“Really?” Gulch says. “Let us ask someone with perfect standardized test scores. If it pleases the court, we’ll hear now from Cindy Vale.”
A perky middle-schooler in plaid comes up the aisle carrying a covered tray, like a waitress at a five-star restaurant.
“Tell the court, Cindy, if you would, how much homework you get per night.”
“Honestly, I can’t speak for all the other kids, but I spend, oh, maybe, two hours. A little more on Mondays because I believe in getting a head start.”
“Does the homework cause you any stress?”
“Not at all. In fact, I know some kids will laugh at me for this, but I like homework. I appreciate the extended learning opportunities it provides, like in this project we were asked to do.”
She lifts the cover off her tray. “A 3-D biorama.”
We all lean forward to behold a display board with 3-D trees, text, drawings, and birds. It looks like a page from a life-size pop-up book.
“What’s a biorama?” Judge Wright asks.
“It’s a biographical diorama. Or a dioramic biography. I did mine on John James Audubon. The teacher asked us to go above and beyond this time. So I added a feature of my own invention. Robotic birds.”
Next thing we know, these animatronic arctic terns, American magpies, and tricolor herons take off from her posterboard and start soaring around the courtroom, while an American flamingo steps onto the judge’s desk.
There are gasps and ooohs and aahs and whoas coming at us from every side.
Behind me I hear Sean tell Sadie, “We should’ve hired her.”
“Your Honor,” Cindy Vale says, “if you abolish homework, students like me who are hungry for more challenge will get bored. And I’m afraid we’ll fall even further behind other countries. Like China.”
Her birds all come back to roost. She beams a perfect teacher’s-pet smile at Livingston Gulch.
But Catalina notices something and leaps up.
“Look at her fun facts!”
The judge turns to look at the biorama.
“What about them?”
“Fun fact number five: ‘Adopted by Captain Jean and Anne Audubon, John James was given a good education and plenty of leisure time. This extra time made him notice his own curiosity in the nature around him.’ That’s because he didn’t grow up with a ton of homework!”
“Thank you, Catalina,” Mr. Kalman says, “that’s exactly our point. Your Honor, we aren’t suggesting that homework be eliminated so that children can be bored. We’re saying the students and their families should have the freedom to choose how they spend their time outside of school. Sam, if you didn’t have homework in the afternoons, what would you do?”
“I’d play piano. Walk my dogs. Build a treehouse with my dad.”
“And you, Sadie?”
“I’d volunteer at a legal clinic. Start reading for pleasure again and spend time with my little brother.”
He calls to the kids’ half of the courtroom. “What about the rest of you?”
One by one, kids start to answer him.
“I’d bake with my grandma.”
“I’d train my parrot.”
“I’d train my voice.”
“I’d post more comics on iFunny.”
“I’d babysit.”
“Build an app.”
“Teach art to younger children.”
“Learn a thousand digits of pi.”
“Go to Laker Camp.”
“Try out for MasterChef Junior.”
“I would do nothing,” Sean says. “And in doing nothing, I would discover what to do.”
“Your Honor, if homework is the wall standing between these children and their dreams, maybe it’s time to tear it down.”
It’s supposed to be quiet inside a courtroom, but right now it sounds like a gym—and we just hit a buzzer shot for three.
Outside we’re greeted by a crowd of people exercising their First Amendment right to assemble. I’ve been in crowds before, like at Disneyland waiting to get on Space Mountain, or in the seats at Staples Center. But I’ve never been in a crowd that’s there because of me.
Kids I don’t even know come up to say hi. They tell me that even if we lose, they think it’s awesome that I tried.
That feels great. That makes me proud.
And I go on shaking, fist bumping, and high-fiving kid hand after kid hand, until one of the hands is suddenly twice as big.
It’s Mr. Powell. “You’ve shown a lot of courage, Sam,” he says.
Then he turns to Mr. Kalman. “We’re not all monsters, you know. Teachers don’t necessarily want to be assigning so much homework.”
“Why do you, then?”
“Because the district is broke. They cut the school year but not the curriculum. They cram so many kids into our classes, we can’t get everything done between eight and three. And because they tie our jobs, our raises, and our retirement to the test scores.”
If you’re a teacher these days, you get ranked just like an athlete. Only it’s not your stats they rank you by, but your students’ stats. Their test scores. I guess it makes sense. How do you know if a teacher is good? Look at his students’ test scores. But I’ve spent a lot of time in classrooms, and I can tell you that some kids are so bored, they can hardly stay awake. And some can hardly stay awake because they were up too late the night before. Doing homework.
“That may be unfair,” Mr. Kalman says. “It may even be illegal. That’s for other courts to decide. But we shouldn’t be taking it out on kids.”
A reporter for the LA Times wants to know how we think we did. I don’t really know how we did. It’s that same feeling you have right after a test. I guess we did
