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You can’t ‘learn concepts by repetition’, that is not how learning works. You can learn a concept & repeat its application to be faster at it.
And that’s the problem. What if the student didn’t catch the concept during the lesson? He or She needs help by a guardian or be punished for not completing the task.
Same thing with the supposed self management skills. What if the student fails at it? He or she needs help by a guardian or will be punished.
At the end of the day homework is a tool to offload tasks of the school to the guardians of the student. A schools system, that relies on homework, is a system that fails in its task of creating a level playing regardless of socioeconomic background of the student.
The Problem with things, like the 15 hour per week claim, is that work isn’t comparable in different forms of society.
The article for example never specified, what it defines as work. Is only the time spent hunting or foraging ‘work’ ?
Is making & maintaining tools work? Is learning a new skill from an elder work? Is experimenting with a new technique work? Is keeping the campfire alive work? Is keeping watch for dangerous animals work? All of which are work in today’s society. Hell, over half of my work week is spent ‘socialising’. Do I only work for 20 hours a week now?
Every article or study, that I know of, that claims that people in the past worked significantly less, fails to specify what it defines as work.