I had this discussion with a single mom a couple years ago. She had a son somewhere around 8-12 years old. I really can’t remember his exact age. I remember her telling me all the differences between school nowdays and school when we were kids(in the seventies and early eighties). She told me that kids lug around 40lbs of books or more everywhere they go. they don’t use lockers. They have tons of homework everynight, even in elementary school. There’s no recess. There’s no gym class. They get in trouble if their sack lunch has anything in it that is disposable(bad for the environment). They spend all day talking about the environment, politics, and current events. Then they are handed huge assignments to do at home. the teachers don’t do a DAM THING to teach or help the kids with their assignments. The kids are expected to do all that on their own or with some aftershcool tutor. If the parents are poor, the parents ARE the tutor.
When I was in gradeschool, there WAS NO SUCH THING AS HOMEWORK. Except for spelling tests that is. OR if you were dumb and couldn’t keep up. Otherwise, all your studies were done at school. Sometimes a big writing assignment was finished up at home if you didn’t get it done on time.
NOBODY carried a book bag until 11th grade or later, if at all. There was no text books to take home until 7th grade and then there were so few of them that no book bag was necessary. And you almost never needed to take them home anyway. They stayed in the locker. 80-90% of all homework was completed in study halls...up until about 11th grade, when writing assignments became more involved and classes became more difficult. Test time was a little different. there was always cramming for a test the night before. But that’s about it.
And that 40 lbs of books and hours of homework are based on defective pedagogy that make it impossible for children to learn effectively. For example, here is an lucid exposition of what passes for math in government schools today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI
Virtually no one could learn enough math this way to be able to be a scientist or an engineer.
And there there is “whole language”...
Homework in the school system where I went was, from 7th grade on, centered around essays for english, research reports for social studies, and practice work for math. That’s it, and that’s all that should be needed.