Students if school started at a later time: "That means later bed-time :D"
Something everyone here seems to be forgetting is that even if you are getting the same amount of sleep, sleeping at a time which fits your biological clock better is better for you. I can get some amount of sleep and wake up at 5am and be tired the whole day, and yet if I wake up at 8-9am with the same amount of sleep I am perfectly functional the whole day.
I noticed exactly this since starting WFH. Even if I suffer a bout of insomnia -- where I get maybe 3 hours of sleep -- just being able to sleep in to 0800 makes it so much more tolerable.
It goes from feeling tormented to just feeling rough around the edges.
God but I remember fighting to keep my eyes open at school and at work back then.
Circadian rhythms are rooted in our very cells and dominate our lives. Defying them always comes at a penalty. Adding to the complexity here is that everyone is different; social norms be damned.
Jetlag is probably the best studied phenomenon for trying to "break the rules", and surprise, there is no remedy other than waiting a few days to acclimate to a different solar cycle.
Uhh, yes? I think that is kind of the point. To acknowledge they do have a different sleep requirements than adults and elders.
I almost want to disagree with you, but this is legitimately how my friends and I would have responded to a later start time lol
Same for myself, knowing that I'd do that was one of the reasons I even thought to write that :D
"How can we get your children indoctrinated into a 8a-5p work week if we have them go in later? We can't have that!"
That's half the problem though isn't it. The parents have to work the 9 to 5 so that's when the kids need to be out of the house as well.
True. School is useless.
/s
Too bad, cause I don't want to do 9-5s.
I thought it was easy until my kids' school system tried to do it.
The bus drivers all quit. The only reason they took the job was because it was early and they could start a 9-5 job after their bus drive.
After delays and rescheduling, many schools in the district now start earlier than they did before they tried to make them later.
Don't they have to also pickup the students in the afternoon?
How the hell could they have time for a 9-5 in addition?
I didn't understand either but that's the reason that they gave for quitting. Maybe some schools had a different afternoon driver.
Also a tertiary function of schools is to act publically funded daycare. Moving the handoff later in the morning means that parents would also need to start work later, or take on fewer hours.
Not saying that wouldn't be a good thing, but there are knock-on effects that go beyond the clout of a school to tackle.
So hire other bus drivers, or just have kids take the regular bus. Where I live there's no such thing as a school bus.
We lived in a city where high schoolers take public transit and that worked well for them, but the district could never hire enough drivers for the elementary and middle schools. Even with the drivers they had, they had to stagger school start and end times so that buses could do multiple routes. Some schools started at 7 and others at 9. Then the problem you highlight comes up, that there are only a few hours between shifts, so it was harder for drivers to have a second job. Many drove Uber between.
I have a hypothesis that adolescents staying up late and the elderly waking up early is an an evolutionary holdover from a time when someone needed to be awake to watch for lion attacks.
That's an actual theory afaik.
Need as in, for a healthy body and mind?.. Hardly needed if we can breed fresh meat for the economic grinder on less sleep!
Revenge Bedtime Procrastination! Why would I go to sleep early, giving up time that I enjoy (after school) to more fully experience and function during time I don't enjoy (during school)?
Scientists: humans have evolved to go to sleep later in the evening and wake up later in the morning during their teenage years. It's hard to fall asleep earlier and even if they do the quality of their sleep will be less.
Morons commenting on this post: just go to sleep earlier8 - 10 = -2
i see what u did there
I see you went to public school. Learned yourself some maths, too. Nice.
The tragic truth when I’ve worked at schools that start that early is that it was done so that the kids could work/take care of siblings. Even then many kids would leave school early because they would be asked to come into work. It sucked, I had kids that would sleep through my classes because they had worked extremely late.
Most of the shitty things Public schools do are because we have no money, are trying to feed/clothes/protect kids who have literally no one else. The school I worked at had 100% free breakfast and lunch, because the population was so transient/not in the country legally that it wasn’t realistic to expect them to fill out the forms to get free lunch.
The system is such a brutal grind that is also designed to extract as much as possible from optimistic, well meaning folks. There is no money, so most good things come from teachers spending their own money, staying well after contract hours, etc, etc. The burnout rate is insane, my school has already had multiple people leave mid year (and this has happened every where I’ve worked). Alcoholism is rampant among teachers. The stress caused me to develop epilepsy - and I’m not the only person I know this has happened to.
Republicans have been running a war on education for years now, and this is the result. We are forced to do things that we know are bad and ineffective (like the shitty hours, or allowing physically violent students to stay in classroom because we aren’t allowed to suspend them, or teaching to the test) because we have no resources and are expected to be the entire social safety net.
Tbf it’s not gonna fix anything, teens need a LOT of sleep and their rhythm stray to as far as 4-5AM, so even when starting at 9 they won’t get a lot of sleep
What in my opinion would work is reducing school times a bit and have morning and evening batches with different staffs and the student could choose which time they want to attend, the productivity would be much higher making the lower time period not a problem, tho i am pretty sure there might be some issues in this system remembers CGP grey’s rule
one solution would be longer school years (doesn't have to be a 'year-round' calendar) with maybe an hour or hour-and-a-half less class time per day. but that costs more in terms of food service, transportation, building upkeep, and so forth; plus extra child care burden on parents when most families don't have a 'stay at home' parent these days.
I know, instead of not paying teachers lets have twice as many teachers/teachers on call all day, and still not pay them.
remembers CGP grey’s rule
Hexagons are the bestagons?
Better than the restagons?
Luckily, my state understood this and our school hours were like 8-8:30am to 3pm. Still kinda early, but way less of a kick in the teeth as states that make their kids come in at 7am and out at 2pm.
Sorry for the delay. But this is the interview I listened to about this topic.
At least college somewhat does this. Yet it still doesn't help with my sleep schedule.
Missed title opportunity “Pinky Up”
What if (hear me out) the high school kids can go to bed earlier if they're sleep deprived? Waking up at a certain time is really only half the equation. The school isn't making you stay up and get up early.
Going to bed earlier isn't an effective solution for many kids. Around 1 in 6 adolescents find it difficult to fall asleep before 11:00 PM.
In adolescence, up to 16% of teenagers experience a sleep phase delay. Due to this circadian shift , their melatonin levels don’t begin to rise until later in the evening. As a result, they naturally feel more alert at night, making it harder for them to fall asleep before 11:00 p.m.
Well considering that public schools (at least in the US) are glorified daycares in place so both parents can go work, the obvious solution is to globally push back the concept of "morning" to mean 'a few hours after the sun rises'.
Our school started at 8:30 for a whole year, it sucked ass. Since it was high school, the classes going until 4:30 was impossible to manage with a job, I'd end up getting home around 12:00 just to get a normal shift in. Extracurriculars lasted until 6:00! No time to do homework. Waking up early is a part of life, considering we can't just lengthen the day.
Seems like the lesson is that students shouldn't need to have a job while going to school because they have enough to do already.
That's true! Personally I wanted money to buy a car. Public transport would have been nice. But it was a little bit self inflicted
That’s like 1.5 hours longer than the school day here what the heck are yall in school for 8 hours straight for. If we started at 9 we’d be out at 3:30.
Been a while since I was in school, but high school went from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm. The bus arrived at my house at 7:30 and dropped me off at 3:30.
The school day consisted of four 1.5 hour classes, we had three 10 min breaks between classes and a 30 min lunch.
Why not just go to bed earlier?
This is actually a good question that people may not read into very well, and the OP probably knows but didn't indicate: Humans have a circidian rhthym which is a component that indicates when you naturally want to wake up and sleep. Thoughout our lives it changes at different points, but the important point is that for teenagers, they want to be up at night and also wake up later(almost the exact opposite of elderly people).
So trying to make students sleep at 10pm is very difficult vs having school start later to allow classes to better match their sleep cycle.
Additionally, many people who have been well and truly diagnosed with ADHD also experience Delayed Circadian Rhythm which makes them into night owls.
School districts that have shifted to a later start, especially for 12 and up (age wise), have seen improvements in attendance, behavior, and grades.
From an evolutionary point of view, I wonder if it has to do with giving them plenty of evening time for sexual activities. Especially since 30 used to be old age at one point in our past, so teenage years were the childbearing years...
I dont see what the issue is, the kids have plenty of time to sleep, if they go to bed at 9 they can wake up at 6 with 8 hours of sleep and one hour to spare.
The biological clock of kids changes when they are teenagers, though. They tend to become night owls and thus they naturally feel tired at night.
The brain has adapted to be able to adapt to sleep patterns of all times of day. Kids stay up late because they don't appreciate the value of sleep.
I seriously do not understand going the fuck to bed earlier. Just go to bed earlier. Your body adapts over time. Sure schools could move the start time, but if not, just start the sleep sooner.
They won't. So it doesn't matter.
Yeah man, what even is a circadian rhythm lol
The 15-18 year old brain does not work that way and it is simple as that.
No, it doesn't. Where the hell did you find that nonsense?
I've been alive for over 30 years and my body hasn't adapted yet. How much more time will it take?
Working off of memory so take this with a good amount of salt. If I recall correctly, studies have found that teenagers generally don't go to bed later to match if school starts later, but the same applies the other way too. It may be that they technically could get that sleep by going to bed earlier, but as a society that is not a viable proposal to fix the problems that arise from their lack of sleep.
Also just to make sure I'm not misunderstood, I don't dispute that individuals can get used to a new sleep schedule or will go to bed earlier if they have to get up earlier, just that it isn't as easy as waking two hours earlier, means go to sleep two hours earlier for teenagers especially.
No you don't understand, the kids are sleepy eepy and it's someone else's fault!
Beginning later is a non-starter. Parents gotta get to work.
Could work for high school, but some of the younger ones aren't mature enough or raised independently enough, so there's that.
I don't get this, I was always responsible to get myself up and to school. I can't imagine kids not being able to do this.
And I walked or biked to my elementary school every day in the 70's. Many kids are raised very differently now, hence my comment.
I'm working to make my small children independent, their mother, my-ex wife, is working to keep them dependent.
is this an americabrained comment? here in sweden, and this is not some urbanist paradise, kids can absolutely get to school on their own, whether that be walking biking or taking public transport.
it's in fact bog standard for kids to take the bus to school in my town, to the point that you really want to avoid their travel times because buses will be jam packed with annoying children.
Yep, America all right. Couple of things:
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In some states it's illegal to leave children of a certain age unsupervised. I think it's 11 and below here? People do it anyway and no one's looking to prosecute, but it's a thing.
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I can't speak for every municipality in America, but the elementary schools around here do not allow kids to walk or bike to school. Either that, or every single parent, no exceptions, disallows it, because I've never seen a child that young coming into or leaving the school on their own. FFS, when I used to pick up my stepson, same car every day, the teacher had to put their hand on the roof and look me in the eye through a rolled-down window. That was literally the rule.
So like I said, "some of the younger ones aren't mature enough or raised independently enough". It sucks, but it's true.
I have an 8 and 10-yo. They love my house because I allow them freedom. We went to a huge camping place to get married this weekend, local outfitter sort of thing. I gave them some instructions and warnings, cut them loose. Their helicopter mom would shit her pants if she knew they walked all over the woods alone.
(And of course we got the usual comment below crying about capitalism. I'm not sure if these people expect that no one works for a living, or they don't do it on a coordinated schedule, or what.)
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So the sleepy teens should move to Sweden, problem solved!
First off, the meme is specifically about high schoolers
Second, parents needing to be at work doesn't seem to be an issue in summer... They'll figure it out.
Could go to bed earlier
Does nobody who says this remember their days in highschool?
Let's say a bedtime of 9
School gets out at 3
Allot about 2 hours for homework, it's now 5
Allot an hour for dinner, it's 6
Congratulations! A kid has a whopping 3 hours of free time per weekday to enjoy the last few years of childhood. These are even relatively conservative numbers, HW could easily stretch into 3-4+ hours with an AP class or a particularly HW heavy teacher leaving a whole hour of free time! How wonderful.
Oops wait, a strict parent(s) now adds an additional hour for household chores, ah well so much for free time.
You should read why, studies found teenagers bodies(something outside of their control) fall asleep later.
Wouldn't hurt to link them, not just for me but for the thread in general
lol ... I had a nephew like that .. at around the age of 12 to 15 a few years ago .. I'd be visiting their family, then around 10, he'd yawn, make a big show and say he's going to bed.
What the parents just ignored was that he was lying in bed with his ipad and phone until early, early in the morning watching movies, youtube or tv all night long and getting absolutely no sleep ... wake up like a drunken sailor every morning and not pay attention at school.
The parents didn't care because the kid wasn't bothering them and he stayed quiet in his room ... he could live their by himself on the wifi connection for all they cared. ... high speed internet is a great baby sitter.
There was no internet access in bed kind of thing when I was a teen and I still did the same thing, I just used books and the radio instead.
I did this a few times... with a gameboy/DS
