Depends on the age, in college my homework was like a check mark for 10% of my grade. Ignore it at your peril. In middle school you gotta see they are actually doing some work before you flunk them.

Depends what kind of homework. A huge portion of school is just there to learn how to learn. Learn how to teach yourself something. Getting the fundamental basics of knowledge and how to tackle subjects that are strange, foreign, boring.

Some things you'll have to learn by yourself. Students between 5 - 14 are just not there to learn vocabulary, basic maths, etc. on their own. It gives every student the chance to do it at their own pace, find their own way how to learn and understand it best, using the tools they learned during class.

That the execution of this theory is not the best (especially in certain countries) is obvious, however, I think without homework I would have no tools nowadays to get into a new, complicated topic without being tutored/ guided all the way through.

Fun fact: it was invented by Roberto Nevilis, who did it to punish students who didn't understand much of the content/did not want to understand much of the content. However I suppose he didn't expect teachers to use this globally.

I do agree with your points above and who knows, maybe chatgpt will finally force schools to be reinvented and remade for the next generation to be more engaging.