Childhood passes quickly. And so do sunny days.

That means, in our house, sunshine trumps homework pretty much every time.

I figure that the kids have been shut in a classroom most of the day, and I've been glued to my desk. So if our wretched climate gives us an excuse to play outside, we should grab it.

When I confessed this delinquency to Paul Cappon, director of the Canadian Council on Learning he was surprisingly sympathetic.

You see, my kids are in elementary school and it turns out that, according to the latest CCL report, Homework Helps But Not Always, it's students in Grade 8 and above who are most likely to benefit.

For younger kids, there's little to suggest that doing drills at the dining room table does any more good than skulking bugs and digging for worms in the backyard.

Bring on the lawyers

Most parents know this instinctively. Just as we know that the best homework assignments are the ones that get the kids chattering about things that are important to them.

For my two, that means pencil drawings and a few scrawled sentences about family and friends, their dream pets (arctic fox and dolphin) and their favorite food (raspberries and lasagna).

But down the road I have no doubt things will get more complicated.

"Homework is effective when assignments are engaging, relevant and meaningful," the CCL report says crisply. But it also acknowledges the frustration many parents feel about the lacklustre work sheets that too often arrive home crumpled inside a child's backpack.

According to Cappon, surveys show that the overwhelming majority of Canadians believe homework is an important element of education.

Yet these same parents also see it as "a significant cause of stress" in the home.

That's why the story of Calgary parents Shelli and Tom Milley resonated with so many of us last week.

Homework: A young boy in Beijing does his homework on a makeshift desk outside his parent's convenience store in August 2009. (Greg Baker/Associated Press)

Both lawyers, they literally hit the world headlines after negotiating an agreement to dispense with homework for their 10- and 11-year-old children.

Amount and quality

The Milleys were angered both by the quality and quantity of homework their kids brought home.

They had been through the routine with their older son, now at university, and didn't feel they had the stamina to deal with what they describe as colour by number sheets, word scrambles and Popsicle-stick bridges all over again.

The Milleys seem to have overseen their children's school work with an attention to detail that made me feel both awed and guilty.

Tom Milley told me that the tipping point for him came when he questioned the educational value of a word puzzle that included words like "wotzup." The teacher sent a note saying that she'd assigned the puzzle for fun.

Milley wrote back: "We can make our own fun, thank you. We don't need your help."

Homework contract

At the Milley's school, however, the teachers' "help" took three years to dispense with.

It was ultimately replaced by a two-page legal "differentiated homework agreement" that set out the respective responsibilities of all three "parties."

The Milley children agreed to prepare for tests and work on their weak areas; their teachers agreed not to penalize the children for homework that wasn't completed and to grade them only on in-class work; and the parents promised to ensure the kids keep to the rules.

With that bit of paper, Shelli Milley says the children can now go straight to bed after Girl Guides, gymnastics, speed skating and music lessons, without them, or their parents, having to complete long multiplication or jiggle decimal points.

Not surprisingly "all their friends want the same deal." (And that's just the parents, she's talking about.)

A little trust

But where does this leave the rest of us who don't have the time or negotiating skills to work out our own personal, a la carte homework plans with our local school board?

This past weekend, CBC Radio's Cross Country Checkup heard from students, teachers and parents on this very subject. Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion and no one completely agreed.

Neeta Kumar-Britten came closest to expressing my evolving feeling on the issue.

A mother and a Grade 12 teacher in Sydney, N.S., she believes that homework is absolutely necessary, both to reinforce class learning and to ensure that the curriculum is covered.

"I'd like to be trusted as a professional insofar as I am not sending homework home just for the sake of having homework assigned," she says.

"Parenting is freakin' hard work," she agrees. "But that's what we signed on for. In my opinion, parents have to stop expecting school to recognize and meet every and all needs at school."

Let the children play

There's no doubt, mind you, that homework can sometimes be the proverbial back-breaking straw. Take Deirdre Bradley's experience in Ottawa.

She describes homework as the bane of her existence, saying that it ruins many evenings with her 10 year old, who starts school at 8 a.m. and goes to after-school care.

"I dread every evening because when we should be out walking the dog or doing something fun, we are standing over her," she says. "Two words: HOMEWORK SUCKS."

On the other hand, John and Wendy Dixon in Vancouver believe it's the very wrestling with homework that gives it its real value.

"The knowledge we acquire in school — as anyone who went through it and can look back now will attest — is ephemeral," say the Dixons. "We don't retain 99.9 per cent of the information, but we learn how to learn, and how to apply ourselves to the work before us."

Out of everyone, I thought, Ellen Burnell of Perth, Ont., came closest to an appealing détente in the homework dispute.

She's another teacher who combines her professional training with the parental acumen that comes from raising three children.

"I found that there are as many points of view on homework as there are parents," she said, adding she would assign each student to read for 20 minutes each night because: "It builds a lifelong habit that benefits all."

The assignment didn't have to be marked and could be done anywhere, even on the way to hockey practice.

Fortunately I've got a few years still before homework becomes truly onerous among my brood.

And, for the moment at least, I can take comfort in the title of the most popular online resource from the Canadian Council on Learning. It's called Let The Children Play.