Sleepy Teens, Early Classes: Your Comments

I'm Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Education Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.com |   / voalearningenglish   Last week, we talked about the conflict between sleepy teenagers and early morning classes. Many people commented on our website and Facebook page. For example, Damla Ece in Turkey wrote: I agree with the idea of starting lessons later so teenagers can feel better in the morning. But sleeping more than seven hours can be wasting time for students. Tran in Vietnam disagreed: I think teenagers, on the average, need eight to ten hours of sleep everyday. It's useless trying to force them to concentrate while they can't concentrate.Enilton Neymakes in Brazil goes to sleep late and wakes up in the afternoon and wrote: That's my life, but at least I am studying. Afshin Heydari from Tehran says schools should start early to avoid heavy traffic later in the morning. And Suze from Jordan wrote: When I was a teenager, I enjoyed taking my courses as early as possible. That way I could find a long time in the day to do my own activities.But Azra from Kyrgyzstan said the reason schools start early there is a lack of classrooms. Omid in Afghanistan calls teenagers the destiny-makers of a society. So they must be more alert and active in order to be more successful.And Joruji in Japan wrote: When I was a teenager, I used to get up before six to go to school, which was far from home, and I don't remember having problems. I think nowadays the Internet, TV games and cell phones make teens go to sleep later.Thirty-year-old Kika in Spain says: In my opinion, young people are very lazy.But Dennis Jin disagrees: He says for high school students in China, we must reach class at six-twenty in the morning and be back home usually at ten in the evening. Then we'll have some extra schoolwork to do. Teenagers are not the only ones who suffer. Kathy in Canada wrote: My daughter likes complaining about everything in the morning, and I know that this is from lack of sleep. I wish schools should change their start time to eight-thirty or nine a.m. Vidara Mom, a Cambodian living in New Zealand, says school starts at nine and finishes at three p.m. Therefore the students have heaps of time to interact and play before they go home. Wibi Sebastian from Indonesia wishes school started at seven-thirty instead of seven but tells students don't forget to eat breakfast! For VOA Special English I'm Alex Villarreal. (Adapted from a radio program broadcast 14Oct2010)