Homework single-handedly contributed to turning me off to any pursuit of college, because I grew to greatly resent any kind of busy work. It wasn't for lack of

Homework single-handedly contributed to turning me off to any pursuit of college, because I grew to greatly resent any kind of busy work. It wasn't for lack of knowledge or understanding, as this was evidenced by my flawless test scores (and I eventually tested out of a college degree). But, I see homework as helping to contribute towards socializing children into getting used to doing repetitive tasks that don't really have a greater point (much like a lot of people's jobs). I've thought a lot on this over the years, and the ways I'd personally fix this are: 1. If you're going to have homework in your class, have a policy such that if a student gets 85% or higher on a test, they don't need to do any homework until the next test. 2. Possibly have a system where homework doesn't actually count towards your grade, but only can help your grade. This would help those who don't handle the pressure of test taking well, and allow them to boost their grades up through the homework. 3. Have assignments that are longer form and more constructive, such as writing papers over a period of a couple weeks, where the student can turn it in at intervals to get feedback until they feel comfortable that the assignment is in its final form. For a class like math, have the student write a lesson teaching the actual thing that they're supposed to learn, and see if another student in the class is able to read it and understand the subject better. 4. The hardest one -- applying new concepts to real world applications that are in peoples' interest areas. I would have definitely perked up if someone had drawn comparisons of concepts to how they would apply to game programming, for instance (pretty much all basic math used in things like matrix transformations/linear interpolations, raycasting, inertia) which took me a whole lot of Khan Academy to start to understand much much after the fact. What makes this the most difficult is that the teacher has to be incredibly creative to pull this off, regardless of subject they're teaching. Can you imagine an english assignment being writing dialogue branches for an RPG? My final GPA in high school was 1.85, which basically forced me into the military, forever changing my future. My end goal has now become to start a program in high schools where students are funded to start their own business, say for 10,000, and their absences of lack of completion of assignments are deducted from their funding. At the end, they'd basically get to keep whatever was left including what profit their business made. Still fleshing this one out, but I think giving students basic knowledge of how businesses operate through practical knowledge could drastically change their trajectories.