More sleep, less homework will ensure better, healthy students

Every time I see students in primary school drag their feet while they are difficult to pull school bags on wheels, I wonder why their study load has become so heavy, in stark contrast to what most people of my generation experienced half a century ago.

A lightweight sling bag made from coarse canvas, which contained only a few study books, a exercise book and a pencil box, would do for my entire day study when I went to a primary school in the 1970s, as was the case with most other students of my generation. And things were almost the same when I continued to a high school.

After school, say around 3 p.m. or 4 p.m., we often played table tennis on an improvised stone table on campus, until it was so dark that our on duty teachers had to “drive us” us, with reference to parental care.

We studied hard, but played harder, and we always walked in small groups between school and at home in small groups and never disturb our parents or grandparents.

But look at the school -going children of today, especially those in secondary and junior secondary schools. Some shuffle their feet while pulling or shoulders of heavy strings filled with a dozen study books and related study material, while many others have their parents or grandparents who wear such heavy school bags.

If my observation, based on my daily meeting with many school -going children and teenagers, is something to enter into, it seems that some of them miss the signs of the original energy of life, because they are too tough study load at such a young age. Recent national statistics show that more than half of the Chinese school -going children and teenagers suffer from insufficient sleep due to overloaded curricula and excessive homework.

A report from Xinhua News Agency, published two years ago and even spread widely today, has discovered that, while the country's health authorities suggest that a school bag should weigh less than 10 percent of a student, in reality a school bag is often much heavier if it is difficult to walk or to run.

I have always had doubts about this pedagogical method, which assumes that a heavier study load, in combination with longer hours of homework, can bring out the best potential of students.

After all, we studied less and played harder half a century ago, although the competition for admission to better secondary schools and universities was proud than today, because there were fewer top schools or colleges at that time. Anyway, many of my classmates, who hardly studied later than 8 p.m., were admitted to elite schools or colleges and later became excellent editors or entrepreneurs, to name just a few professions.

Empirical

Despite my deep doubts, I had not been able to gather empirical evidence to convince my friends or neighbors to push their children too hard, until last week I read a report about a director who had dramatically reduced the study load and raised the sleep hours of her students.

“Our students can sleep 10 hours a day and have no weekly or monthly tests, let alone of additional instructions outside the class, and yet 90 percent of them have a definitive tests, with 60 percent get A+,” said Liu Xiya, party secretary of Xiejiawan School in southwestern Education offers Compliciping, who nine years.

Founded in 1957, it was first a primary school with curricula that covered for six years. In 2021 it also expanded with students from the high school students.

Liu made the comments during a group discussion on the newly excluded annual national legislative conference in Beijing. Her observations have become viral on the internet, which causes a hot debate nationally about how schools and parents can raise children in a way that in the first place guarantees their health, while effectively promoting their academic performance.

“Education will be imperfect if it in the first place does not guarantee the health of students,” said Liu. In her school, Sport is one of the most important classes, with students who occupy different exercises for at least two hours a day. The school arranges the most most important courses in the morning, so that students can play freely in the afternoon, because they can choose to become a member of one of the hundreds of interest groups of the school, including those aimed at mathematics, English, calligraphy and aeromoding.

“You hardly see a lot of spectacled or overweight students at the school campus,” said a reporter of China Sports Daily. In 2023, the General Sports Administration Xiejiawan School honored its important contribution to the sports development of the country.

A final report from Xinhua quoted a recent national survey that said that more than half of the Chinese school -going children and teenagers suffer from myopia. To be specific, the rates of myopia for primary school, high school and high school students are approximately 37 percent, 71 percent and 81 percent respectively. The Xinhua report mentioned disorderly sleep and lack of outdoor exercises as one of the main causes of the myopia of students.

Instead of assessing the performance of a teacher, mainly on the test scores of students, Xiejiawan School pays more attention about how well a teacher takes care of the health of each student. And it's not just about giving students more time to sleep and play.

Once a student often turned out to be in the classroom, although he went to bed early. A special team consisting of teachers from different classes was quickly formed to “diagnose” the apparent “narcolepsy” of the child. Eventually the team discovered that the child had drunk too much water lately after eating cookies before it went to bed. As a result, he would get up several times at night to go to the toilet and disturb his sleep. Eventually the teachers worked with his parents to adjust his diet so that he could sleep better at night.

Balanced growth

This careful care for the well-being of students, from small attention to their personal health to careful designs of curricula that give them more time for recreation and tranquility, speaks volumes about the efforts of the school to cultivate young talents with a therapy for balanced growth instead of a recipe for Lopscores and Rote-Lerleleling.

But not all people agree with what the school has done. Many Netizens recently expressed their concern and say that the practice of Xiejiawan cannot be easily copied by other schools, because many teachers and parents throughout the country still regard test scores and excessive homework as the most important things for students. Limited by their own experience, some Netizens even refuse to believe that sufficient sleep hours can help students to study better.

Guo Zhenyou, a former deputy national head inspector of the Ministry of Education, recently wrote that the reform of Xiejiawan had been one of the most successful in the country under the leadership of Liu, although it had ever had criticism and pressure from many parents and experts.

Sleep is important

Cleveland Clinic, a well -known medical institution in the United States, published a report last year on the importance of sleep, with suggestions from the American Academy or Sleep Medicine. For example, the academy suggests that school -going children (6 to 12 years) have to sleep 9 to 12 hours a day.

“When your child goes to school, their number 1 task is to learn. Getting enough sleep will go a long way to keep them involved during their lessons,” the report said.

For teenagers (13 to 18 years old), the Academy suggests a sleep duration of 8 to 10 hours a day.

“Sleep is one of the most elementary of all human experiences. We need it all and helping your children get enough of it is important to keep them about learning and growing learning,” concluded the report.

In 2021, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued a notification of “Benchmark” sleep hours for the students of the country: 10 hours for people at primary schools, 9 hours for people at secondary schools and 8 hours for people at high schools. But in 2022 a national survey discovered that the “benchmark” sleep hours could not be observed on the letter.

While the Xiejiawan school pioneered in a new path to the balanced growth of students, it can hardly change a deep-rooted bias among many parents or teachers in the direction of a determined pursuit of test scores and excessive homework.

And yet, although there is still room for the Xiejiawan school to further improve itself, the experiment was perfectly pointed out of a better future in which children can grow healthier and study more efficiently.