More sleep, less homework will make for better, healthy students

Each time I see primary school pupils dragging their feet while laboriously pulling wheeled schoolbags, I wonder why their study load has become so heavy, in sharp contrast to what most people of my generation experienced half a century ago.

A lightweight sling bag made of coarse canvas, which contained only a couple of textbooks, an exercise book and a pencil box, would do for my whole day's 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 went further to a junior middle school.

After school, say around 3pm or 4pm, we would often play table tennis on a makeshift stone table on the campus, until it was so dark that our teachers on duty had to "drive" us away, citing parental concern.

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

But look at today's school-aged children, especially those in primary and junior middle schools. Some shuffle their feet while pulling or shouldering heavy knapsacks stuffed with a dozen textbooks and related study materials, while many others have their parents or grandparents carrying such heavy schoolbags.

If my observation, based on my daily encounter with many school-aged children and teenagers, is anything to go by, it seems quite a few of them lack the very signs of the primordial energy of life, weighed down as they are by too heavy a study burden at such a young age. Recent national statistics show that more than half of China's school-aged children and teenagers suffer from insufficient sleep due in large part to overloaded curricula and excessive homework.

A report from Xinhua news agency, published two years ago and widely circulated even today, has found that, while the country's health authorities suggest a schoolbag should weigh less than 10 percent of a pupil's body weight, in reality a schoolbag is often much heavier, making it difficult for a child to walk or jump as merrily and lightly as they are supposed to.

I've always harbored doubts about this pedagogical method, which assumes that a heavier study load, coupled 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 competition for admission into better high schools and universities was fiercer than today, as there were fewer top-tier high schools or colleges at that time. Anyway, many of my classmates, who hardly studied later than 8pm, were admitted into elite schools or colleges and later became excellent editors or entrepreneurs, to name but a few professions.

Empirical evidence

Despite my deep doubts, I had been unable to gather any recent empirical evidence to persuade my friends or neighbors from pushing their children too hard, until I read a report last week about a headmistress who had dramatically reduced the study load and increased the sleeping hours of her students.

"Our students can sleep 10 hours a day and do not have weekly or monthly tests, let alone out-of-class supplemental instructions, and yet 90 percent of them have got A in final tests, with 60 percent getting A+," said Liu Xiya, Party secretary of Xiejiawan School in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, which provides nine years of compulsory education.

Established in 1957, it was at first a primary school with curricula covering six years. In 2021, it expanded to include junior middle school students as well.

Liu made the remarks during a group discussion at the just-concluded annual national legislative conference in Beijing. Her observations have gone viral on the Internet, sparking a hot debate nationwide about how schools and parents can bring up children in a way that ensures their health in the first place while effectively advancing their academic achievement.

"Education will be imperfect if it fails to ensure students' health in the first place," Liu said. In her school, sports is one of the most important classes, with students engaged in various exercises for at least two hours a day. The school arranges most main courses in the morning, leaving students free to play in the afternoon, as they can choose to join any of the school's hundreds of interest groups, including those focused on math, English, calligraphy and aeromodelling.

"You hardly see many bespectacled or overweight pupils on the school campus," said a reporter from China Sports Daily recently. In 2023, the General Administration of Sport honored Xiejiawan School for its significant contribution to the country's sports development.

A latest report from Xinhua quoted a recent national survey as saying that more than half of China's school-aged children and teenagers suffer from myopia. To be specific, the rates of myopia for primary school, junior middle school and high school students are about 37 percent, 71 percent and 81 percent, respectively. The Xinhua report cited disorderly sleep and lack of outdoor exercises as among the major causes of students' myopia.

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

At one time, a student was found to often doze off in class, although he went to bed early. A special team comprising teachers from different classes was soon formed to "diagnose" the child's apparent "narcolepsy". Eventually the team found that of late the child had been drinking too much water after eating cookies before going to bed. As a result, he would get up several times at night to go to the toilet, disturbing his sleep. In the end, the teachers worked with his parents to adjust his diet, so that he could have a better sleep at night.

Balanced growth

This meticulous care about the well-being of students, from minute attention to their personal health to careful designs of curricula that allow them more time for recreation and rest, speaks volumes about the school's efforts to cultivate young talents with a therapy for balanced growth rather than a recipe for lopsided emphasis on test scores and rote learning.

But not all people agree with what the school has been doing. Many netizens have recently voiced their concern, saying Xiejiawan's practice cannot be easily copied by other schools, as many teachers and parents across 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 sleeping hours can help students study better.

Guo Zhenyou, a former deputy national chief inspector of the Ministry of Education, wrote recently that Xiejiawan's reform led by Liu had been one of the most successful of its kind in the country, although it had once met with criticism and pressure from many parents and experts.

Sleep matters

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

"When your child starts going to school, their No. 1 job is to learn. Getting sufficient sleep will go a long way toward keeping them engaged during their classes," the report said.

For teenagers (13 to 18 years), the academy suggests a sleep duration from 8 to 10 hours a day.

"Sleep is one of the most basic of all human experiences. We all need it – and helping your children get enough of it is important to keep them going about their business of learning and growing," the report concluded.

In 2021, China's Ministry of Education issued a notice setting "benchmark" sleeping hours for the country's students: 10 hours for those in primary schools, 9 hours for those in junior middle schools, and 8 hours for those in high schools. But in 2022, a nationwide survey discovered that the "benchmark" sleeping hours failed to be observed to the letter.

While Xiejiawan School has pioneered a new path toward students' balanced growth, it alone can hardly change an entrenched bias among many parents or teachers toward a single-minded pursuit of test scores and excessive homework.

And yet, although there's still room for Xiejiawan School to further improve itself, its experiment has perfectly pointed to a brighter future in which kids can grow more healthily and study more efficiently.