Several regions in South Korea are introducing a 9:00 a.m. school start time, which has been met with both support and opposition, with proponents saying it will improve students’ physical and mental health by giving them more time to sleep and eat breakfast, and opponents saying it will inconvenience working families and make it harder to coordinate school schedules.
In South Korea, Gyeonggi Province implemented 9:00 a.m. school starting time on September 1, 2014, and Jeolla Province implemented 9:00 a.m. school starting time in October 2014. In Seoul, the 9:00 a.m. school start time policy for elementary and high schools was fully implemented in 2014. On March 1, 2014, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education announced and implemented a policy to adjust the school start time for elementary and middle school students to 9 a.m. This was done as a measure to ensure students get enough sleep, improve their health and learning efficiency. In the case of high schools, schools were allowed to adjust the start time based on their own autonomous decisions. The public has been debating the issue through various surveys and opinions for and against. Teachers are against the idea, students are in favor of it, and parents of elementary, middle, and high school students are divided depending on their own circumstances.
In this regard, there are many different opinions on the subject. Some experts argue that a 9:00 start time can improve learning by allowing students to get more sleep. Studies have shown that getting enough sleep can help improve learning focus and memory, so if students come to class well-rested and refreshed, they’re more likely to perform better academically. Additionally, having a little extra time in the morning can help students feel less stressed and in a more positive frame of mind.
On the other hand, the opposition to a 9:00 start time is not without its critics. Many educators are concerned that the policy will increase teachers’ work hours and make it difficult to coordinate academic calendars. In addition, working families may be inconvenienced by the inconsistency between parents’ work times and students’ school start times. To address these issues, schools and communities will need to work together to come up with a variety of measures.
I’m in favor of the 9:00 a.m. school start time, which is a hot topic these days. I am in favor of a 9:00 a.m. start time because it is beneficial to students’ physical health because they can eat breakfast or get more sleep, and it is beneficial to their mental health because they can talk to their families while eating breakfast.
When I look back at my high school days and think about the morning routine of today’s high school students, I woke up at 6:30, got to school by 7:10, ate breakfast at school, and had morning study sessions from 7:30 to 8:20. It was a boarding school, so the school served breakfast and didn’t take much time to get to school. Because I didn’t get enough sleep, I would try to eat breakfast while I was still groggy, and I would end up eating only a spoonful or two of soup and throwing away the rest of my meal because I had no appetite. Also, during the 50 minutes of morning study hall, about 25 out of 30 students in my class would sleep on their desks because of the lack of sleep. First period ended at 9:10, and even during first period, I couldn’t pay attention in class because I was so groggy. I also rarely ate breakfast, so I was forced to grab something from the cafeteria around second or third period. I don’t think the life of a middle school student today is much different than my high school experience, and this sloppy morning routine all started with fitting everything into an early start time.
If school wasn’t out until 9:00, I could get more sleep, eat a full breakfast, and pay attention in my first period classes. It’s good for students’ health because they’re eating a breakfast that’s more nutritious than the snacks available in the cafeteria. This experience is why I’m in favor of a 9:00 start time: it allows students to eat a good breakfast and eliminates the inconvenience of sleeping on their stomachs at their desks at school.
It also benefits students’ mental health because they can talk to their families in the morning and start the day refreshed because they’ve had a good night’s sleep. Families don’t get to sit down for meals together as often these days. In the morning, it’s impossible to sit down and talk as a family because everyone is in a hurry to get to work or school, so they make do with bread, milk, and cornflakes. The same goes for dinner. Everyone gets home at different times, and it’s not uncommon for a meal to be a long-overdue event, especially with dad as the head of the household. Even when the family does get together for an evening or weekend meal, it can be awkward to have a real conversation with middle and high school students who are just entering puberty.
If not for busy mornings and separate dinners, the breakfast time freed up by a later school start time can bring the whole family together every day. Sitting down together in the morning, even for a few minutes, to talk every day, would help our students feel loved by their families, and their mental health would benefit from the attention they receive. Starting the day with a good night’s sleep would be a more positive force than starting the day with less sleep. Learning from a clear mind would naturally be more effective, and the feeling of being refreshed and confident in their abilities would enrich their mental lives.
Despite my proponents, there are those who oppose a 9:00 start time for other reasons. The most common argument is that it’s hard on working families. The second reason is that the school start time is later than the work time of working parents, so children are sometimes left unattended in the morning. The school board is taking measures to address this concern. It is reported that they are planning morning care programs, opening school libraries, and assigning teachers in charge. It’s a matter of taking advantage of these programs.
Another argument against the idea is that it will lead to an increase in tutoring and cramming in the morning. However, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect students to be tutoring or going to tutoring during that time, given the travel time from home to tutoring and back to school again, even if the school start time is delayed by an hour or half an hour. Furthermore, if parents recognize the mental and physical health benefits of using the morning hours, they won’t let their children spend the morning in tutoring. In fact, they shouldn’t.
In the article “Seoul to start school at 9:00 a.m., frontline push for 9:00 a.m.” published by the Korea Education Newspaper, which is published by the Korea Federation of Educational Organizations, there are a number of objections to the above-mentioned arguments, some of which I would like to comment on based on my own arguments. It is said that students will be able to enter and exit the PCC before school, but no one goes to the PCC in the morning just to play 30 minutes or an hour of games. You might think that students will spend time at the PCC at night because school starts later, but teenagers are not allowed to be in the PCC after 10 o’clock, and there is a shutdown system, so they will not play late at night.
It has been suggested that students’ school hours will overlap with workers’ rush hours, which could lead to increased traffic congestion, but this is unlikely to be the case as students will be using public transportation rather than their own cars for transportation. Bus and subway schedules may be adjusted to accommodate students’ commute to school, but this is unlikely to be enough to cause traffic congestion. There were also some comments that morning sports activities and various creative activities might be curtailed, but since morning sports activities are meant to be done before the start of first period, I think there will be more of them, not less. I also personally think that the extra morning time might encourage more students to exercise in the morning.
Lastly, there is an opinion that a 9:00 start time is not good for high school seniors who want to align their lifestyle with the SAT because the start time does not match the SAT time. The SAT Korean Language Test starts at 8:40, and the principle is to be in the school by 8:10. Even before the implementation of the 9:00 start time, high schools did not always arrive at 8:10 and start first period at 8:40. To argue that high school students’ timetables should be adjusted to the SAT after the implementation of the 9:00 start time seems to be an attempt to simply blame the 9:00 start time policy. Furthermore, it is not necessary for students to start school at the start time of the SAT long before the SAT, as the two weeks leading up to the SAT are enough time for students to adjust their life rhythm to the SAT.
While public opinion is split for and against 9:00 a.m. start times, there is some tendency for the debate to be pitted against liberals and conservatives. Whether it’s the conservative camp blindly criticizing and criticizing the policies of the newly elected liberal superintendents, or the minority group expressing their support and agreement with the policies of the liberal superintendents, it doesn’t serve the best interests of students. Instead, the right policies should be implemented for the mental and physical health of students and their ability to wake up refreshed and ready for the day.
A 9:00 a.m. start time should be accompanied by policies that go beyond simply delaying the start time to accommodate students who arrive earlier in the morning. There are many things to do, such as expanding libraries and internalizing before-school programs. First and foremost, we will need to continue to observe and analyze the pros and cons of what is happening in Gyeonggi Province, which has implemented the policy first, and continue to improve the policy.
Regarding the current issue of 9:00 a.m. school start time, I am strongly in favor of 9:00 a.m. school start time because I believe that securing morning time is essential for students’ physical and mental health, despite many opposing opinions.
