I'm going to have to stay fairly neutral on this subject. When I was in high school I had a history teacher that every day he would assign a chapter and for homework we had to do an outline of what was in the chapter. The next day we had a test on it. Lather, rinse, repeat 5 times a week. Yes he did grade the homework and yes that is way too much work for one class. In years before that I had said "teachers give too much homework blahblahblah" but it really wasn't.
tl;dr some teachers do give too much homework, and some kids complain way too much
tl;dr some teachers do give too much homework, and some kids complain way too much