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Why ‘Sleep on It’ Is Our Most Useful Advice for Learning
It’s one of humanity’s oldest cliches. Educators keep ignoring it
A s a strategy for raising educational achievement, sleep should rank highly. Yet you will hear scant mention of sleep in the education discourse. For all the debate on curriculum and assessment, pedagogy and behavior management, so little attention is given to an issue that acutely affects our everyday lives.
Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep addresses that dearth. Sleep, it appears, is vital to every aspect of our mental and physical wellbeing. Walker’s expertise lies in neuroscience, and his well researched work exposes the fallacy in thinking we can get by with compromising on our sleep — not just the amount of sleep we get, but also the consistency of our sleep patterns. After reading it, I was convinced that I have chronic sleep deprivation. Walker made me reflect on my morning coffee routine and my occasional nap. His book has been — that’s right — a wake-up call.
Sleep, Walker suggests, is crucial to problem solving. When my students are stuck on a math problem, sleep on it is often the only wisdom I have to offer. This adage has served me well in the past and now, thanks to Walker’s research, it enjoys a strong neurological basis. Walker demonstrates that problem solving can seamlessly…
