Sleepy Students

[ysabetwordsmith]

This article looks at the problem of students falling asleep in class.

Aside from the issues raised in the article:

* Make sure they don't have an environmental problem interfering with their sleep, such as an unsafe or noisy home.

* Make sure they don't have a physical problem interfering with their sleep, and that they don't have sleep inertia.

* Check their natural biorhythm.  If it's on a greatly different setting than their current school, provide education according to their body clock.  Forcing them to work in the middle of their body-night is ruinous to health and doesn't teach them much anyway.

* Provide interesting material and plenty of activity during the day.  Inactivity and boredom can put even well-rested people to sleep.  This is most likely an issue if many  students are sleepy.

* A tremendous cause of not getting enough sleep is too much homework.  Limit or better yet eliminate homework; schools have 8 hours a day and any more than that constitutes an unreasonable infringement on "8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we will" of a healthy balanced life.  And of course, if students don't get enough sleep because they have too much homework, they tend to do a shitty job in school anyway.

* If they're falling asleep in school, for fucksake let them sleep.  Lack of sleep can kill people.  Also, sleep deprivation is a recognized form of abuse and torture.  Go figure out what the problem is, and after you've fixed it, they'll stop falling asleep in class.  If it's unfixable, leave them the fuck alone.

Comments

[cmcmck]

If you look at artistic depictions of classes all the way from classical Greece to the present, there's always one who is asleep.

Interesting, that......

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

One, sure. Two, maybe. There's always someone who had an occasional bad night. But when it's a widespread problem then something is wrong.

[thewayne]

I like seeing that some high school districts are changing to later hours to give students a longer lie-in. Now if they'd cut back on the ridiculous amount of homework.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I like seeing that some high school districts are changing to later hours to give students a longer lie-in.<<

That's very helpful.

>> Now if they'd cut back on the ridiculous amount of homework.<<

I agree. Like I said, anything that takes more than 8 hours of someone's day is abuse in the form of life imbalance. If they want to assign 4 hours of homework they should cut school to 4 hours.

[erulisse]

The high school I went to started at 7freaking30 in the morning. Cruel and unusual punishment! That was definitely one of the major factors that led me to dropping out. (Plus shitty homelife that made it basically impossible to even try to keep up with the workload)

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Sleep deprivation is an approved form of abuse for minors, which is a problem. Only a few schools have put any effort into identifying the biological needs of their students regarding sleep schedule, which is why a few high schools start later to accommodate the typical nightward drift of adolescents.