Requiring homework on a consistent basis is not an evidence-based practice and actually introduces worse outcomes for kids whose parents/guardians are less present, which disproportionately affects poor kids and kids of color.
Why do we do it? Because there are some parents (you know the ones) who will pester the school and lobby for dropping their funding if they don’t see consistent tangible output from their students. If the kids aren’t coming home with half a dozen papers each day and a bag of books, how can we verify that the teachers aren’t just sitting around on their phones all day not doing shit and collecting a paycheck WITH OUR TAX DOLLARSSSSS?!!!?!?!
So, homework largely serves as busy work to signal to parents that teachers are doing things. And the system is designed for parents to actively encourage and participate in the development of the skills required to regularly complete homework independently by high school. Kids whose parents have less free time are inherently disadvantaged, often labeled as bad kids or lazy early on, and can have a seat on the prison train before they’ve entered middle school. It also harms kids’ self esteem and sets an unhealthy precedent for expectations around work-life balance.
There isn’t a single thing that homework accomplishes by accident which couldn’t be accomplished better on purpose via other methods. Fuck homework.
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I've always held this pet theory that if you need to enjoy the field of study before you're ever going to successfully grind it out. My prime example is in our bjj academy we encourage fundamentals students to only practice a move on one side. If they're doing a choke with their right arm, they'll only do it with their right arm. The main line of reasoning is that it's better to be okay on one side than mediocre on both. My theory is that if you can get a glimpse of what it's like to be good, to feel competency, and see what bjj is about, then you'll start to like it. You'll have a massive gap in your technique and when it gets exposed by a better grappler, you'll have the investment and desire to put the reps in and practice a left handed choke. If we made students grind from the get go they'd get bored and leave.
In that same vein, if you could show a previously uninterested child how to build a computer generated image of a higher dimension(al shadow) then you'd then have their patience and desire to learn Python and mathematics. If I got to see the experiments that culminated in the discovery of DNA being a double helix first, I'd be much more open to learning my AT-GCs. Give them a piano and show them how to improv with the black keys and then teach them about sub tonics.
The flip side of this is that people really need to be able to push through at least some stuff they aren't interested in. Some things just kind of suck but need doing.
CW millennial linguistic depravity
spoiler
Think of what people mean when they use the term "adulting"