Harold,

What you witnessed from the teachers--obviously well-meaning and dedicated people, who nevertheless mindlessly repeated institutional dogma without any evidence of having even suspected it might be just that--is called "learned incapacity." They were "educated" out of most of their critical thinking skills.

Karyn,

Homework also crowds out time that could be spent on self-directed learning about stuff the kid is interested in. Paul Goodman observed that one of the lessons inculated in school is that anything you pursue for your own purposes is a "hobby," i.e., comparatively trivial, while anything assigned by a teacher or a boss is important. The other lesson, as Ivan Illich described it, is that learning is a commodity that can only be dispensed by properly qualified "professionals."

Just before school started, I saw a sign at Hastings announcing that they had Watership Down (one of the books on the required summer reading list). I was never given a summer reading list, thank God (back in those days, the publik skools here didn't yet have the presumption to claim control over 100% of your time), and I first read Watership Down as a young adult. I'm grateful that I wasn't taught to hate that wonderful book, as I surely would have been had I been commanded to readed it.