The 2 hour limit thing sounds fine, but I'm somewhat convinced that bad assignments and poor materials have to play a large part in the overall result.
At the very least I'm not convinced that reading a few chapters of an age appropriate book or the odd creative project (draw something, etc.) or short writing assignment can be bad (or take more than an hour).
On the other hand, I'm sure writing all 25 of your vocabulary words 5 times each isn't particularly helpful. (This was the main homework assignment I remember getting as a 2nd grader. I hated it because it made my hand sore (possibly because I was always trying to do it as fast as possible) and was boring.)
I've found over the years that my children's worst teachers were the ones who assigned the most homework. Invariably, they supplemented their poor focus on conveying concepts with lots and lots of homework.
A ton of homework is a smell that I've learned to look into in order to see if I need to meet with the teacher and possibly talk to the school administration.
I remember a math class from high school whose homework seemed like it took me way too long to complete. Looking back, the teacher was actually one of my best and the length of time I spent on that homework was more of a signal that I didn't excel in the course or subject matter.
But then I had other teachers who assigned homework which was likely motivated by a need to have things in the gradebook that weren't tests
If / when I have children, I'd make it a point to teach them how to program things like that instead of just doing it by hand. Programming is a much more useful skill than cursive in 2016, and I'm sure that that'll only be more true when the time comes.
There's some evidence that while producing cursive isnt useful, the process of learning and using it is useful: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/16/cognitive-be...
If you're taking over your kids education, you probably want to add some elements that replace it instead of just ditching handwriting altogether.
At the very least I'm not convinced that reading a few chapters of an age appropriate book or the odd creative project (draw something, etc.) or short writing assignment can be bad (or take more than an hour).
On the other hand, I'm sure writing all 25 of your vocabulary words 5 times each isn't particularly helpful. (This was the main homework assignment I remember getting as a 2nd grader. I hated it because it made my hand sore (possibly because I was always trying to do it as fast as possible) and was boring.)