"I sleep at midnight and I'm up at 4 am."
She said.
“Doing homework. No time for practice.”
It is our weekly Piano Lesson. 1Mini has not made any progress on the piece we’re learning for her Piano Exam.
This girl sleeps for 4 hours.. Impressive.
"Play the 2nd passage from bar 23." I said.
As she plonked away my mind sailed into my childhood. School was focused around waking up, not getting late, sitting down, taking breaks, avoiding fights, having snacks, getting home, finishing homework, preparing for the next day, and waiting for the weekend. Weekends meant lots of cartoons, visiting cousins and no school to think about for 36 hours.
I try to remember what I learned. With the exception of illustrated books, on popular European tales: Pinocchio, Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Tin Tin and Little Red, my knowledge landscape looks a lot like Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise.
Playing Catch-up
Mornings in Nairobi are always a buzz. Yellow trickles in every possible direction across the city ferry children to schools.
After about 4 hours of sleep2 students will run to class, catch up with unfinished homework, catch up with assembly or a class meeting as they prepare for the first lesson. The bell rings for the first lesson at 8.30 am. Homework gets marked. Break time. More lessons. Probably Physical Education or Swimming on a lucky day. Then back for rushed lunch, more lessons while battling fatigue. On the odd day they will have clubs which is code for a semi-free afternoon.
When the bell rings to announce home. They have to wait for the parent or the bus, maybe sit in traffic, get home for another activity, shower, homework, dinner, homework again then sleep.
To repeat the cycle the next day.
It takes a lot of grit to maintain such a tight schedule. It takes even more genius to remember anything useful after books are closed.
Performance Driven Education
A lot of school work is based on endless memorization of facts. Tests are designed to determine and award the best memorizers.
In a performance driven environment students are trained to consume and reproduce with minimal opportunities for reflection or application. It is the endless amount of knowledge consumption that takes up so much of student time. Few of the students pulling 4-hour nights are spending their time building software or researching ways to fight climate change, learning a life skill like cooking or moving their bodies to keep them healthy and strong.
Homework is a priority. At the expense of health, play, curiosity led learning experiences and guided experiments.
Memorization of facts without useful connection into relatable and useful knowledge is a waste of time and life. Relevance and understanding is more important than hoarding and cramming.
Number of assignments completed has become the standard measure of learning. Just like reading many books does not make one smart, finishing many assignments does not translate to quality learning.
Efficient teaching challenges the student to connect disparate facts into knowledge that’s understandable, actionable or applicable. Proper learning focuses on how new knowledge can be combined and recombined to make new discoveries or provide greater insight on a topic.
The Joy of Variety
As schools make more effort to increase the variety of activities that a child can participate in, parents can choose to engage their children at home. With homework based on quality than quantity, students have more time to learn vital skills.
Home lessons in cooking are vital. Food is the basic driver of energy. Growth, development and proper brain strength are determined by the quality of food we eat. These have a direct impact on mood, attention levels and mental ability.
Encouraging daily play helps take away focus from school work. Play stimulates multiple areas of brain activity and contributes to relaxation which the mind needs to form associations and solve complex problems. Stepping away from my workstation for a walk has always provided me with fresh perspectives working on a piece of writing. Teaching children how to wind down after a long day is the essence of play. The relaxation also prepares them for a good night’s sleep.
It is counter productive to have students pulling all-nighters when more research continues to prove the benefits of enough sleep and quality rest. Sleep is the axe that sharpens the mind for effective learning.
More than performance, our schools can optimize for productive teaching and learning approaches. As parents focus on engaging children in useful activity. Otherwise school becomes a sluggish slavery from which students will always crave freedom.
For your curiosity and her privacy: not her real name.
This is an assumption of student sleep hours. More advanced students have homework and assignments to complete by the next day for nearly every subject. There’s no sleep until work is done. If they sleep it is to wake up early. Either way sleep times are short.
Kindergartners and Early Years tend to have a slightly longer and probably better sleep hours.
Play is so essential. Essential to learning, essential to growth, essential to well-being and happiness. Sleep is essential as well. This is how we integrate what we've learned, how our mind processes all experiences. And, of course, it is restorative. It's always sad to hear when children are not getting enough sleep or play.