school and/or the teacher to understand the details. Second, I may speak to my child about their assignments and offer to explain unclear concepts to them. I won't take a pencil and start solving the problems for them.
Please don’t do that here.
> children that have active and engaged parents have an advantage over those who do not.
You’re not answering my questions, or responding to my summary. Either teachers are aware of this – in which case teachers should logically help the parents, not arbitrarily assigning homework to kids – or teachers are unaware, in which case parents helping kids is skewing teachers’ perceptions of the kids’ abilities – i.e. cheating. I made the charitable assumption that teachers are acting reasonably based on what they know.
> I won't take a pencil and start solving the problems for them.
But this is what the stereotypical, commonly depicted, behavior is. It may not be universal, but I am sure it is not uncommon.