I also never did homework at home and I agree that it was probably for the better.
The only bad effect is that homework got associated with bad feelings (anxiety, stress), because I had to find ways to still get them done without doing them at home. Going into university this was hard to undo.
We also had the rule of one hour per class per day. The funny thing is that this scales up the more time you spend in school, instead of scaling down. In 10th grade, our school days were longer than my parents' workdays and of course every teacher likes to assign homework on top of that, so you can imagine what the expected load was.
In my opinion, homework should be abolished completely. Work should not be taken home. If you want kids to do extra work, have "schoolwork" classes after regular classes, where they can do exercises that teachers provided them that day. At the very least this provides a direct measurement of hours spent on school, provides a clear expectation and forces a cap on how many hours kids spend on school per day. Of course no school would do that because it would be a nightmare.
> Of course no school would do that because it would be a nightmare.
In France if you are a dorm resident in high school you do have such mandatory "schoolwork" classes. You start with a mandatory 10 hours (IIRC) of classes of study that you have to do each week. These are done in specific rooms at specific times, but you can choose when to go (usually there is one hour open during lunch period and 2 to 3 hours in the evenings).
Depending on your grades the amount of mandatory hours goes up or down. If you are good enough it can go down to zero. When I was in high school these hours were largely enough to finish all homework, including the mandatory reading assignments.
The only bad effect is that homework got associated with bad feelings (anxiety, stress), because I had to find ways to still get them done without doing them at home. Going into university this was hard to undo.
We also had the rule of one hour per class per day. The funny thing is that this scales up the more time you spend in school, instead of scaling down. In 10th grade, our school days were longer than my parents' workdays and of course every teacher likes to assign homework on top of that, so you can imagine what the expected load was.
In my opinion, homework should be abolished completely. Work should not be taken home. If you want kids to do extra work, have "schoolwork" classes after regular classes, where they can do exercises that teachers provided them that day. At the very least this provides a direct measurement of hours spent on school, provides a clear expectation and forces a cap on how many hours kids spend on school per day. Of course no school would do that because it would be a nightmare.