Agree, pedagogical methods and homeworks could be significantly improved. Searching library vs search engine is also a good point. Although it's useful to know how to check old books to see if the engine is biased and lying...

Some repetition is unavoidable for the methods of solving problem types to establish themselves in the brain. For physics and math it's necessary to solve problems and make mistakes. It's the only way people can correct and polish the mental models in their brains.

Students also need to write some essays to be able to present an argument later.

We don't need to memorize the entire Odyssey. (it'd be nice tho) But being able to memorize is useful at least to some extent.

While busy work certainly exists, we have to be careful with what's busy work and what's repetition necessary for reasons not immediately obvious to the student.