<p>It doesn’t prepare you for college. So why?</p>
<p>Just a guess, but, teachers are probably thinking that if they assign you the homework then you’ll retain some of the stuff over the break and not lose it all.</p>
<p>You go to school to learn. A well-designed homework assignment will help you learn.
You can have homework over breaks in college, if the break doesn’t happen between semesters. I had homework over Thanksgiving break.</p>
<p>If the break is fairly long it’s to make sure you don’t forget what you just learned. Unless you do it all as soon as you get it, it’ll serve as a refresher for what you learned right before the break. The idea is that shortens how much review the teacher will have to do once you come back.</p>
<p>In my parents’ time, final exams in college were after Christmas break! That would be horrible.</p>
<p>Teachers I’ve had who assigned work during break told us that that was the only way to make the curriculum work without everyone rushing all the time–usually, this would be assigned reading/journals for English or History.</p>