It is different elsewhere, yes. Your school was unfortunately a rare exception. Most schools everywhere I've been mandate homework and give it significant value towards your final grade. If you have multiple classes (which you do), they will often have no regard for each other when assigning homework, so you are often left with no time to meaningfully absorb any of the assignments (and occasionally no time to possibly so much as complete all of them). Self guided schooling like yours is unfortunately still viewed as a new wave hippy-esque thing.