Three days ago, an Australian newspaper, namely the Financial Review, reported positively about a Western Australian school taking a positive stance regarding students and sleep and it has demonstrated that radical movements (towards teens) are always possible:
Joanna Mather reported:
A Perth principal on a mission to improve teenage sleep patterns has convinced 600 students to give up their mobile phones in exchange for a good old fashioned alarm clock.
In what she still hopes will take off as a national or even global movement, Presbyterian Ladies’ College principal Kate Hadwen, wrote to parents in October proposing a bedroom ban on devices such as phones, televisions and laptops after lights out.
Dr Hadwen knew many studies were proving a link between sleeplessness and electronic devices, but as she pressed send on the note to parents she worried it would be viewed as an unwelcome intrusion on their home lives.
She needn’t have worried. “The response from parents and students has been amazing, overwhelmingly positive,” Dr Hadwen told The Australian Financial Review on Wednesday.
With the biggest excuse for needing a mobile phone being to set an alarm for the morning, Dr Hadwen decided to hand out free alarm clocks to every student who pledged to surrender their technology at bedtime every night. Parents are informed of the pledge, which gives them ammunition to argue the toss at home.
That was 600 alarm clocks ago.
“We sold out K-Mart in Western Australia. We had to get them shipped in from other states.”
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