If the success rate of directed research is very low, though, it is true that the more we search, the more likely we are to find things "by accident," outside the original plan. Only a disproportionately minute number of discoveries traditionally came from directed academic research. What academia seems more masterful at is public relations and fundraising.

This is good news--for some. Ignore what you were told by your college economics professor and consider the following puzzle. Whenever you hear a snotty European presenting his stereotypes about Americans, he will often describe them as "unintellectual," "uneducated," and "poor in math," because, unlike European schooling, American education is not based on equation drills and memorization.

Yet the person making these statements will likely be addicted to his iPod, wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans, and using Microsoft Word to jot down his "cultural" statements on his Intel-based PC, with some Google searches on the Internet here and there interrupting his composition. If old enough, he might also be using Viagra.

America's primary export, it appears, is trial-and-error, and the innovative knowledge attained in such a way. Trial-and-error has error in it; and most top-down traditional rational and academic environments do not like the fallibility of "error" and the embarrassment of not quite knowing where they're going. The U.S. fosters entrepreneurs and creators, not exam-takers, bureaucrats or, worse, deluded economists. So the perceived weakness of the American pupil in conventional studies is where his or her very strength may lie. The American system of trial and error produces doers: Black Swan-hunting, dream-chasing entrepreneurs, with a tolerance for a certain class of risk-taking and for making plenty of small errors on the road to success or knowledge. This environment also attracts aggressive tinkering foreigners like this author.

Globalization allowed the U.S. to specialize in the creative aspect of things, the risk-taking production of concepts and ideas--that is, the scalable part of production, in which more income can be generated from the same fixed assets through innovation. By exporting jobs, the U.S. has outsourced the less scalable and more linear components of production, assigning them to the citizens of more mathematical and culturally rigid states, who are happy to be paid by the hour to work on other people's ideas.

Alongside an overemphasis on time is the widely held
belief that homework “reinforces” the skills that students have learned – or,
rather, have been taught -- in class.  But what exactly does this
mean?  It wouldn’t make sense to say “Keep practicing until you
understand” because practicing doesn’t create understanding – just as giving
kids a deadline doesn’t teach time-management skills.  What might make
sense is to say “Keep practicing until what you’re doing becomes automatic.” 
But what kinds of proficiencies lend themselves to this sort of improvement?

The answer is behavioral responses.  Expertise in
tennis requires lots of practice; it’s hard to improve your swing without
spending a lot of time on the court.  But to cite an example like that
to justify homework is an example of what philosophers call begging the
question.  It assumes precisely what has to be proved, which is that
intellectual pursuits are like tennis.

The assumption that they are analogous derives from
behaviorism, which is the source of the verb “reinforce” as well as the basis
of an attenuated view of learning.  In the 1920s and ‘30s, when John B.
Watson was formulating his theory that would come to dominate education, a
much less famous researcher named William Brownell was challenging the
drill-and-practice approach to mathematics that had already taken root. 
“If one is to be successful in quantitative thinking, one needs a fund of
meanings, not a myriad of ‘automatic responses,’” he wrote.  “Drill does
not develop meanings.  Repetition does not lead to
understandings.”  In fact, if “arithmetic becomes meaningful, it becomes
so in spite of drill.”

Brownell’s insights have been enriched by a long line of
research demonstrating that the behaviorist model is, if you’ll excuse the
expression, deeply superficial.  People spend their lives actively
constructing theories about how the world works, and then reconstructing them
in light of new evidence.  Lots of practice can help some students get
better at remembering an answer, but not to get better at – or even
accustomed to -- thinking.  And even when they do acquire an academic
skill through practice, the way they acquire it should give us
pause.  As psychologist Ellen Langer has shown, “When we drill ourselves
in a certain skill so that it becomes second nature,” we may come to perform
that skill “mindlessly,”  locking us into patterns and procedures that
are less than ideal. 

But even if practice is sometimes useful, we’re not
entitled to conclude that homework of this type works for most
students.  It isn’t of any use for those who don’t understand what
they’re doing.  Such homework makes them feel stupid; gets them
accustomed to doing things the wrong way (because what’s really “reinforced”
are mistaken assumptions); and teaches them to conceal what they don’t
know.  At the same time, other students in the same class already have
the skill down cold, so further practice for them is a waste of time. 
You’ve got some kids, then, who don’t need the practice and others who can’t
use it.

Furthermore, even if practice was helpful for most
students, that doesn’t mean they need to do it at home.  In my research
I found a number of superb teachers (at different grade levels and with
diverse instructional styles) who rarely, if ever, found it necessary to
assign homework.  Some not only didn’t feel a need to make
students read, write, or do math at home; they preferred to have
students do these things during class where it was possible to observe,
guide, and discuss.

Supporters of homework rarely look at things from the
student’s point of view, though; instead, kids are regarded as inert objects
to be acted on:  Make them practice and they’ll get better.  My
argument isn’t just that this viewpoint is disrespectful, or that it’s a
residue of an outdated stimulus-response psychology.  I’m also
suggesting it’s counterproductive.  Children cannot be made to acquire
skills.  They aren’t vending machines such that we put in more homework
and get out more learning.

But just such misconceptions are pervasive in all sorts
of neighborhoods, and they’re held by parents, teachers, and researchers
alike.  It’s these beliefs that make it so hard even to question the
policy of assigning regular homework.  We can be shown the paucity of
supporting evidence and it won’t have any impact if we’re wedded to folk
wisdom (“practice makes perfect”; more time equals better results). 

On the other hand, the more we learn about learning, the more willing we
may be to challenge the idea that homework has to be part of schooling. <!-- #EndEditable -->