at the federal courthouse, Judge Otis Wright the Third doesn’t keep us waiting. At exactly ten o’clock he walks into his courtroom, and the bailiff says, “All rise. The United States District Court, Los Angeles County, is now in session. Judge Otis Wright the Third presiding.”
Everyone stands, and I mean everyone. The courtroom is packed with kids, parents, teachers, and reporters.
Mr. Powell came with our whole class. He made a special request for a field trip today. Mr. Hill signed that special request because he thinks the school board is going to win and that’ll prove he was right to suspend me.
Livingston Gulch is there, of course. Mr. Hill is standing next to him.
Otis Wright the Third says, “You may be seated,” and we all sit at once, like we’re doing the wave at a Dodgers game. “In the matter of Warren v. Board of Education, are the plaintiffs prepared to make their opening remarks?”
Mr. Kalman stands. “We are, Your Honor.”
“Proceed.”
“Your Honor, every home in this country has something called a door. The people on the inside get to close it. Lock it if they want. A burglar can’t come through that door. Neither can the police without probable cause. Yet our schools seem to think they have a key to every home in America, and after hours they can come barging in. A dozen sight words for a kindergartener to memorize. Twenty-five math problems for a first-grader to solve. Book reports. Dioramas. And a great white forest of worksheets. What’s their probable cause? That homework increases learning? There’s no evidence for that claim. In fact, the Cooper Study out of Duke University showed that in high school, too much homework can have a negative effect on learning. In middle school, homework has little or no impact on test scores. And in elementary school, homework made test scores decline.”
“Decline?” the judge asks. “Why’s that?”
“Because young brains—all brains—need downtime to absorb what they’ve learned. The only thing homework increases is stress. My client, Sam Warren, is here to represent all the kids in the district, and all their families, who are asking this court to hang a sign on their front doors: NO TRESPASSING. NO MORE HOMEWORK IN OUR HOMES.”
Mr. Kalman steps back and sits down. Livingston Gulch raises his hand.
“Yes, Mr. Gulch?”
“Mind if I ask the boy a question?”
“Go ahead.”
Gulch leans in close to me. I can smell the spearmint gum he spat out on his way into court. Plus the In-N-Out Double-Double he had for breakfast. He screws up one eye at me and says, “What level are you up to on Martian Battle Craft?”
“Master Guardian.”
He looks away from me to the crowd. “He must not be doing that much homework. I don’t know about you, but I’ve tried that game. Can’t get past Junior Cadet myself.”
Laughter rumbles from Mr. Hill’s side of the courtroom.
I feel myself turning bright red.
“I play the game to get my energy out,” I say.
“What’s that, son?” Judge Otis Wright the Third asks.
“It’s a may-do. After my must-dos get done. Playing video games helps me feel better. If I didn’t have so much homework, I probably wouldn’t need to play them that often. And I’d be stuck at Junior Cadet. Like him.”
This time all the laughter comes from the kids’ side of the room.
I’m expecting the judge to pound his gavel for order in the court, but it’s Gulch’s raised hand that quiets everyone down.
“Yes, Mr. Gulch?” Judge Otis Wright the Third says.
“De minimis non curat lex.”
The court is silent. Even Judge Wright is speechless.
“The law,” Gulch translates, “does not concern itself with trifles.”
“Are you suggesting it was wrong of me to hear this case?”
“No, Judge Wright, I am not. But if this delicate boy needs his downtime more than the rest of us, he should apply for a 504 Education Plan. It’s how the district accommodates a child with a learning disability identified by the law. But to aim his arrow at the institution of homework is to waste the time of this fine court. What’s more, the research I saw suggests that homework is helpful.”
He pulls an index card from his shirt pocket and puts on his reading glasses. “Consider this from Harvard University: ‘High schoolers who do their homework earn GPAs that are thirty percent higher than those who don’t. Middle schools that give one to two hours per night have higher test scores than the low-achieving schools that don’t.’ The only reasonable conclusion: homework helps kids learn.”
“Objection!” Sadie shouts, jumping to her feet. Which is pretty funny if you consider that she’s never been to law school. “Mr. Gulch is misinterpreting those studies.”
“Who’s she?” Gulch asks.
“My legal assistant,” Mr. Kalman says.
“Qualifications?”
Sean springs up.
“Captain of the debate team. Winner of six Lincoln-Douglas awards and over ninety speaker points at the state finals.”
Otis Wright the Third tells Sadie to “proceed.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” she says. “Mr. Gulch has a flaw in his logic. First of all, the higher grade point average among students who do their homework might only prove that by doing their homework, they please their teachers, who reward them with higher grades. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re learning anything.”
“What about the test scores?”
“There may be a correlation between heavy homework and high test scores, but that doesn’t mean there’s a cause. The test scores might be higher because the level of education in the homes is higher. Or they might be higher because the teachers are teaching to the test. Or worse, cheating on it to boost kids’ scores. To prove there’s a cause, you’d have to take one class of students and randomly split them into two groups—one gets a lot of homework, the other gets none. Then see which group has higher scores. My guess is it would be the one that gets none.”
“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 okay, but we have to wait for the results.
Then Mr. Kalman comes face-to-face with Mom.
“Did I convince you?” he asks.
Mom thinks for a minute. Then she says, “I still believe kids need to do their homework to compete. But while I might not agree with the message, I’ve never seen my children work so hard for anything.”
She means we did a yeoman’s job. Maybe, for now, that’s all that matters.