Forget breakfast — it’s hard to imagine any child would have the mental capacity to learn at 5am, yet that’s the current reality for students of public high schools in the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT).
The NTT administration, led by Governor Viktor Laiskodat, recently implemented a new educational policy mandating public high schools in the provincial capital of Kupang to start the school day at 5am, with the idea that struggle builds students’ character.
“They can sleep at 10pm and wake up at 4am. Six hours of sleep is enough. Bathe for 30 minutes, travel to school for 30 minutes because nowhere is far in this city, so they can be at school by 5am,” Viktor said yesterday.
“The main reason for this is to build our students’ character so they know discipline.”
As far as anyone knows, there is no mandate for the governor and other NTT administration staff to wake up every day at 4am and be in the office by 5am.
Obviously, such a rule affects not only the students but teachers as well. One TikTok video has gone viral showing staff at SMAN 6 arriving at school on Feb. 27 — the first day of the enforcement of the policy — while it was still dark outside.
The NTT Ombudsman office has called on Viktor to reconsider the policy, as they see no benefit to shifting the start of the school day from 7:15am to 5am.
“I ask that the policy be discussed again with school committees and parents,” NTT Ombudsman Head Darius Beda Daton said.
Won’t somebody think of the children? Because these officials certainly aren’t. If they had these children’s best interests at heart, they probably wouldn’t get teenagers’ recommended sleep time wrong in the first place (it’s eight to 10 hours per day, FYI).
