It's cheating to help a 7 year old understand how to do basic math? Because the alternative is them staring at a paper and writing random numbers down.
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).