My son and I have talked about this a few times. He says he thinks having to do busy work in school does not prepare kids for real life like some people think because it is not like the real world. He said with most jobs there is a chance for promotion and that is an incentive to work hard at the boring stuff. With school there is no incentive when you know that after doing all that busy work you still will not be allowed to "level up" in knowledge.
At my son's old school they rarely allow grade skipping and they don't let gifted kids learn anything beyond grade level material. They also have more busy work for homework so that there isn't as much time for learning what they want to learn outside of school. I think this is sad. This should be their time to learn as much as they can before becoming adults with all those adult responsibilities and so little time. I don't think it is right to squander their precious learning time by forcing kids to do busy work if they have already mastered a concept.
I don't think grades would be an incentive for my son at all because an A in something that was easy for him wouldn't mean much to him. The incentive for him is learning and knowing more than he did the day before.
I remember when my husband told me about problems with his highly gifted older son from his previous marriage not turning in homework and getting bad grades even though he made the highest scores on tests, I didn't have much sympathy for his son, but now that I can see my son has some similar issues, I have changed my mind about some of this. My stepson did not develop a good work ethic in public school. My husband and I knew we had to do something different with our child and homeschooling was really the only choice we had.
After seeing my son work hard at preparing for the spelling bee and working very hard at learning dances for musical theater when this is not easy for him as a child with motor dyspraxia, I know that he is developing a good work ethic. I just don't see how making a kid do lots of busy work when they have already learned the concepts would have a positive effect.
I am hoping that my son will be able to test out of some classes at a community college when he is high school age instead of taking high school level classes in those subjects and doing busy work. I have heard of other homeschoolers doing this and their kids didn't have any trouble transferring to a 4 yr college.
