less homework the better?

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I'm beginning to suspect that I am not a visual thinker. I'm just lazy.

I have started a thread on visual thinking in the general autism forum. Why? Because I feel like it!

I am curious to know, TM1, do you own an abacus? Or have you ever found the use of one to be helpful in learning math?

Again, we're talking different strokes. Computer learning games can be helpful only if they teach within a particular context. One game my son has features "healthy foods" and it's set in a video game structure-he learns nothing from it at all. But another game features academic concepts and skills in order to play a video game later and he learns the information well. The problem is the repetition.

3-D software sounds alright for older people. But kids can easily learn from real world 3D objects. Coins, beans, and pictures are all very easy for children to handle and understand.

I'm of two minds on the topic, really.

If they never have homework, how will they cope with the sudden influx of papers, studying, and so forth they'll have to do later, in college?

At the same time, how much of what we have children do is really for their benefit? It has always seemed to me that most children's activities have one central goal... to keep the child quietly slaving away, rather than running the risk the child might bother the adults in the vicinity. Surely there should be more important goals with the rearing of children than just keeping them out of your face as much as possible for 18 years?

Compulsory education is a double-edge sword, brought on by two different movements (at least). Before school was required, sweat-shops employed children and forced them to work ungodly hours for little pay. sometimes the family was paid as a single employee and so the whole family had to work as a unit to increase production/$$. When child labor laws came about, something had to be done with children. Working moms couldn't stop working, children couldn't be allowed to run around.
On the other hand, there had been a movement to make education required so that the gov't could fund it better and so all children had a better chance to be educated.
Homework right now at my son's school is seen as a tangible way to force parents/custodians to sit with their kids and do something productive. There are other gauges schools use to measure parents' performance at home.
To say that early grades have homework to get kids ready for higher education isn't logical. You don't teach kids dating etiquette when they're 7, why prep them for term papers? College "homework" is altogether different anyways-it's project-oriented and students study subjects they're interested in.