im 60. Child of 60s wrt primary education.
no homework for infants in those days at any school I (plus siblings) went to (and we moved around a lot).
I was a slow reader, so mum did do a lot of reading with me and then it clicked and I became a book worm and speed reader. But spellings, like times table was a fecking waste of time for me…I have a spelling blindness (runs in family) and zilch short term memory for numbers. Yet I have a joint degree in maths and chemistry, spent a lifetime working professionally in STEM including writing long and complex tech docs. My spelling is still crap, but no amount of writing out3 times to correct all the way through school ever did solve that…I have a visual memory and can’t “see” all the vowels and little curvy letters…words like “decision” were a nightmare for me until spell checkers came along (I had to check that 🤣🤣) .
whilst good mental arithmetic is very important and literacy is vital, the drudge of spelling lists and timetables with my own kids was sole destroying, in the same way for me as it had been a form of mental torture homing right in on the 2 skills I was most useless at, and making me think I was crap at maths for years and years.
I told my kids school I was not going to do their homework for them. If they weren’t old enough to read and carry out instructions by themselves, and do work themselves, the school was de facto setting me homework and it wasn’t going to happen. I worked long hours and was carer for my husband who had severe and enduring mental illness by then. I told the school that my job was to nuture curiosity, create discipline and help my kids to learn in using a variety of methods . I took that bit bloody seriously and did a lot of extra curricular stuff with them. But nope, I never did homework with them until late primary age where they could ask for help when they got stuck, after trying to do it themselves.
This wasn’t laziness. Once they were doing homework I’d spend a lot of time with them, I particularly enjoyed 😉🤣🤣 learning about economics, music theory and electronic circuit boards, which I had somehow missed in my own education, I latter proof read and advised on 3 degree thesis for them and another for a long term girlfriend of one of them, plus 2 master thesis. I have some rather specialised knowledge now on GIS or radiation environments in exoplanets atmospheres . I still waiting for that to be useful. 🥸😝In the meantime I still support them with interview practice when they change jobs.
BUT, I grew up with very educationally minded and supportive parents, and in turn I was very focused and engaged in my kids education. And that makes the difference. They had no doubt education and learning was key. And that school was critical. The teachers, once recovered from the blunt “no I will not be doing that” soon had sense to realise that I was doing mental maths and stuff to help with literacy in other ways.
I think where homework comes into play with younger kids is where parents don’t or won’t support their kids education otherwise. Parents who are unengaged, or even maybe have no experience of the opportunity ducstion csn bring. Parents who wouldn’t read to and with their kids unless told to by school, parents who don’t encourage their kids to do play involving maths, literacy, the arts, music etc . This is who these homework regimes were introduced for. But the utter crapness of teaching by route timetables and spelling is a hill I will die on to never do. It only works for some kids who think that way and can completely disengage kids who don’t think like that. It’s sheer laziness by schools to churn out lists of words or timetables each week without thought or intent. Kids that age need to have fun and engage to learn anything. As do adults for that matter