As the parent of a child in a poor South American country, the daughter was getting 2hours of homework most days from 7yr onwards and I Can assure you it was not leisure. The kithen table resembled a battlefield with screaming and cries every night.
Some reasons why there was so much home work
1) large class sizes so a lot of the time in the day the teacher is just controlling the kids not teachinig them. So teaching of new things was assigned for homework, then in class they would just do excercise based on what learned at home
2) No money for resources.I have read about issues with US schools and no money for text books and teachers having to buy them. Here you have to buy your own, nothing is provided, so a lot of the home is "prepare the materials that will be needed for class".
3) and honestly, the daughter didn't want to do it, so what should have taken 40 minutes would take 2-3 hours. It was turn off from learning. So much homework is self defeating, that at times I would just do it for her to save the battles and I just didn't have 2-3 hours to talk her through the concept. We also learnt how to use a calculator
Some reasons why there was so much home work 1) large class sizes so a lot of the time in the day the teacher is just controlling the kids not teachinig them. So teaching of new things was assigned for homework, then in class they would just do excercise based on what learned at home
2) No money for resources.I have read about issues with US schools and no money for text books and teachers having to buy them. Here you have to buy your own, nothing is provided, so a lot of the home is "prepare the materials that will be needed for class".
3) and honestly, the daughter didn't want to do it, so what should have taken 40 minutes would take 2-3 hours. It was turn off from learning. So much homework is self defeating, that at times I would just do it for her to save the battles and I just didn't have 2-3 hours to talk her through the concept. We also learnt how to use a calculator