2. The several comments related to the US highlight the fact that, when learning about cultural dimensions, we should not forget that these dimensions are general tendencies, and not absolute truths. This means that individuals within a culture will deviate from them, some more than others. Thank you, everybody, for your comments! We are so happy that you found this post interesting.

One group agreed in general with Laura’s response that U.S. students are too stressed out by all the work they’re given, but disagreed somewhat with the statement that teachers should be responsible for making the lessons interesting. They thought students should be responsible as well. They also commented on the many additional distractions, online and off, that students have: Facebook, AIM, myspace, Hi5, email, texting, MSN, games, YouTube, forums, phone, downloading music.

Another group thought that everybody at some point needs to sleep and students’ daily lives are always busy doing something IMPORTANT! (Caps intended.) That group also made a connection to their own lives, that in general, more activities = less sleep, or sometimes even NO sleep.

A third group did think it was the teachers’ responsibility to energize us, and that teachers don’t really care about anything but their own work, and not students’ outside activities. They liked the fact that the comment was written by a young person who was going through the same experiences as they are.

That said, the teachers at our school know we’re over-worked and over-tired so if we happen to fall asleep in class, they send us down to the nurse to take a nap because they know that it’s not a lack of respect, but simply a lack of necessary energy. Focusing in a classroom where every other student is silent and the teacher is talking about something you can’t seem to be interested in makes the perfect scenario for sleeping. I fall asleep in school every now and then but I usually try not to because I take a lot of pride in my education. If I do decide to sleep I’ll usually sleep during my lunch hour or my study hall hour because then I won’t miss anything.

It’s not like we fall into a deep sleep. It’s a lot more like we close our eyes and let everything just drift away until we’re so relaxed we can’t hear anything anymore.

Like Cate said about feeling like it’s the teacher’s responsibility to energize us. As much as I feel bad for saying it, when you are in school for such a long period of time, it really is. Challenging our brains with random facts is not something we’d choose to do in spare time, so teachers need to look for a way to make it appealing to us so we don’t have a negative outlook on education.

I really appreciate how our school deals with sleeping students. I don’t believe sleeping in school deserves punishment unless it’s done at an important time in class or unless it keeps happening. I’ll admit that we don’t have as much respect for our teachers in America as you do in other countries but I’ve never seen a student fall asleep simply because they don’t respect their teacher.

I work 36 hours a week along with 7 hours a day of school and there’s millions who do the same. We Americans are tired.