Bird Droppings July 29, 2026
What is the Sixteen-Hour Syndrome, and should we embrace it or find a cure?

I have been working on a chapter for a book the past few days snf my thoughts have been wandering, so I may be a bit wordy today, letting it all out. It has been nearly fourteen years since I wrote about the Sixteen-Hour Syndrome in relationship to emotionally and behaviorally disturbed students. The idea developed from my observations of a group of twenty-eight students in a Georgia high school. At that time, I was seeing the negative aspects that came to school in the form of students being too tired to stay awake or too upset to attend even any lesson presented. While unknowingly, in my observing and understanding, I was able to be successful with these students. As I read Dr. Alexander Sidorkin’s introduction to his book, Learning Relations, I understood all too well what was going on in my first few weeks back in teaching in 2001. Much as he was referring to in his teaching, it could have been mine.

“I finally learned how to be a decent teacher, which involves a lot of improvising, paying attention to my intuition, listening to kids, and trying to take it easy. Having learned to do something is not the same as understanding how it works.” Dr. Alexander Sidorkin

Twenty-five years ago, for me, it was coming back to teaching after a twenty-three-year hiatus and quickly finding that, as a teacher, I was in a paradox. We as teachers have the students for approximately eight hours a day during school sessions and are often expected to teach them everything they need, according to some parents. However, those same parents and society have those students for sixteen hours to undo and/or add to the educational possibilities of the individual student. As I read various books for my graduate courses, I seemed to find an underlying theme in each book; many teachers seemingly never consider this issue of what students bring with them to school.

“There is incumbent upon the teacher who links education and experience together a more serious and harder business. He must be aware of the potentialities for leading students into new fields which belong to experiences already had, and must use this knowledge as his criterion for selection and arrangement of the conditions that influence their present experience.” John Dewey, 1938

The sixteen-hour syndrome is the accumulated experiences of that student each day out of school, and if acknowledged and used by teachers, could be an asset and boon to a child’s learning and future. The sixteen-hour syndrome is the family, community, culture, friends, society, and all other variants and possibilities that are actively involved in the students’ hours away from school. I believe and will address the need for and importance of teachers attending to and understanding this concept and aspect of a student’s life, the sixteen-hour syndrome.

On some mornings, I begin the day driving about looking for a sunrise and occasionally walking into the local Quick-Trip and getting my customary bottle of Smartwater and two Celsius energy drinks, a little caffeine to keep me going through the day. Over the many times I have walked into QT, I have found that of all the stores and retail facilities in the area, perhaps this one place is the most homogeneous of all. Eastern Europe is represented behind the counter by an assistant manager, Hispanics both in line earlier on as they head to work and a cashier, Afro-Americans in line and working at the store, local born and raised kids, and it is almost a rainbow of humanity. As I watch, interactions all seem to flow and work. There are foodstuffs and drinks to cover the range of cultures and personalities purchasing in that store, obviously a good marketing plan. Why then is it so hard in education to see and delineate that we have multiple cultures and peoples within our schools? When we look at AYP and discuss this group or that and test scores, we seem to leave the realities on the table in the conference room.

Using an analogy, the classroom is much like a jigsaw puzzle with numerous intricate pieces that, when placed on the table and worked with, all interconnect often in minute detail. I will often place a jigsaw puzzle out and deliberately turn the pieces over so only the grey back is visible, making all the pieces essentially neutral. While looking at the pieces in this color-blind manner, it is difficult to truly see where each piece can find its place. Teachers, as they scan the room on day one, often try to look at grey pieces and miss the fine detail that in reality is there. In many ways, it is a racial starting point, but culture and socio-economics as well provide intricacies we so often overlook as teachers.

“While it is recognized that African Americans make up a distinct racial group, the acknowledgement that this racial group has a distinct culture is still not recognized. It is presumed that Afro-American children are just like white children, but they need a little extra help.” Gloria Ladson- Billings, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children

Referring to my jigsaw puzzle analogy, it is when we look at the pieces and investigate that we solve the puzzle. It is often when solving the puzzle that pieces are sorted into one pile, often by color. I have watched children look for shapes and corners as they solve the puzzle. It is far too often that teachers in their classrooms feel constrained and/or limited and often never get past sorting color or shapes. Dr. Delores Liston, in Joy a Metaphor of Convergence, offers a rational explanation of this societal impact on teachers and limitations that many feel is imposed.

“The Cartesian worldview presents us with the false security of objective truth, but if we accept this view, we also accept our powerlessness to enact change. …. This perspective leads us to say, ‘What can I do? That’s just the way it is.’” Dr. Delores Liston

Sadly, many teachers succumb and, for thirty years, wait till retirement to rid themselves of their pieces to the puzzle without ever seeing the real picture presented by those pieces. While many parents, school reformers, and even society look to teachers to provide during school all the needs of a child, which for some includes teaching morality and ethics. These same parents, school reformers, and society overlook the impact and consequences of the time a student is at home and out in society, which is approximately sixteen hours during the school day. John Dewey is very well represented in my readings and is touted by some of the authors as one of the premier educators of all time.

“The development within the young of the attitudes and dispositions necessary to the continuous and progressive life of a society cannot take place by direct conveyance of beliefs, emotions and knowledge. It takes place through the intermediary of the environment. The environment consists of the total of conditions that are concerned in the execution of the activity characteristic of a living being.” John Dewey.

It is the total of our experiences that makes us who we are, and these are not bits and pieces we learn and acquire totally within school and the educative process. These are pieces and bits we bring to school from outside. Somewhere along the line, many of the pieces formerly learned and understood at home were transferred or assumed to be transferred to the school as the supplier of and provider of implementation of various human attributes. Jane Roland Martin views the industrial revolution as an integral part in altering the delineation of various aspects of humanity in her book Cultural Miseducation: In Search of a Democratic Solution (John Dewey lecture 8). Martin views home and school as separate entities and that students in school “cast off the attitudes and values” from home. I would offer that perhaps teachers unknowingly disenfranchise those attitudes and values, considering education, and even neutrality, going back to my grey-backed puzzle pieces and political correctness. There is, in effect, a lack of understanding in general within education, and far too often what students could be bringing to the classroom is ignored and/or overlooked.

“No one asks if the wealth that is not in the schools is elsewhere being transmitted to our young. No one dares talk about cultural liabilities being passed down to the next generation, let alone calculate the intergenerational injustice the older generation is doing by passing them along.” Jane Roland Martin

How much is being lost by not seeing the wealth of experiences that students bring to the classroom? So many teachers argue there is not enough time to even consider anything beyond the curriculum. Dr. Delores Liston reviews the commonly held view of curriculum as that of an assembly line in industry and follows with: “This is the belief that persists that if we can just find the right formula, and clear away all the unnecessary steps in the education process, we will educate more as well as more efficiently. So many teachers view the curriculum, and the teacher’s package of books, manuals, and transparencies as the key to their success in the classroom. Sadly, we are no better off than we were years ago.”

How do we attempt to see beyond the facade presented in education? Can we even attempt to do anything different, and would that even help at this time? Dr. William Glasser looks to a more recent event, that of World War II.

“What is true in our schools, and has been true since the end of World War II when we first began to make a real effort to pursue universal education through high school graduation, is that many students (my conservative estimate is at least fifty percent by the eighth grade) who are intelligent enough to do well, many even brilliantly, do poorly.” Dr. William Glasser

Dr. Glasser, of course, sees this as a choice in his writings. However, in the pursuit of universal education, in 1974 the inclusion of students with disabilities of all natures placed all children into the public schools. As this universal education developed, could we have overlooked and perhaps passed by crucial elements of who and what we are as human beings in terms of those students? Have we attempted to provide for and truly recognize the differences in students? I think back to the assembly line mentioned by Dr. Delores Liston in Joy is a Metaphor of Convergence, which is so often echoed through other authors, like how so many administrators and even teachers see education. It has been a few years since I was introduced to the author and educator, Ivan Illich. He was a radical thinker in terms of education and religion and offered a rather grim view of schooling in his book Deschooling Society.

“A second major illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning is the result of teaching. Teaching, it is true, may contribute to certain kinds of learning under certain circumstances. But most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in school only insofar as school, in a few rich countries, has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives.” Ivan Illich
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Ivan Illich may be a bit extreme, but within schools, are we missing those experiences that students bring to the classroom that could be integral pieces to the puzzle, the sixteen-hour syndrome as I call it. In Paula M. L. Moya and Michael R. Hames-Garcia’s book Reclaiming Identity, Hames-Garcia addresses the idea of restriction in terms of various groups within society. Hames-Garcia states: “I call the process by which such individuals come to be misrepresented and misunderstood ‘restriction.’” Is it that we as teachers restrict students by seeing only grey instead of what is there? I look back to John Dewey and possible solutions.

“It is the function of formal schooling to extend, broaden, and improve cultural construction of emerging minds begun at home and in the community.” John Dewey

Dewey continues, suggesting that humankind reproduces itself in two ways: first biological and the second cultural. In our efforts, should we not be addressing what children bring with them in their experiences, which include culture, race, and socioeconomics? Can we adequately address the need for understanding and trying to develop in students that knowledge of their life experiences? Can teachers learn to look beyond the curriculum and reach for a student-centered understanding, caring classroom? In her book The Dreamkeepers, Gloria Ladson-Billings addresses issues concerning African-American students and the teachers who have been successful with predominantly African American classrooms. She writes, “this book is about teaching practice not curriculum.” How does this author view a successful teacher?

“Teachers who practice culturally relevant methods can be identified by the way they see themselves and others. They see their teaching as an art rather than a technical skill. They believe all their students can succeed rather than that failure is inevitable for some. They see themselves as part of the community, and they see teaching as giving back to the community. They help students make connections between their local, national, racial, cultural, and global identities.” Gloria Ladson-Billings

Making lessons culturally relevant to the students as a key for successful teaching is not only restricted to those teachers working with African-American students, but logically, the more we involve the culture of our students, the more interested they will be, and perhaps Dr. Glasser’s observation will be a thing of the past, and students will want to learn.
Looking at a critical aspect of teaching and getting more actively involved with students is that of caring. In the mid-1980s, two developmental-oriented psychologists came at the development of morality in differing ways. Lawrence Kohlberg viewed morality as an ethic of justice, impartiality, and fairness, and in developing his theory used only white males as models. Carol Gilligan’s approach was one from the point of view of caring and viewed through a female perspective.

“A care orientation, according to developmental and educational psychologist Carol Gilligan (1982), reflects the presence of benevolence and compassion. A caring person treats another person with sensitive discernment of, response to, his or her contextually embedded need. Care means liberating others from their state of need and actively promoting their welfare; care additionally means being oriented towards ethics grounded in empathy rather than in dispassionate abstract ethical principles.” Dr. James Fowler

Should we be approaching teaching in a caring, compassionate manner? Most teachers would answer yes, but few attempt it. Perhaps it is difficult for some, but as I read and researched, is not much of what we see as compassion and caring a learned-by-example part of who we are?

I first read of Gilligan and Kohlberg in a book by Dr. James Fowler, Head of the Center for Ethics in Public Policy and professor at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. Dr. Fowler wrote about the development of faith in his book Stages of Faith. In my studies and in using Dr. Fowler’s thoughts, I viewed the concept of trust as a synonym of faith. Trust has significant application and understanding within the classroom. Fowler, in developing his ideas, uses some thoughts from Richard Niebuhr, a 1950’s theologian.

“He sees faith taking form in our earliest relationships with those who provide care for us in infancy. He sees faith growing through our experience of trust and fidelity – of mistrust and betrayal – with those closest to us. He sees faith in the shared visions and values that held human groups together. And he sees faith at all those levels, in the search for an overreaching, integrating and grounding trust in the center of value and power sufficiently worthy to give our lives unity and meaning.” Dr. James Fowler, The Development of Faith

We can superimpose trust in place of faith, and as soon as I look at students coming to my class, I see that they either learned trust in the process of growing up, or they perhaps learned betrayal. Just how significant is that piece of information as a child walks into the classroom? To be successful in teaching students need to trust their teachers and, in return, be trusted by a community to develop and hold together. What should education be about? Should it be, as John Dewey discusses, a basis for our democratic society and community? Should education be about caring and compassion? An aspect that Dewey is well-written on, and numerous others have addressed community.

“For Dewey, the quality of life mirrors its aesthetic depth, understood as the extent to which it embodies grace, artfulness, and appreciation, whether in maintaining a home, classroom, business, or government. The quality of life reflects its emotional maturity and attentiveness, which Dewey contrasts with sentimentality and superficiality. Moreover, the quality of life displays its moral depth, which encompasses considerations of freedom, justice, compassion, humility and personal as well as social responsibility.” David Hansen, Ethical Visions of Education: Philosophies in Practice

It is about community, belonging and relationships that could be a driving force in education.

“I hope that students will be attracted to schools because of the quality of human relationships, the quality of communal experiences there. In other words, students will want to go to school, not because of what they will do but because of whom they will meet.” Dr. Alexander Sidorkin.

As I looked at how we can piece together all of the information that could come into a room with students, my first thought was that teachers need to ask questions of students. There needs to be a learning period where the teacher becomes the learner and tries to understand all the bits and pieces that their students bring with them.

“Good teachers possess a capacity for connectedness. They are able to weave a complex web of connections among themselves, their subjects, and their students so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves. The methods used by these weavers vary widely: lectures, Socratic dialogues, laboratory experiments, collaborative problem-solving, and creative chaos. The connections held by good teachers are held not in their methods but in their hearts – meaning heart in its ancient sense, as the place where intellect and emotion and spirit and will converge in the human self.” Parker Palmer

Perhaps if we try to learn about our students and try to understand the experiences that they bring, if only a few moments are taken from the day, be it in reflections, journals, discussion, and a learning community is developed, education could be changed. We should be looking to embrace what I once considered a negative, the sixteen-hour syndrome, and weave it within our classroom tapestry. Again, as I have for over ten years now, please keep those in harm’s way in your heart and on your minds, and to always give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,
Mitakuye Oyasin
(We are all related)
docbird