haha. i've been to taiwan on an immersion program, and also
experienced their enforced sleeping sessions.
In taiwan schools, the standard lunch time is about 30min,
followed by a 20min compulsory sleeping sessions ( where the
discipline officers would patrol the classrooms to ensure that
people are actually sleeping ).
I believe that this approach is probably not feasible in
Singapore for this following reasons
1. It is not feasible for primary schools because school start/end
during lunch time
2. Lessons also usually end by lunch for secondary school. This
is compared with taiwan school days which end about 5pm where they
DO need the sleeping time
3. Lunch time for JC is about 50mins. This equals the combined
lunch+sleeping time for Taiwanese students. JC students CAN have
their lunch, followed by their nap. However, this makes little
difference since a JC student is likely to have free periods in
which they could sleep if they choose to. The ever changing
classroom venues also helps to keep the student awake.
4. There is insufficient manpower to enforce such a
system. We do not have a discipline-officer system in Singapore,
and teachers already have more than enough work on hand.
5. Such a system would not be welcomed by all
- some students prefer to use their lunch time to catch
up with their revision
- some students refuse to sleep, and hence more manpower
would be needed to
make sure they comply ( There were many such people in the
taiwanese class i was in, and the school i was in was considered
quite prestigious )
