School = Brainwash?

Disagree with this one. Homework is meant to build good habits for the future. Sure, most low paying jobs won't ever require you to work from home or stay late in the office but if you even aspire to have a half decent job then being willing to put in overtime is extremely important in your success.

Just realised that I didn't really clarify my point. Homework measures how willing you are to work hard to be successful.

This should be revised to say, "homework measures how willing you are to work." Working hard must be dropped, because i am assuming you are referring to the difficulty of the actual assignment, which is seldom the case, more often than not its just lengthy. As for the successful part, working hard doesn't make you successful... working smart, maybe. Nothing is more pointless than getting 30 problems in math, only to repeat the same concepts you already know and are rather easy to arrive it through reasoning (this changes with the higher level math courses in college i admit, but that is when math drifts closer to a subject of art).

This was already addressed, but homework and good grades is not and never has been a measure of intelligence. Tests have become a measure of knowledge, or how much was retained of the lectures. Homework is a measure of willingness to work, no matter how trivial it may be. Grades are a measure of participation. Though, tests such as the SAT/ACT taken in high school do measure intelligence, if the variables of participation are taken into account. But then again, what importance is intelligence, creative thought is just as necessary to some of the most successful people in the world.