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.
It sure would be nice and just if the schools had the means to provide the personalized tutoring most children need to understand. Reality is that the parents do that - and yes, it is an advantage to children with parents able to invest time and skills in their education.
The thing is, what if your parents aren't educated. Because of lots of reasons, my parents didn't even attend high school, they wouldn't have been able to tutor me after I was 10. I really think tutoring should be done in school else it would be very difficult to rise above your previous generations. Also, children should play after school, not do more work IMHO.
So, you're suggesting we limit everyone's potential so a few uneducated/poor families don't feel left behind? That's ridiculous.
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.
They're children, not some neural network you can train. They're all going to learn at different rates, and individualized education in a school setting is simply not possible. You're lucky if there's a breakdown by remedial, regular, and advanced classes. Even within those, kids are going to struggle and need some help outside of class time.
Is this “help” meant only to be available to kids with rich parents, as it is now? Or is the school at fault for not being willing, or able, to teach all kids to an acceptable degree?
I'm surprised to see that you think there is a clear dichotomy between what can only happen at school and at home when it comes to learning.
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.
A person’s “socioeconomic background” may dictate that they don’t have time to spend many of their vanishlingly rare non-working hours on being a teacher. I'm surprised to see you assume that everyone has this kind of time. I assure you that they do not.
What is your obsession with correlating good parenting with generational wealth? You can be poor, have relatively uneducated parents and still be taught by them.
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).
When “generational wealth” correlates directly with “availble hours to spend with the kids”, then it matters a great deal. It’s great for you that your parents did not have to work every waking hour to afford food and living space, but many are not as lucky.
I didn't have tutors or parents helping me with homework when I was in school. Also, bad grades were not tolerated in my household, so I had to keep up.
You had a household where bad grades were not tolerated, but no support in achieving better grades? Sounds like a crappy household/parenting. That doesn't mean everyone else should have a crappy household or parenting philosophy because you managed to get through it.
I do not call this is cheating. but this is a crazy advantage of children. some kids never learned learning is important, parents can let deep in their mind. teachers have some chance, but there are too many kids in classroom.
If parents “help” kids with homework, the teacher will get a misleading view of what the kid has learned and is capable of. Other kids, lacking this “help”, will get worse grades.
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.
You're dying on a very strange hill. Yes, children that have active and engaged parents have an advantage over those who do not. "Cheating" implies that the parents are doing the homework for the child without the child's involvement. Of course, that's not what is happening, and I'm sure you know that.
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.
> 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.