[NemesorZandrak]

When I was at school and that is not USA but Poland. We used to have 6-8 different subjects per day from biology, chemistry, geography, maths and history as examples. Everyone of this subjects converted to at least an hour of homework. What I learned as a kid is that it is impossible to learn all this things at home and I have to filter what is needed the most. Sometimes approximate and sometimes simply take the risk and just read rapidly the book and count on luck. This what most valuable lesson if learned at school. Some of the kids managed to do this 8 hour drill some like me had to adjust and focus on important stuff learn to filter. This gave me ability to play games and program.

[neltnerb]

Thanks for the interesting perspective. I guess I was lucky in having teachers who were more concerned with aptitude than homework (luckily before no child left behind). Almost none of my homework was graded -- this seems to be a european thing? You'd know better than me. So I did the amount of homework needed to learn the material, and no more. Like college.

I do wonder if the big issue is that this approach can really burn kids out on cool areas. How many kids think math puzzles are fun in elementary school when taught as a game? I think actually a surprisingly high number. But when you turn it into work it's a totally different approach, and it really doesn't seem to work.

There seem to be some promising alternative possibilities, like Khan Academy, but when you're giving kids so much work that they can't read Feynman's lectures out of actual interest you're being counterproductive.

[VargardObyron]

There is no marks for having homework, there are only negative marks for not having it.

[gambiting]

Yup, the same here. Teacher would always only check whatever we had homework,not how well we've done it. I don't remember ever getting a grade for my homework,except when I didn't have it - it always meant an automatic "1"(fail) added to my grades.

[VargardObyron]

Same here. I think there is a massive overload of homework. School should focus on important bits but also don't leave general knowledge out of scope and going for full specialisation.