Dear Friends,
Recently, I was talking to a 6th-class student studying in a corporate school. The student wakes up at 6 AM and goes to school by 8 AM. They have regular classes till 4 PM, and special classes are conducted from 4 PM to 6:30 PM! The school does not have any playground or greenery. The school operates from Monday to Saturday. Sunday is mostly spent sleeping and watching movies!
We can clearly see a deficiency in terms of physical, emotional, and psychological development. I was recollecting our school days. Our classes used to start at 9 AM and end by 4 PM. The school consisted of 25–30 classrooms on the ground, and 2/3 of the school was covered by a playground. We used to go by bicycle, which was 4 km away from our home. From 5 to 7 PM, time was dedicated mostly to play! I heard the word “IIT” for the first time in my +2! During school days, dreams and goals were mostly limited to becoming a high school teacher or a banker due to limited exposure. I am not saying we studied in a perfect model either.
However, recently I read a post by Alexey Navolokin, GM at AMD. In many Chinese schools, students pause class for 1–3 minutes and move together (hands and body are shaken simultaneously) — inside the classroom. It is not a dance, not military, nor system design.
It’s called Radio Calisthenics. It has been practiced nationally for decades to reset posture, circulation, and attention.
The reasons are obvious. Prolonged sitting reduces cognitive performance after 30–40 minutes. Short movement breaks improve focus and working memory by 10–15%. Light physical activity increases blood flow to the brain by up to 20%, and even 2 minutes of movement measurably reduces mental fatigue.
As AI scales execution, human attention becomes the bottleneck. While there was a transition from legacy software to enterprise-level systems, similarly, early school education needs an overhaul with physical and emotional activities embedded into the learning process.
Ravi Saripalle
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