Reclaiming the holiday break for Muslim students’ well-being

with Ismail Asiimwe

Assalam alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh

Imagine your daughter returning home exhausted every day, not from playing or learning, but from sitting in a school chair for hours during classes, often over ten. She eats breakfast around 10 am and lunch around 1 pm. If she’s at a boarding school, which most teenagers attend, she might have a rushed dinner around 7 pm, then return to class until about 9 or 10 pm, repeating this cycle every weekday. Weekends are not so different.

If she goes to a day school and commutes from home, she gets home, finishes household chores, has no break, and then needs to finish her homework. By the time she’s done, it’s nearly bedtime, and she gets barely 8 hours of sleep; it’s morning again when she has to get up early to prepare for school and attend class by 8 am. If she attends a boarding school, she is expected to wake up much earlier to attend morning prep, take a brief break in between, and rush to class by 8 am.

This is the reality of what takes place in most schools in Uganda. If I were a better storyteller, I could have added more to the above anecdote. Such a routine exposes our teenagers to mental health issues. Recent research published in PLOS Global Public Health by a team of researchers from the School of Public Health at Makerere University and the Department of Public and Community Health at the Medical College of Wisconsin found that Ugandan teenagers in schools were silently suffering from mental health struggles.

These conditions included anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and adjustment disorders, often involving excessive worry, sadness, fear, or mood instability. These issues were more pronounced in girls than boys. Academic pressure was one of the main factors behind this mental health crisis, and the study called for interventions that work with schools to create a safe environment for learners.

One of the key findings from the study was that students in private schools had 1.4 times the odds of experiencing emotional disorders compared to those in public schools. The authors linked this to the pursuit of academic excellence in private schools, which often produces a “high-pressure environment.” In many cases, private schools are organized less as spaces for holistic education and more as commercial enterprises whose reputations and incomes depend on producing top grades. As a result, students are drilled and “grilled” relentlessly for examination performance, while the broader aims of education envisioned in national policy and curriculum are pushed to the margins.

Little attention is given to students’ mental and physical well-being: investment in motor and cognitive learning facilities is limited, and until recently, physical education, an essential component of healthy development, was treated as a mere footnote in the curriculum. Even under the new curriculum, physical education and broader well-being initiatives are often implemented in a tokenistic manner, more to satisfy policy requirements than to nurture the whole learner genuinely. In such environments, it is unsurprising that the pressures of schooling can undermine rather than support students’ emotional health.

It is the holiday season; students are finally leaving school, but many are moving from sitting in class to watching television or enrolling in endless tutoring and extracurricular activities, driven by the same grade-A obsession that dominates private education.

I urge Muslim parents to use this vacation differently. Limit passive screen time and extra-curricular activities, and engage your children in the real, embodied work of faith, family, and community instead. Let them help clean and maintain the mosque, help organize or maintain communal spaces, participate in Islamic charitable activities, distribute sadaqah, visit elderly neighbors, and participate in meaningful domestic projects, such as cooking for others or gardening.

These are not distractions from learning, but the strong manifestations of learning. Research has consistently shown that physical activity reduces anxiety and depression, while belonging to a community strengthens identity, empathy, and belonging. When young people combine movement, service, and problem-solving, they develop the very resilience and critical thinking that schools claim to value — results far less likely to come from another math assignment, a class, or an hour spent on the phone.

—

The writer is a Doctoral Candidate in Kinesiology at the University of Georgia, Athens, and a lecturer of Sports and Exercise Science at Gulu University. Readers can share feedback via asiimweismail@gmail.com