Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks
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Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks
#2Looking at the chart in the middle of the article brings up more questions than it answers. Maybe it's the weird 3D perspective, but it looks like all groups get better grades in evening classes. Furthermore, it looks like finches do better in all categories than larks, and owls always do the worst. This seems to argue against the points that the article puts forth.
Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks
#3I’ve found these recent studies interesting in that they seem to confirm what many young people have been saying for a long time. I’ve always struggled to wake myself up of a morning and found that most classes earlier than about 10am were pretty much forgotten come end of semester. Not sure how American schools organise timetables but the two weekly cycle of class times went some way to compensate for this by changing which class was first meaning you wouldn’t fall drastically behind in one specifically because it was earliest. Things have of course changed since leaving school and my sleep patterns have changed significantly, and I can see immediately how trying to make a school student conform to such a cycle would be a poor idea, but I wonder if some time soon I’ll forget being young and start seeing the world like so many leaders seem to with no regard at all for what it was like growing up.
Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks
#4Looking at the chart in the middle of the article brings up more questions than it answers. Maybe it's the weird 3D perspective, but it looks like all groups get better grades in evening classes. Furthermore, it looks like finches do better in all categories than larks, and owls always do the worst. This seems to argue against the points that the article puts forth.
"Owls performed worst of all the groups due to chronic social jet lag"
Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks
#5Do we like to tell ourselves the purpose of school is academics or athletics?
If athletics, school must start as early as possible, so "away" outdoor games can be held outside in sunlight and "away" teams can get home at a reasonable hour.
If academics, school should start as late as possible, so students (and instructors!) can do class prep immediately before class and/or sleep in.
Its interesting that the only acceptable model of alternative education is essentially "pick your major in high school" such that there are art high schools or music high schools or aviation high schools, etc. And of course religious schools that have been around for centuries. However there are no business model schools based on priority, like a school with no athletics program that focuses on academics.
The real purpose of school is lowering unemployment by increasing babysitting years, along with raising the bar as a filter to reduce the number of "successful" kids needing jobs. Certainly we have far too much academics for our economy and culture to hold them.
Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks
#6> night owls were especially vulnerable, many appearing so chronically jet-lagged that they were unable to perform optimally at any time of day.
I experienced this with an 8am biology class I was required to take. It wrecked my whole day. About 1/3 of the way through I just started skipping the class and then later getting notes of the lecture from a friend of mine. It ended up working dramatically well. I got an A, while my friend who got up every MWF to take the notes, got a B. It was kind of a wild result since my studying was based almost entirely on her notes. I hadn't given it too much thought, but it would make sense if being sleep deprived is what hurt her in this case.
Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks
#7Our school district just spent the last year trying to convince parents we should shuffle around start times to make high school later and elementary school earlier.
It was a complete clusterfuck. Both teacher and parents alike at both the elementary and the high schools all had a million reasons why it couldn’t possibly work. Since there are a limited number of buses which are shared, you can’t move one start time without moving the other.
It came up at every school event, sports practice, kids party, to the point where I would just walk away when people starting bitching about it one way or another.
The biggest issue was we had a new superintendent who wanted to “start a dialogue” about the start times rather than actually make a policy change. It took up hundreds of hours in PTO, Administrative, and Town Hall meetings and of course ended up in absolutely no change in the end. Everyone’s opinion of course had to be heard, whether it was a longer commute that a teacher would have, or then not having time to drop off their own child before getting to class, or impacting afternoon sports, or the something about the bus route, or... Of course none of the debate actually addressed if students would possible learn better from it.
I was so glad when they finally sent out the email saying they were dropping it just so that I wouldn’t have to hear the constant bickering.
It was like an engineering team with no lead and a non-technical manager arguing over what DBMS to use where no decision could be made until everyone agreed we had the “right” solution!
Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks
#8I can definitely confirm this from my time in college at least. I had an 8am, 4 day a week calculus class my first semester that I was only taking to get an easy A since I already had the AP credit. Ended up dropping it and my grades in every other class improved.
My best semester by far was one in which I somehow managed to schedule all of my classes after 2pm until about 9pm.
Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks
#9The problem in college is bad, but the problem is some high schools is even worse. At high schools without block scheduling, every day might be a 6 am alarm to get to school by 7:00.
Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks
#10I used to have lots of problems getting up early and always championed later times. Growing up through my twenties, it was great seeing finally seeing more and more evidence for a later school start and I was hopeful for future teens.
But it wasn't until my first kid that I finally understood that school doesn't start this early because it's good for the learning experience.
It starts this early so parents can get their kids to school and start working afterwards, without getting fired.