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Class Action TRANSCRIPT


ORAL ARGUMENT ON BEHALF OF THE PETITIONERS Sadie Warren: Mr Chief Justice, and may it please the court, this, um – (That word again. But she takes a minute. She thinks it through.)


This is a case about the rights of children to have a childhood. We come before you because one sixth-grade boy, my brother, stood up for that right by refusing to do his homework. As you’ve seen in the days leading up to this hearing, over a million school-age children and their parents have stood with us to ask that you put an end to a practice that not only violates our nation’s Constitution but harms its future.


Justice Rauch: How is homework harmful to the country’s future?


Sadie Warren: There’s too much of it, Justice Rauch. Most of it is quite dull. It takes away the downtime, the dream time, if you will, of the next generation’s developing minds.


Justice Defazio: I thought that homework was designed to reinforce what was covered in class. A ten- or fifteen-minute exercise.


Sadie Warren: It may have been once upon a time, Justice DeFazio. But the fact is, today’s teachers are so stressed by Common Core and the high stakes testing that goes with it, they use homework to get done what they can’t do in class.


Justice Fitzgerald: What’s wrong with that?


Sadie Warren: It doesn’t work, for one thing. Kids are too burnt out by the time they get home. The evidence shows that in elementary school, homework has a negative impact on student outcomes. In middle school it’s neutral. And in high school there may be a slight advantage but at a great cost.


Justice Suerte: Cost to what? Sadie Warren: Childhood.


Justice Rauch: How can we be sure that this homework epidemic, which you imply plagues the youth, is real? Where’s the proof? Sadie Warren: We included several homework surveys in our brief, Justice Rauch.


Justice Renfro: Kids might exaggerate their answers on that survey. We need empirical evidence.


106


Use different voices for each character.


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