strong response

Alexandra Corujo
Andrew Golden
ENC 1101
0ct 8, 2013 Sleep Deprivation Becoming a Problem

Sleep deprivation has been a big part with the 21st century. Children are becoming more advanced in technology, but lacking the advancement in school performance like in this article. Staying up late at night usually browsing the web or playing around on their electronic devices and having to wake up early for school is becoming critical in a student’s life. Sean Coughlan provides a wide range of statistics on students being affected in their performance in school by the lack of sleep, which makes this paper more trust worthy. Although sleep deprivation could be reversed, Coughlan lacks informing the readers of the effects in the long term and how it can be reversed significantly. In “ Lack of Sleep Blights Pupils’ Education “ Sean Coughlan conveys a wide spread problem happening along all students in school. He presents the tragedies that students go through when they tend to go weeks with little to no sleep. According to researchers that carry out international education tests, there are many factors that can play out to cause sleep deprivation in pupils’. He examines the results on test scores of the students in different subjects while lacking sleep and having enough sleep. The author made the majority of the paper all statistics, but it lacked connecting with the reader on a personal level. It didn’t allow the reader to relate specifically into the article; instead they had to think more about how they could fit in.
Although he argues that not having enough sleep lowers your performance in school, he states that if not had done enough damage to the brain, sleep deprivation can be reversed. He doesn’t show how it damages the brain, but he does say that getting seven to nine hours of sleep can help the brain start to regain memory capability and attention span. I personally feel more awake and aware when getting at least 8 hours of sleep. I feel as if it allowed me to regenerate my body to be able to perform better through out the day.
Coughlan structures a powerful well-argued case about the difficulties students go through when going through sleep deprivation. Coughlan provides credible studies done by Global Education Rankings and International Benchmarks. Focusing on the students overall presents a small portion to the amount of studies that could be done individually. For instance, making one study on just male students, and then another one on just females. Also demonstrating the difference in age differences separating them into groups of elementary (ages 5-10), middle (ages 11-13), and high school (ages 14-18). Although the author did state that the influence of home life does affect a student’s sleep, he made it a broad argument and didn’t provide enough information. It would’ve made his argument more powerful if the author showed what the differences were and gave examples of how they caused the students to lose sleep over it in particular scenarios.
I truly believe that that students are learning at a slower rate causing a disruption with the teachers learning schedule causing them to slow down their teaching rate. For instance in high school when the students would fall asleep in class, the teachers would constantly have to stop teaching to have to go over and wake up the students, which interrupted my learning. Another example I faced in high school was when my peers wouldn’t do the homework assigned to them, the teacher would get upset and say to us that we didn’t care so why should they waste their time if were not putting in the work to learn. So these statistics seem to be accurate enough throughout education everywhere, especially in the higher grades.
I would have to disagree with the author when he says, “in literacy tests there were 76% of 9 to 10-year-olds lacking sleep.” 9 to 10-year-olds get more sleep when compared to older grades in my opinion. They don’t get as much homework as high school students would get, for instance projects and papers due within a day. The only way I could see this being true is if they’re involved in after school activities or a sport and they put in more than 3 hours in a day into their activity after school and then having to go home and do homework, eat and shower.
Overall, the article was very boring only because of the fact that it only contains facts and statistics. It would’ve been better if they included student’s stories on their personal reflection and feelings towards getting less sleep compared to other students. Also the teachers and parents perspective on how they could improve this unfortunate performance in the students. I didn’t attach myself to the story and enjoy it as much as the author could’ve made me interact with it more.
I would like to say though that it did educate me on all these problems associating with sleep deprivation. Now being a college student, I’ve started to get less sleep because I’m either studying, doing homework, make notes, the gym, and having a social life all at the same time. It was a big change from high school to college since high school was easier and allowed me to get more sleep even with my after school activities. Now that I’ve started college my body isn’t adjusting well, but I’ve learned to manage sleep into my day to be able to perform well in school.
Coughlan is correct about the major problems associated with students losing sleep and the affects it does to them. It has been proven to not only affect one student, but also the whole class itself. Although I feel like Coughlan limited himself with the amount of more studies you could’ve done to improve his research and data, this article did provide informative information that is dependable and accurate. This tactics in relying the information to his audience was precise and to the point by addressing the issue and stating facts. Overall I agree with Coughlan and the issues being addressed towards the students that are lacking sleep.