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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

#162
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the effort of getting ready once and then having to get ready again. Not traumatizing, just a pain. Some people are particular about their routines.

All people are particular about their routines. Some to greater degrees than others. Are you familiar with the phrase: "There are two types of jobs, those you shower before, and some you shower afterwards."

What's that have to do with routine?

You shower after manual labor jobs. That's just a matter of practicality.

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

#163
post #58

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.

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

You can't value economic success solely on the size and influence of companies. In Germany (Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg especially) there are literally thousands of very successful small-middle tier engineering firms doing highly specialized work in very specific areas. It might not be Facebook or Google or even BMW in terms of size and influence, but they are the very core of the economic success in these states.

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

#164

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…

What about those kids who wake up early? I've always been a morning person. Even as a kid I remember waking up with the sun because sleeping always felt like a waste a time with so much fun stuff to do.

I remember staying up as long as I could because there was so much fun to do.

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

#165
post #115
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember nothing worse in High School than waking up showering and getting dressed for school, only to have PE class first period.

What was so traumatizing about the showers available to you in high school? Because I certainly remember first period gym, and I just took a shower afterwards. Then I was right as rain.

My school didn't allow us to use the showers after PE. First period PE meant you could either minimize your participation or be sweaty all day. The showers were only available for the sports teams after school.

Don't know how common that is.

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

#166
Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Favor After School Football Practice.

Seriously, much of America is so entranced by high school football that entire district schedules are oriented around ensuring ample practice time after school.

It determines bus schedules and school start times for the entire district and all students.

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

#167
I’m a Bay Area high school student and schools in this area have tried adopting these late start times. However, they were faced with intense community resistance, with parents pushing against that idea as it interferes with extracurriculars and childcare.

I recently watched a PBS Frontline documentary back from 2002 that discussed this issue, and even then parents were extremely resistant to change.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schools can still help with this by trying to schedule the core academic stuff later in the the day and the less mentally intense stuff like PE earlier in the morning. My kids' elementary school actually does this. They tell parents "if your child has a doctor's appointment or needs to be out for a portion of the day, schedule it at the beginning or end of the day to make sure they don't miss anything important."

The problem with that is rotating schedules is more economically efficient than loading all the class-types onto one time of the day. This would mean you need more PE teachers in the morning, more math teachers in the mid-day. There's a reason schools have multiple periods of each course, and that those periods rotate day-to-day. One interesting follow-up study could be to compare night-owls/morning-larks in rotating…

At the root of it, they define "core" as Math and English with the goal to centralize those two in the middle of the day as much as possible.

Physical Education, Art, Spanish, Music, History, Science, etc are scheduled around those accordingly.

The main reasoning is simply that math and English are the two subjects that build upon each other the most from grade level to grade level and because of that, they are considered the "core".

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

#169
post #48

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.

> If there was a will, teenagers would be allowed to come sooner or on bike or fully by themselves.

Wait, are there some places in US where teenagers aren’t allowed to do that?

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

#170
I wonder if the study corrects for students that just stay up late for parties, etc., and just strip themselves of sleep when it could be avoided. It's quite easy to move your bioclock forward bit by bit, esp.for social reasons. It is very hard to roll it back (some studies suggest it's better to just roll it forward more and more instead)
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