This new study out of MIT was designed to show, from Fitbit wearing students, that there is causation between fitness and grades. It found no such causation or even correlation.
But, because Fitbits and frustrated scientists are intrusive and don’t really care about students’ privacy, the data was mined further.
The next thing was to look at getting enough sleep before tests, midterms and exams. This also didn’t lead to a correlation.
But the scientists were bound and determined to find something so they looked at sleep before a non testing day or in other words a learning day.
The students who got the most sleep on the night before these days and strung those nights together, got the best marks. The next level of sleeping the night before got slightly poorer marks and the worst level of sleeping got the worst marks. Which blatantly suggests that sleep is important for learning.
Now this could just be a correlation. For instance, the students who had the worst marks might just have an inability to sleep well. Which makes it’s own sense. It’s just that I am going to assume that sleep is important for learning.
Knowing this, all the students will try their best to sleep well before a learning day. Most of the school year consists of learning days. Knowing full well the importance of this, the students will all put pressure on themselves to sleep well.
Do you know what is going to happen to a lot of those students? The pressure to sleep will be too much and they won’t get as much sleep as they normally would have gotten. So they won’t be able to learn as well or as much.
Their professors will drill it into their brains that they better stop clowning around at times they should be sleeping. Which will make the matter worse and their grades will go down further.
At the end of the school year the average mark will be down. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were down a full letter grade. The school can either lower their standards and give out grades they know their students are capable of or not promote a lot more students. I think the schools will have to lower their standards.
Then, in a few years, the real world will hire worse graduates and the general competence level will be down everywhere. Machinists will saw off more fingers, engineers will make worse bridges and more lawyers will become like Rudy Giuliani.
So it’s best to seal this one up and not tell any students. Really it’s for the good of all.
