Mr. Boy, our No. 1 son and in-house fifth grader, hasn’t had any substantial homework in more than two months, which is pretty darn strange. He had a nightly hour’s worth or more in second grade and it has diminished every year since then. It seems to be dependent on the teacher, not the system.
It also seems to match this study that found that college today (never mind elementary school) is pretty much a waste of time and money:
“In a typical semester, a third of students took no courses with more than 40 pages of reading per week. Half didn’t take a single course in which they wrote more than 20 pages over the semester.”
No wonder elementary school is so lackadaisical. It’s a waste of our tax money, unless you consider full employment for teachers and administrators to be the main objective. Which I’m sure they do.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
No one wants modern times students to riot. After all, they could destroy pretty much everything when unhappy with too much homework, too much brain effort, too much… whatever. And deity forbid if a cop touches one of them…
Just as long as they pay. Or their parents do. As for college, however, the degree is still a ticket to a good job, where the door is closed without your ticket. So it’s not entirely worthless. Just academically so.