How Much Class Can Students Handle?

Monday, April 13th, 2009
by SamanthaK11

School five days a week already is miserable for the average student, but adding Saturday classes on may seem like it’s flirting with the idea of child abuse. The thought of having to set the morning alarm for 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. for another day while also only getting a one-day weekend may just be another form of torture. Imagine, in essence you have to study every single night during the week and the only day you can sleep in is on Sunday. Can you imagine how draining school six days a week might be on a teenager? Well students who attend what is like to be known as “traditional boarding schools” use this method of torture on their own students. However, these schools defend their system by allowing classes to get out at noon on Wednesdays. A half day Wednesday, exciting? Well maybe but not enough to add on a whole extra day to the school week. And yes, teachers may have the ability to spread out their curriculum when given the extra day but it ultimately hurts the students in one way or another. So Saturday classes a positive or a negative? Well it depends on the person who you’re speaking with.

According to students what they want most during the week is sleep and between rigorous academics and demanding athletics or arts schedules, students rarely find the time to complete everything that hope to. By forcing students to go to classes on Saturdays they are depriving a student an extra day of rest. Alarms still have to be set six days a week despite the half day or “mid week break” on Wednesdays. Not only are students pulled out of bed during the morning hours but those half days that are provided sometime add more stress than relaxation. Yes, the break was designed to give students a day of less stress but by allowing them all that free time games it was easy to schedule a game for a team. So those stress free days turn into hectic ones in which students are scrambling to eat lunch and catch a bus for a game, relaxing it is not and the same schedule happens on Saturday as well. In fact students find Saturdays so crazy and detect it as another way for teachers “ruin their lives.” Students who have the ability to create and change their schedules do so in such a way that they make themselves go through an awful Monday through Friday schedule. Their reasoning is purely so they do not have to go to classes on Saturday and they can sleep in not feel the rush and added that everyone else does on a day that is suppose to be low key.

Along with the stress from waking up and making games, classes on Saturday give a student less time to catch up on missed work. Students are forced to study on Friday nights seeing as how Saturdays tend to be an ample time to torture the students some more by passing out tests. And once again, an example of added stress. With all that is going on stress and sleepy students are good inputs for a successful outcome to an equation.

Okay, there is one positive, but it’s not from the student’s perspective. That one point that is beneficial is that teachers do have the ability to spread their curriculum out over a longer week thus being able to give extra help and focus more in depth on materials. However, if their students are falling asleep in class and so stressed out, how does that benefit in any way?
And so, all schools should not subject their students to classes six days a week, it is not healthy. It is just an added stress factor as well as another way to deprive students from even more sleep. Give everyone real world weekends and everyone will be much happier.

Photo Credit: lenifuzhead

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