The Problem with Public School (Part 2)
Children tend to complain. They complain when they’re bored, or hungry, or when they have to do something they don’t want to (like going to school.) But when do these complaints begin to have real value beyond brief nuisances?
As mentioned before, children aren’t especially fond of going to school. Not that they can truly be blamed, after all, it is not the school’s intention to make children happy, but to educate them. However, the school certainly does not (or, should not) exist to make children miserable either. What can be done?
No solution can come without a problem to solve. Below are two major problems students have:
- School starts too early. Students are not getting enough sleep.
- Homework shouldn’t be assigned, and if it must be, not in this amount.
Now that the problems are known, here is the prompt: what can be done to help improve student’s happiness and decrease stress levels at school?
“School Starts Too Early”:
Indeed, it does! Most schools start at 8:00 a.m sharp. This means getting up at 6:00 in the morning, getting to the bus at 7:00, arriving at school at 7:30, going to class at 8:00. Assuming most teens go to bed at roughly 11:00 p.m, that means students are only getting around 7 hours of sleep as opposed to the 9 or 10 hours a growing student needs!
What would happen if the school day were postponed just another half-hour?
Well, first off, students would pay much closer attention in early classes. Children who are running on cheap sleep can obviously not prosper in a classroom as well as a well-rested student would. Keep in mind that, comparing the maximum melatonin levels in adults versus teenagers at different times, waking a student at 7:00 am is akin to waking an adult at 4:00 am. No wonder they can’t focus, especially considering children are getting up an hour earlier than that.
Of course, students would not just have better results in their first hour, it would improve their whole day! Studies showed students who had a start to the school day before 8:00 a.m scored worse in all of their classes.
Children are being woken at 4:00 in the morning (or so it feels like,) and sent to work before their brains can fully comprehend what they’re learning. If the school is going to teach children correctly and efficiently, they need to quit fighting the exhausted biology of the teenage student and let students get the sleep they desperately need.
“There’s Too Much Homework”:
This, too, is true. Homework can definitely have benefits, but it often is more trouble than it’s worth.
PROS:
- Studies support the notion that homework helps increase knowledge retention.
- Additionally, homework helps ensure students know what they’re doing and can help isolate any problems or concepts students are having trouble with.
CONS:
- Related to the latter of the above: if students DON’T know what they’re doing wrong, they’re merely teaching themselves false information over and over again.
- Homework has to be balanced perfectly between being too easy or too hard (one bores students, another frustrates them) and stressful or too lax (overwhelms the student, or encourages apathy.)
- Takes away the child’s free time, which is used to grow a personality and sense of self, as well as bond with family/friends and as a stress reliever.
- Children are being assigned 3x the recommended amount of homework, including kindergarteners, wildly breaking the balance of what a child’s home life is supposed to involve.
- Homework is so stress inducing that it has caused children painful physical side effects like migraines, ulcers, and even sleep and weight loss.
The cons clearly outweigh the benefits of homework, but it’s not as though the concept of working at home can be erased from students lives. However, there is an alternative which is quickly taking root in many classrooms across the nation: the reverse-classroom, which involves students watching lessons at home and returning to the classroom to do the paperwork there. This eliminates the chances of students teaching themselves wrong information repetitively, as students work in groups together and share/compare answers. Students clearly learn best in the classroom, and focusing on the application of the concept there (rather than the basic lesson, which can be easily learned at home) should benefit both stressed and apathetic students alike.
Overall, these two problems are caused by the public school system taking things too far. Students are being assigned 3 times the recommended amount of homework, and are being woken up at what, to them, feels like 4 in the morning. At the end of the day, these children are the future, yes, but school systems need to acknowledge the present as well. A balance needs to be achieved, and fast: the classroom is an integral part of a students life, and the way it can be handled can make or break a student.
