The elementary school day is long enough that there really just isn’t any need to give external homework. Any needed practice can be completed in class, if the teacher chooses to build in the time
I recall having very little homework in the elementary school (Hunter Elementary) from which I graduated in 1966; certainly not enough to interfere with having a lot of time to hang out with friends and go to the Park and read and, yes, watch lots of TV. I don’t think I was any less well prepared than anyone else when I started at a private school in 7th grade, but it did take me quite a while to get used to doing all the homework!
Once in fifth grade, my D, an extremely conscientious and stellar student, was overwhelmed by the amount of busy work she had as homework. While she finished something else, she said in tears that she still had Health homework. Turns out, it was a search-a-word of terms they had learned that day. Not even matching terms with definitions, just finding them in the letter grid. I finished that sucker myself, with absolutely no qualms about it.
Sometimes it took the whole family, and anybody who might stop by, to find all the words in those word search worksheets.
OMG, the puzzle homework. D had a stack of them once that all had a webpage printed at the bottom. Yeah, all the answers were there. I didn’t feel bad about pointing that out to her.