East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) Governor Viktor Laiskodat’s draconian decision to start high school in the predawn hours has received flak from educators and government agencies, since the policy came into effect at the end of February.
Viktor seemed to epitomise self-confidence and certainty, as he spoke to an audience of senior high school and vocational school principals in NTT on Feb 23.
“We have to change things (in Kupang, the NTT provincial capital). (These include starting) schools at 5am.
Do you agree or not headmasters?” the NasDem Party politician said in the speech, which has since gone viral on YouTube.
“Agreed!” the principals said at the time.
Education experts have been even more pointed in their criticism of Viktor’s education policy.
“High school students need between eight and 10 hours of sleep. They are likely to sleep after 9pm, especially as much of their homework needs to be done through smartphones,” said teacher and child psychologist Sri Purwita “Ninong” Mintarti.
“If they sleep at 10pm, then ideally school should start at 8am or 9am. The students’ mental capacities are affected by the quality and length of their sleeping hours.”
High school teacher Widya Suharnoko agreed.
“The ideal time to start classes is between 7.45am to 8am. By then, the students will be well rested, have time for early morning prayers and other religious rituals and have breakfast with their families before heading to school,” Widya asserted.
Ninong warned that “(excessively) early school hours will cause sleep deprivation among students, reducing their energy. In the long run, this can cause emotional problems and mood swings”.
“They might lose the enthusiasm to go to school and affect their attention span, memory, creativity and problem-solving capacities, as well as other cognitive skills.”
The United States-based American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) backed her assertion.
On its website, the CDC warns that sleep deprivation in adolescents and early school hours can make them “overweight, suffer from symptoms of depression, and engage in unhealthy risk behaviours such as drinking, smoking tobacco and using illicit drugs”.
Most of all, the two factors can lead students to “perform poorly in schools”.
The storm of criticism caused Viktor to slightly move back school hours to 5.30am, along with provincial administration offices.
Nonetheless, the Ombudsman office noted that the decision behind the school hours “was not based on proper academic research” but rather on Viktor’s exhortations.
Chairman Syaiful Huda of House of Representatives Commission X, which oversees education, sports, tourism and the creative economy, is just as critical of the policy, particularly on its use of discipline as a pretext.
“There are many ways to improve discipline for schoolchildren. But moving up school hours (to 5am) is not one of them,” he told kompas.com.
But he admitted that provinces have the discretion to make their own policies on education and other social issues, especially as “there is no binding law on school hours”.
Experts like Ninong pointed out that students are not the only ones feeling the heat from excessively early school hours.
“The early school hours are equally problematic for teachers. They have to come in before their students and mentally prepare to face them, and prepare their teaching material,” she said.
“The early hours can disrupt how much time they spend on the job as teachers, as well as quality time with their families. The long hours might reduce the teachers’ leisure time, and adversely affect their mental health.”
For Widya, “many parties are involved in the schools’ educational process, all of whom are affected by the early school hours”.
“These include parents who have to wake up in the small window of hours to help their children to prepare for school and take them there,” she said.
“The minimum amount of rest will affect all parties, not least the students’ academic performance.” — The Jakarta Post/ANN
