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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

#51

Post by mbrameld »

RHSeeger wrote: post #30
robterrell wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's happening where I live too. It's amazing how quickly the discussion moves past "what's best for students" and into the "it's annoying to me personally" and "when I was a kid, we suffered" conversations.

To be fair, "I got fired from my job because I couldn't get there on time anymore because school starts too late" isn't particularly good for the children of the people getting fired either.

One person's issue with work is worth compromising the learning of all the other children? That's not exactly what I'd call fair.

Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks

#52

Post by zaroth »

Goronmon wrote: post #17
zaroth wrote: post #7

Our 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 w…

Of course none of the debate actually addressed if students would possible learn better from it. Is that important if there is no way to make a different schedule work from a practical perspective?

What blew my mind was how parents of elementary school students somehow needed the late start time to make their work possible and parents of high school students needed the late start time... to make their work possible.

I tried explaining that parents of high school students almost certainly were once parents of elementary school children, and those elementary school parents will almost certainly one day have kids in high school, but gave up.

The best part was the parents who had kids in both schools who would still argue against the change :-)

Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks

#53

Post by wpasc »

I disagree with ideas that school schedules should shift later. I am a night owl myself, but our "natural" sleep cycle certainly more or less falls in line with school times. We have fully disrupted our circadian rhythms with our lifestyles and especially screens/lights at night. Before artificial light, our sleep/wake schedule was set by the sun.

I know we live in a different world today, but I feel like shifting our schedule because of poor sleep hygiene and bad light habits is kind of reinforcing a bad habit. Whose to say that the shift wouldn't just perpetuate itself even after a shift of 1 hour later.

Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks

#54

Post by zaroth »

wambotron wrote: post #21
zaroth wrote: post #7

Our 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 w…

The school district my kids are in does this. High school starts 1 hour after elementary, and the buses just run the same routes twice.

That’s what it is here except reversed — buses do the high school run first, and the discussion was around reversing it - like you would think it would have been from the start.

Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks

#55

Post by danharaj »

watwut wrote: post #48
danharaj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising children is one of the fundamental processes of human society. If there really were a will, we could rearrange everything for them. But the way we treat children and teenagers is rather callous and cynical at the system level.

If there was a will, teenagers would be allowed to come sooner or on bike or fully by themselves. If raising children would be really considered important, caregivers needa would not be treated with "shut up and do the things the most complicated way". For that matter, calling school that starts an hour sooner then optimal "calous" is overly hyperbolic, manipulative and dramatic.

> For that matter, calling school that starts an hour sooner then optimal "calous" is overly hyperbolic, manipulative and dramatic.

Do you know how miserable it is to be chronically sleep deprived for, like, a decade? Yes, it's callous to make someone suffer like that for the convenience of everyone else.

Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks

#56

Post by sudosteph »

endymi0n wrote: post #10

I 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 th…

That makes sense to a degree, but it always killed me that in my school district had elementary school starting at 8:30, and high school at 7:15. They told us that it was to stagger the buses and give high schoolers time to work part-time jobs, but it was rough. Especially because the bus ride took another hour out of the morning.

Also, most elementary schools around there offered before and after school programs that working parents can leverage to fit their schedules. That, and neighbors who took turns watching the bus stop to make sure everyone made it on time, gave us enough support to get to school when parents were on tight work schedules.

Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks

#57

Post by gliboc »

vanderZwan wrote: post #41
taneq wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine that there were groups of humans who did this, but they got out-competed by humans who gave a higher priority to work.

If you think every form of natural selection is automatically proof that whatever came out is the best option, then you do not understand evolution at all.

He didn't say that at all. The only fact you can derive from evolution is that some things existed, and now they either do or don't exist. That's exactly what he is saying.

You could argue that maybe some solutions were not even tried before, or that they were tried and abandonned for random reasons. But actually, since the evolution process took a long time, we can reasonably say that we are witnessing the mean outcome of these events. Aka, in this case, the overwhelming majority is a work-related school schedule.

This doesn't invalidate 'free schools' such as Montessori, as these could be good local solutions. They just apparently don't scale to the ensemble of society since they didn't yet and had plenty of time to do so.

Another remark : this doesn't apply to things that were recently invented or discovered.

Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks

#58

Post by Decade »

jaltekruse wrote: post #46
taneq wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine that there were groups of humans who did this, but they got out-competed by humans who gave a higher priority to work.

There are several countries in Europe that give maternity/paternity leave and vacation time to all full time employees by law. The result is not a massive drop in productivity, on the contrary studies have indicated higher overall productivity in many cases. There are things besides short term business gain that societies can invest in that can end up with everyone better off in the long run, even economically.

And where is the European Apple? European Google? European Facebook? Even the European Intel, ARM, now belongs to Japan.

Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks

#59

Post by [deleted] »

vanderZwan wrote: post #41
taneq wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine that there were groups of humans who did this, but they got out-competed by humans who gave a higher priority to work.

If you think every form of natural selection is automatically proof that whatever came out is the best option, then you do not understand evolution at all.

[deleted]

Re: Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks

#60

Post by tehwalrus »

wafflesraccoon wrote: post #50
jaltekruse wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several countries in Europe that give maternity/paternity leave and vacation time to all full time employees by law. The result is not a massive drop in productivity, on the contrary studies have indicated higher overall productivity in many cases. There are things besides short term business gain that societies can invest in that can end up with everyone better off in the long run, even economically.

Source?

The UK.

https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights

(I was actually shocked that Americans don't always get paid holiday.)

Note that we also have 6 months paid maternity leave, and 1 weeks paid paternity leave, with both of those extendable on a lower pay rate.

New legislation from the 2010-2015 government allows parents to share this leave, even if they work at different companies, and start/stop it during the time when it would be taken (so mum can take the first 3 months off, then dad take a month off, then mum again, etc). Sorry for the hetero-normative example, adoptive parents also get paid leave in the same way.

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