Sleep for Education
Everyday across
the country, millions of young students wake up around sunrise and begin the
tedious task of getting through their morning routine in order to get to class
on time. Some of these students are early risers and take well to the task
while others struggle just to get out of bed. Attention span is key in order to
be able to digest the information overload that students from Kindergarten
through High School face every day. Matthew Shulman from the U.S. News & World Report website, citing a study about the effects of REM
sleep, wrote “Researchers at the University of Montreal report that a study of
young children showed that those who slept significantly fewer hours than the
recommended 10 were more hyperactive and impulsive than those who got plenty of
shuteye and scored lower on two cognitive skills tests.” The study implies that
students who sleep less will be more likely to act up in class and will give
teachers a much more difficult task while teaching their students. Studies like
this one and an abundance of others show a lack of sleep causes not only
learning problems, but can also lead to serious health issues. A change to the
school system from such an early morning rise to a 10 a.m. start, would
dramatically improve learning capabilities of our children and would lead to a more
productive and healthy population.
There are many
arguments for why a 10 a.m. start would not work. Many will say that it would
require parents adjusting their work schedules so they can accommodate the new
standard. It would also require in some cases, a change in day care and
babysitting situations. Another argument would be that it would be unfair to
teachers who have grown accustomed to the 7 to 4 schedule they’ve had for 100
years. It would also be assumed that a 10 a.m. start would lead to a 5 pm
finish and that would wreak havoc on parents work schedules. All these and
other arguments and excuses for why not to have a 10 am start forget one
important fact; it’s not about them. If the point of education is indeed to
educate and not to babysit, the reasoning behind changing to a 10 am start
would be obvious. Students who get more sleep will be more engaged, less
disruptive, and in most cases will be more eager to learn. With students more
awake and engaged from the time they start class, their ability to learn and
concentrate on the subject matter will increase, causing the amount of time
required to have class to decrease. So we can take a 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. school
day and change it to a 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. schedule, and have a more productive
school day with less time required of the students and teachers. Mothers all
over the country are practically pulling their hair out while attempting to get
their kids to wake up each and every day.
In the movie Chalk, Mr. Lowrey has the hardest time
controlling his students. They were disruptive, did not respect him, and seemed
overall uninterested in anything he had to say. He of course was a new teacher
and eventually was able to figure out how to get through to them, but should it
really have been so hard that it took the whole school year to get to anything
that resembled a cooperative class? It was such a bad experience for Mr. Lowrey
that even after accomplishing such a great feat and learning to be, what looked
like from the film, as the best teacher in the school, he seriously doubted his
resolve in continuing to teach. Now it being said that he needed to learn to be
a quality teacher, he would have most likely been able to reach his stride a
lot sooner if he already had a willing and cooperative class. The students in his class would have been
much less of a nuisance if they were accustomed to a proper sleep routine which
would include a later start time.
Many articles are
written about teaching methods to open the minds of their students and to help
those students unleash their own creativity.
Most of these writings are absolutely correct and contain within them,
some of the most important methods to help students become successful. When
reading authors like bell hooks, Mike Rose, and John Gatto or watching YouTube
videos of Ken Robinson, I agree with their views on the current state of
teaching in schools and I’m inspired by some of the proposals for changes to
the school system to encourage critical thought. In John Gatto’s article “Against
School” on wesjones.com, he writes “Boredom is the common condition of
schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers’ lounge can vouch
for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there.
When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you
might expect. Who wouldn’t get bored teaching students who are rude and
interested only in grades?” Both the
boredom the teachers feel and the rudeness the teachers see in their students
that Gatto points out in the quote above, could be fixed mostly just by
adjusting the start time of their day. In an article on the Washington Post website about education
resolutions for the New Year, Mike Rose writes “1) To have more young people
get an engaging and challenging education.” That was his number one resolution.
It would be easier to give well-rested students a more engaging and challenging
education than to a group of half-awake brain-dead troublemakers. I imagine it
would be hard to teach math to a sleeping infant which is basically what it
amounts to when trying to teach millions of under-slept children across the
United States.
A quick search on
Google for “effects of sleep deprivation” pulls up many negative articles
related to mental and physical health issues. Camille Peri writes in a
WebMd.com article “First, it impairs attention, alertness, concentration,
reasoning, and problem solving. This makes it more difficult to learn
efficiently. Second, during the night, various sleep cycles play a role in
‘consolidating’ memories in the mind. If you don’t get enough sleep, you won’t
be able to remember what you learned and experienced during the day.” The article
goes on to explain serious health problems that can arise from a lack of sleep
over time. These health risks include heart disease, heart failure, stroke,
high blood pressure and so on. It did not say the age group of the study but I
would have to assume that this study was based on adults. If that is true, and
it is dangerous for adults to have a lack of sleep, how dangerous is it to
children who require more sleep to have less for 10 – 13 years before
officially becoming adults? Andrew Ward, an expert on the brain, was quoted on
the Stone Hearth News website as
saying “Sleepiness disrupts the coordinated activity of an important network of
brain regions; the impaired function of this network is also implicated in
Alzheimer’s disease.” The brain is the most valuable organ that human beings
have. Without it, we never would have discovered fire, put a man on the moon,
or saved millions lives with innovations in medical technology. Why would we
want to risk the health of children’s brains and their bodies by depriving them
of the simplest form of preventive health care…adequate sleep?
The end result of
switching to a 10 a.m. start time for schools grades K-12 would be dramatically
increased productivity amongst students as well as teachers. The overall health
of the U.S. population will be improved in future generations and we will usher
in a new wave of discoveries by mankind using fully rested and functional
brains. Teachers and parents will be less stressed out as they will be dealing
with less hyperactive kids who are more eager to accomplish goals and to learn.
The research has been done. The answer is obvious. All that’s left is for
action to take place with a very simple change that could alter the lives of
millions for the better and create a society of over achievers.
Works Cited
Shulman, Matthew. “Kids and Sleep: Why They Need More.” U.S. News & World Report. U.S. News
& World Report LP. Web. 6 Sep.
2007
Chalk. Dir. Mike
Akel. Perf. Troy Schremmer, Janelle
Schremmer, Shannon Haragan. Virgil Films, 2006. Film.
Gatto, John. “Against School.” Harper's Magazine. Harper's
Magazine Foundation. Wesjones.com. Web. Sep. 2003
Rose, Mike. “Mike Rose’s Resolution on Education.” The Washington Post. The Washington Post
Company. Web. 1 May. 2011
Peri, Camille. “Coping With Excessive Sleepiness.” WebMD. WebMD, LLC. Web. 14 Sep. 2012
Ward, Andrew. “How sleep deprivation impacts dementia,
different types of memory, and learning.” Stone
Hearth News. Web. 16 Oct. 2012
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