Studying In Their Sleep
The perplexing phenomenon of Korean students sleeping in class
It’s normal for me to look out into my class and see about ten kids passed out. Like heads down on the desk, fast asleep.
Ten out of thirty or so students, so around a third, just passed out.
One of the most surprising – and perplexing – things about being a middle school teacher in Korea has been the pervasiveness of students sleeping in class.
I made a comment about it early on to one of the other teachers here, who turned the question around on me, “What do teachers in the U.S. do about sleeping students?”
I don’t have any formal teaching experience in the U.S., so I could only reply speaking from personal experience as a student.
“I don’t really remember seeing kids sleeping in class,” I said, “at least not at my middle school.”
Of course there’d be the occasional kid or two in the back who’d nod off, but I’d never seen anything like what I’ve seen here, where kids come in and immediately put their heads down on their desks, foregoing even the pretense that they’ve come to class to learn.
This Monday, for example, I’d planned what I thought would be an engaging lesson based on Frank Warren’s ongoing PostSecret project. I started off class with a picture of Secret, an all-girls K-Pop group (always a big hit in my all-boys school), and ended with a creative activity where they got to write their own postcards to send to the PostSecret collection.
But the lesson flopped. Only about half my class was awake. And only a third participated in the activity. (I collected 11 postcards at the end, from a class of 30 students.) Everyone else either slept or refused to do anything.
Students sleeping through class is not a problem unique to my school. I’ve talked to other Fulbrighters who complain of the same thing, and a quick Google search even pulled up some data validating our concerns. A 2010 survey found that one third of Korean students sleep in class. (In Japan, it’s higher, at 45%; in the U.S., it’s 20%.)
Another survey, released a year later in 2011, found that 65% of Korean middle school students think they have a “right” to sleep during class. And more shockingly, 31% of their teachers agreed.
After teaching here myself, I can empathize with the students to a certain extent. I mean, Korean students aren’t sleeping because they’re lazy. They’re tired. Exhausted, really.
I’d be too if I had their schedules. My middle schoolers are in school from 8am to 4pm, then they head off to private academies (hagwons) until 9 or 10pm. So, they’re studying for more than 12 hours a day. And mind you, this is middle school.
There’s a lot of redundancy between the material learned in public school and in private academies. I’ve heard from some students that they learn everything they need to know from their private academies in the evening, so they don’t need to pay attention (read: stay awake) during their classes in the day.
After studying late at private academies, the kids don’t always go straight to bed either. The lucky ones go home and unwind by watching TV or playing computer games. The not-so-lucky ones have to keep their nose to the grindstone, studying well past midnight. It’s usually their moms that make them study late, students will tell me.
I asked my kids in that Monday class why they were so tired (other than, you know, it’s Monday). One kid was up till 3am playing games on his phone. Another was up till 1:30am watching “animation,” so likely a cartoon TV program. One student said he went to bed early, at 10:30pm. (For reference, middle schoolers in Korea average seven hours of sleep a night.)
My reaction up to this point has been to ignore the sleeping in class. As a teacher, I have to pick my battles: I can spend half the class waking kids up who nod off, or I can spend half the class more productively, teaching the kids who want to be taught.
I’ve also been working on making my lessons more interactive. I read a recent blog post where a teacher in the U.S. shadowed two of his students for two days, and it reminded me how exhausting it is to just sit all day (especially for middle school boys). I now try to work in ten minutes of structured activity per class where the kids aren’t sitting. I want my students to get up and move around – as long as it’s based on my lesson.
I’m trying to be optimistic by focusing on the students who are awake, and designing my lessons to make them interactive, but there’s only so much optimism I can have.
The entire situation’s disheartening. I feel slighted when students sleep through lessons that I’ve spent a lot of time putting together. It’s hard not to take it personally (“The students must not like me, or even respect me”).
Then I’ll think about things from the students’ perspective. They’re only seeing me for 45 minutes out of a 12 hour day of studying; it’s selfish of me to expect them to be fully engaged during their time with me, when they have to keep going all day.
If I were a Korean middle schooler, would I stay awake for all my classes? Maybe I’d sleep too, since I know I’m going to learn everything later at hagwon anyway.
Like I said, the whole thing’s disheartening, though I’m trying to be optimistic.
I think I’m going to go take a nap.
