From the observations of a school teacher, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
On a day of the first week of school, as a classroom teacher, the writer of this article at the early periods of study hall at 7:30 in the morning reminded the students, that in the afternoon math sessions, we’re going to go over the homework assignments, those who didn’t come to school with their assignments already done, please take the time between the classes to finish; a female students stated on how the last year middle schooler’s afterschool tutoring sessions, and the homework from the regular schools are too much, she’d stayed up past midnight, and still couldn’t finish, and, she couldn’t even get enough sleep, that, was why she didn’t finish her math assignments, her mother blamed her for not being productive enough in studying, and, she’d felt bad about it and started to cry.
Wanting the kids to get enough sleep, to delay the start of school, the belief had good intentions, but, there are, still problems in the reality to put this idea into practice.
First, the middle schools start at 7:30 in the morning, and the elementary students must arrive in school by 7:50, the time between the first period, there was still about forty to fifty minutes worth of “spare time”. During this time to schedule the cleaning up of the campuses, preparing for examinations, the flag ceremonies, or have the volunteer mothers come share their experiences in volunteering. All of this time, is using classroom management, teacher-student interaction, can it really, be do away with? If it can’t, then “delaying the start of school” will cause everything to get moved back, causing the “delay in letting out after school”; or it’d pressed down on the time of the student’s breaks between the classes, meal time, even afternoon napping hours, so the time to get off from school can be met. Is it, really, beneficial to the students for real?
Secondly, if the parents need to make the work at eight in the mornings, they’d still drop their children off at school at 7:30, “delaying the starting time of school” would cause there to be time to spare between the first periods, and, it may become a cause of campus safety issues.
Last, in the framing of the classes being held the way they’re being held and the advancing of the grade levels, the pressures from testing causing the courses to become too dull, that, would be the primary reasons for why the students don’t get enough sleep. Delaying the starting time for school, sure, it’d give the students an extra ten minutes of sleep, but could it up the ability to learn for them? So long as the nightmares from getting higher grades, performing better in school, the classroom sessions still filled with the boring lectures from the boring texts, not allowing students to have self-guided learning practices, in this vicious cycle, going to bed late, getting up early, no wonder the kids aren’t getting enough sleep.
So, this is on a teacher’s view about how delaying the starting time of school is NOT fixing the problem, because the problems is rooted deeper, you must examine the root cause, in this case, it’s the curricula, the instructional methods, as well as the need to perform well from all around the students’ external environments, adding to the already stressed out lives of modern day students, NOT just NOT getting enough sleep!
Life, the Obstacle Course 