Oh come on. Homework, as much as people may hate doing it, it does benefit. You apply and practice the knowledge at home so you can learn more. If the student struggles, then that's too bad. Either, they get a tutor, help from friend/teacher/parent/guardian, struggle and probably fail, or they move to a lower grade or special school that is more suited for their needs. If the school time is, say from 7:30 am to 3:30
pm, you don't have only 1 class and you have breaks. Outside of that time including weekends, is a perfect place to better learn the material. It reinforces the learning, so either you do the work in class and of course you don't learn as many new concepts, or you do the work at home/outside class and you learn new concepts in class. The second option seems much better to me.
As for this crying over homework making kids' lives ever so harder, so does everything else in this world. However, with more technological advances, things have become easier. You have a computer, you have a calculator, Internet, etc... . Having to do a bit of thinking and some hard work is good, it stimulates your mind.
If this happens, then I'm sure that banning homework for kids, say 15 and under wouldn't be too far in the future.