1) my teachers were all incredibly slack by modern
standards (which strikes me as unlikely)
2) I am far, far more intelligent than most people (which
strikes me as highly unlikely)
Is anyone here capable of relieving me of my ignorance?
My impression is that things have changed in the last ten years. We have friends with young kids who have been through interview processes for preschool. Other friends have complained about the academics in their kids' preschool, or kindergarten (academics in kindergarten? Really? I recall playing and napping, and maybe learning the alphabet.) Many parents are concerned with preparing their kids for college while still in grade school, and the in many cases, it is likely the schools caving to the pressures of parents--they feel without homework, their kids won't be properly prepared.
That said, I don't think this is universal. We have friends who teach at smaller private schools that follow a more classical education model, and their students generally aren't required to do large amounts of homework.
I have two children, 11 (grade 6) and 8 (grade 3). The homework is about an hour each night for the 8 year old, and can vary greatly for the 11 year old, anything from 1-2 hours (practicing what they were taught that day) to "projects" requiring about 16 hours of work over 2 weeks. They're both very bright children (yes, I know that all parents say that about their kids).
Do I think it's too much? Tough call. I do think it's ridiculous that my daughter is carting around a backpack to and from school that weighs half as much as she does. Also irritating is that the onus is on the parents to ensure that things get done, I'd rather that my child is taught responsibility than taught dependence but there is a lot of "sign this and return to indicate that your child did the work" kind of stuff.
Lastly, I recall as a child having time in school to do work around projects, and more often than not I had no homework because that time was given. From what I can tell, that kind of time no longer exists (or it does but there is more work).
I also don't recall having homework at all until I was in grade 6. It starts now in grade 1 (every night was about 15 minutes).
Err, isn't it the parents' responsibility to build responsibility in their children rather than the schools'?
My point, probably poorly expressed, was that it's not realistic to expect the school to instill that sense of responsibility in the child, and that the "check and sign this" policy is really just a gentle encouragement to parents to take an active role in their education.
I guess what I was getting at with the irritated part is that without my signature on the homework, it's deemed 'incorrect/incomplete'. This is teaching my children that they must rely on me for their own success. It's not that the school is not teaching responsibility (agreed that's my job), but that it's teaching dependence.
I also suspect that in many cases the work itself isn't looked at, a signature from me is looked for and that's it. If that's the case, it's a situation where the school is giving homework for the sake of giving homework, which I don't think is correct.
We know several other homeschoolers that have done "normal" preschool for their kids, too. I don't think it's an either/or situation--in fact, it may give you some insight on how your kids learn best (we discovered that our son does really well when taught something one-on-one, but can often become frustrated in larger groups).
Truth is: The vast majority of people don't think or behave like the people on this forum(?) do.
Edit: Just for the record nearly all of the software engineers I know scored in the 99th percentile on all of their standardized tests growing up. Obviously the merit of standardized tests can be argued - but I'm guessing you are smarter than msot people and just incredibly humble.
I was regularly assigned over 16 hours of homework (2 hours a night, 6 hours over the weekend) after attending a 34 hour school week. That was 6 hours of mandatory work that I didn't consent to, and that was after several of my teachers stopped giving me homework (I understood math and science problems virtually in one go, by end of class I could be given a random equation made up on the spot by the teacher and get it right, so they quit giving me homework to save their own time).
It wasn't just the school year that was the problem. Once summer hit we'd be assigned 16-20 hour projects by virtually every teacher. Even on a full 12-month 44 hour per week standard, we were still doing far more work than an adult can legally be expected to do by an employer.
The local catholic school board to me, likely where any children I have will be attending (and where my wife and many of our friends attended) sets a maximum of 1 hour for all primary school children. Why this woman's children were receiving 4 hours a night is absurd and reeks of lazy and incompetent teaching. Sadly from my own experiences, I don't doubt it's true.