I'm worried about homework, not about whether there is too much of it or too little, but rather because a lot of it is the wrong kind.

By the wrong kind, I mean the drill sheets that still come home even for kindergartners and first graders. They ask very little of children. You know the kind: Fill in the letter, draw lines from number to number, very routine, very rote.

This is the kind of homework we had when we went to school. We may be comfortable with it, and we may think that this is what homework ought to be like, but too much of it is inadequate for what children need today.

Students today need homework that calls for creative responses, for problem solving, for innovative thinking. This is homework that asks children: What do you think and how does that work and why?

Teachers would assign more creative homework but many are fearful. What are they afraid of? The tests! Students need to make a good showing on the end-of-year tests. That makes teachers and principals look good, and the public is kept happy.

Students doing rote homework are getting practice to do well on basic tests. If you have seen these tests (and every parent really ought to ask to see a sample) you will immediately see the resemblance between drill homework and test sheets.

There are ongoing arguments about whether we need more or less homework. Regardless of which side wins, there can be no argument that we need better homework. We need what I call "Smarter Kids for Harder Times."

When I speak of "smarter," what I mean is a more comprehensive take on what children, starting young, really need to learn. This includes intelligence, character, emotional and social traits that we know are important... never more so than now.

We live in a "harder world." It is more complicated, an era when a growing number of nations are competing with us or going to compete with us. More worrying than that, we live in a more complex, uncertain, fearful society. Our schools and our children are struggling, the media is overwhelming ...global warming, crime, religious strife, nuclear weapons, terrorism.

How does homework help with all that? When our kids are spending their time filling in blanks, they are not using their brains to invent, imagine and learn to address problems.

A few examples can help make the point about better homework. In the younger grades, instead of kids filling in puzzles designed by long-gone teachers, let's ask them to make up their own word and number puzzles. This lets children demonstrate that they know how to manipulate words and numbers; it stretches their brains.

As students grow older, let them write stories with and about their families. Let them design a new form of car, and come up with solutions to problems that they and their schools are facing. In the higher grades, let's sit down with children and figure out budgets, maybe even review the insurance policy and the mortgage.

The big goal is to apply and extend what children learn in school. Of course, some rote learning is needed in basic reading and math, historical dates, scientific formulas. I don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water. Yet, what is basic today is bigger and broader than ever before.

Nothing is really simple anymore. There is more choice. Everything comes at us, all at once, really fast. Our kids will have to be smarter in many ways, beyond academics. They need the ability to move forward while living with ambiguity and even danger.

Better homework is a modest start.

Dorothy Rich is founder and president of the nonprofit Home and School Institute, MegaSkills Education Center in Washington.