I did not take the time to read all the posts in this thread, but I will say that I personally think that eliminating homework is a bad idea. I think it will contribute to the already prevalent " dumbing down of America" and give kids more unsupervised time to get in trouble, watch TV or play video games.

There are just as many jobs where people take home work, as those that don't, so I don't buy that argument.

I also think if you compare the # of hours our children spend in school to those of countries like Japan and some of the European countries, you will see that those children spend more hours a year in school.

I could go on and on.. but won't. I am NOT in favor of the dumbing down of America, and it concerns me greatly that our values as a nation have shifted so much.

I have to admit, I'm somewhat ambivalent about this subject. Both of my kids have had the same 1st grade teacher, and she sends home the same work on the same day, every day of the week;this is great because we know exactly what to expect and none of it is very long or difficult.
Our middle schooler receives his homework assignments on Mondays and the due dates are staggered-Math is due Thursday, most other work is due Mon., reports and projects generally have 2-3 weeks for completion.
Given the amount of hassle getting even these relatively small amounts of homework takes, if it was all done away with my life would be a lot easier.

However,as Serendipity mentioned, there is a long list of things that kids (& parents) want to do, and it seems to me that doing away with homework just so there is more time for all those other things sends the message that the other things are more important than their studies. I want my kids to be kids too-that's why their list of activities outside the school is limited to 1 or 2 things, so they'll have time for outside play and getting enough sleep. Plus, not having to run somewhere every weekend for baseball games or karate competitions or whatever means that we can do other things as a family, like go to carnivals, museums, the zoo, etc. Or just lay around in our jammies and watch movies, lol.

Many jobs require more than an 8 hour day, especially if you want to get ahead...and they don't give you 3 months off. There's nothing wrong with kids learning that you can't always do what you want to do, sometimes you have to do what you have to do whether you like it or not.

My child is in 3rd grade and has homework every single day, math, reading, vocabulary,ect... She is given a lot of it to do over the weekends too. I can't recall how many times I've had to "help" ( do ) her work because its just too much. There is no time leftover for any other after school activities besides eating dinner, shower and sleep.

Do I agree with it , no. Our school system needs to change. Teachers need to teach more in depth so kids understand and cover more work during school hours.

My daughter is in 2nd and gets about 1/2 hour a few math problems, spelling words, reading. Her teacher said right out at the begining of the year if a child couldn't do the 5 problems given then it wouldnt matter if it was 5 or 50they werent getting it and she wasnt doing her job. Which I totally agree with.
Her teacher on occasions has had them do their homework at school or sent home nothing because she knew the evening would be done doing something. Such as Open Houses, Halloween, things like that. Can you tell she has 4 kids in school? LOL

I think if my child had any more than an hour unless they were in high school then I would be talking to the principal or teachers. Unless it was a paper due and they had a few days to do it something like that I understand but I think a 4th grader with almost 3 hours is a bit much. I do think they should have some kind of homework but I don't believe in the excess of it is a bit crazy.

In the case of my one daughter who sometimes gets 2-3 hours worth of homework. She is in the 4th grade. They have different teachers for each subject and none of them are communicating with each other in terms of what they are asking these kids to do each night. So combined they have no idea that they have set these kids up to have hours worth of homework.

There's been a bunch of Harvard and FINE networkj studies done (I'll find the links someday again) that show that some homework reinforces skills taught, learned etc but that there isnt a noticable difference between comprehension, grades, etc between homework and no homework.

IMHO homework should be more of a ever few days thing and to help reinforce good study habits -not this busywork stuff.

I was notoriously bad at turning in homework (even as a small kid- I saw no point in it then) almost to the point of BIIG trouble- and I turned out just fine (graduated 18th out of 879 students in HS)