Life at MA

The Case Against Weekend Homework

By Serena Payne '26 in Fall 2025

As a senior in high school, balancing difficult classes, homework, studying for the SAT, college work, and outside responsibilities feels like a sisyphean task. Every week I meticulously plan my days hour by hour, and decide whether to use my few free minutes to catch up on never-ending work, resting, or spending time with friends. One Saturday morning, as I was doing my homework, I put down my pen and questioned it: Why, on the days that I’m supposed to have a break from school, am I still doing schoolwork? The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed, and I knew I couldn't be alone in questioning this strange thing we’ve all accepted. Naturally, I took to Google Forms to answer my question. 

I received 172 responses; 161 from students and 11 from teachers. A whopping 88.4% (152) of those polled answered yes to getting rid of weekend homework. Of that 149 were students and three were teachers. 5.2% (9) of those polled said no. Of this group, four were teachers and five were students. I was mostly unsurprised at this data. It makes perfect sense that stressed students wouldn’t want weekend homework and teachers who feel passionate about the subjects they teach would be more in favor. The real shock came when I opened the long-form answers to my questions, “What would you do if you didn’t have so much homework?” and “Would you like to share anything else about it?” 61 respondents, regardless of their answer to the first question, shared something related to how if they had less weekend homework, they would fill that time building social connections with friends or family. 

These responses brought me to a larger issue in our society: the loneliness epidemic. Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States are increasing due to Americans being lonelier than ever before. Despite years of science-backed reports that name social connection as the greatest predictor of lifespan, insufficient time with family has been named by the surgeon general as one of the leading causes of loneliness. From the data that I collected, we can see that this isn’t just happening to people far removed from our lives, we can see it playing out right before our eyes. 

I am not usually a complainer when it comes to my academic responsibilities. I push myself every day to do quality work because I enjoy it, and that means I know when it's too much for me. Recently, it feels impossible to balance every task I need to do. It is literally just too much. This article isn’t to argue against homework entirely (that would take up too many pages), but rather to ask teachers and students alike to consider why we feel the need to be so ahead all the time, and whether assigned homework on days we’re supposed to be recharging benefits or harms our productivity, mental health, and success. Consider what you use a weekend for now, and what you’d like to be using your supposed free time for.