If you just sit a kid down with a textbook and a notebook to do math problems, they don’t have any feedback whether what they’re doing is correct. So in that capacity, I can see why it wouldn’t be a great use of time. However, if there is an actual guided methodology to homework, I think you’ll find that students reviewing lessons taught to them will perform far better than students who do not. What society needs to reconcile is why we send kids to school in the first place. Is it to learn? Or is it because adults HAVE to be at work and we need some kind of babysitter? It seems like the latter in North America.