Live data from Hacker News

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

news.berkeley.edu

261–270 of 458 posts

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 consi…

hm, that's very debatable. alot would contend history and science are core but others aren't. I've heard many complain that they never use math in the real world. I think math is core but the problem is its very opinion based. I don't see how other subjects don't build on each other.

the importance of the ability to calculate and communicate are debatable only by people in total denial about how pervasive both are in our society. should those people really have any say in the curriculum of our children's future?

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

#262

It was shown long ago that your brain doesn't fully wake up anyways until something like 10 AM I believe, if not more like 11 AM or noon. Having students get to school at 6-8 AM is just wasting resources. As some have pointed out though, this runs much deeper than people give credit for. The 8-4 schedule of schools isn't due to random choice, it's built around the entire country from the ground up operating on that t…

School could be 8AM to 5PM to coincide with parents work schedule, but don't start any serious classes until 10AM.

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

#263
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Gallup in 2013 the median incomes in the US and UK were $15,500 and $12,400 adjusted. Considering that US citizens pay on average 10% of earnings on healthcare where the UK doesn't that makes it more akin to $14,000 vs $12,400. Except here is something you didn't know - that British citizen isn't paying income tax at all. Their 0% bracket goes all the way to about $16,000 USD Today. That US citizen is pa…

I don't have any argument to make about relative quality of life between the US and other countries, because that's largely subjective. That being said, Fennoscandia is an aberration. They are monocultures with virtually no 3rd world immigration. By comparison the US actively seeks immigration from third world countries. There's a lot of political turmoil right there over this issue, immigration policy changes due to…

> That being said, Fennoscandia is an aberration. They are monocultures with virtually no 3rd world immigration.

Untrue for Sweden[1] and Norway[2], which have respectively 14.3% and 16.8% of their populations foreign-born. Not all of those foreign-born are from developing nations but developing nations figure heavily in the top-30 list for Sweden.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Sweden#Demograp...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Norway

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

#264

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…

In related news, poor performance at work tied to work hours that don't match our biological clocks.

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

#265

I like how it shows that getting up early ruins the whole day. I have to come an hour early for a meeting every other week and it's always a challenging day... Getting up ~9am is the point at which it doesn't effect my performance anymore (I'd still prefer shifting my sleep phase even further). Sadly this only worked for a job once in my career.

Go to bed earlier. I get up early and have since High School. All I do is make sure I go to bed at a reasonable hour. Going to work, lunch, home early is friggin awesome. Avoiding rush hour, saving me roughly 1 hour a day in traffic, is fantastic. Plus it gives me time to do any personal things in the early afternoon without affecting my work schedule.

To add to that - cut out screens at a specified time. 8PM, 9PM, whatever makes sense an hour or two hours before going to bed. It has a drastic effect on sleepiness.

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

#266
post #232
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of blowing your mind, my analogy was referring to the fact that people usually shower AFTER they get dirty. Blue collar workers shower after work, because their work is where they get dirty. Its not because some mythical voodoo. It is precisely and unequivocally because they have accumulated waste on the exterior of their bodie. All of the rest of us that adjusted to the initial new reality of having to e…

Please stop posting flamebait and taking HN threads off topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please stop jumping to the conclusion that I am off topic.

My thesis that ties this story together, and showering in PE class, is that some people see boats, guns, and sailors moving through the water, but are somehow incapable of acknowledging that it constitues a navy.

The result in this article, people do better when their awake, can be thought of as a frequency plot. This study effectively performed fourier analysis. They studied a comprehensive data set over a long enough time to deduce the cohesion that is evident when controlling for time.

Here's a thought experiment: can you empathize with a transistor? Imagine your a transistor, and I'm a transistor, and we can somehow still communicate. Im a pnp, and you're an npn:

npn: Its obvious that we're just transistors. You keep spouting nonsense about these logic gates, and how their the future. But please, show me the logic gate. I don't see it. You can't even tell me what it looks like.

pnp: look, when you put enough transistors together, you get an AND gate. In another configuration, you can get an OR gate.

npn: Please stop posting your controversial opinions here. This guy. I bet you're gonna tell me about magical flip flops and arithmetic logic units. Thats because you get all your news from science based sources. You should really try and get your information from a more diverse set.

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

#267

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.

The article doesn't support that, it doesn't make sense for a vast majority of school districts - especially inner city ones. Another commenter made more sense - early class times give parents time before work to prepare their kids for school. This football angle is ridiculous. If it were true, wouldn't colleges and universities suffer from the same standard?

Oh, it's ridiculous, and a pretty well known reason for anyone who has studied US public education.

Here is one such article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/04/how-sc...

You'll find case after case of local newspapers reporting on school board meetings where requests to move the start time were met with fierce opposition by athletic directors, etc.

Both my parents were educators (my mom ran special education for a school district, my father ended his career as Dean of the School of Ed @ Edinboro) and for a time I ran the countries top education blog. All three of us encountered this obstacle to sensible school scheduling across a variety of different schools and districts.

I'd say it's the leading obstacle that I've seen when you look at local district opposition.

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

#268

During college, I used to play WoW. I think my biological clock was messed up because of it, not because that was my natural biological rhythm. Also, because of the amount of hours I put into WoW, I did not have many hours left to study, affecting my academic performance. Thus, I wonder if the performance is really linked to the biological rhythm, or rather that the biological rhythm is a sign of activities impacting…

There's also the well documented impact of blue/led light on keeping your brain awake. You definitely get into chicken/egg scenarios with playing games all night, but having a clear screen time cut off every night helps me and my family get to sleep on time.

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

#269
post #98

This study was done on college students, not elementary and HS students, college students at Cal . There are a lot of caveats here and trying to apply them to elementary education is good, but outside the scope. Aside: If you really want test scores to improve, give the kids food. My SO is an educator and she's had kids come in that only get food at school. All weekend they may only eat a bag of Cheetos, sometimes up…

Yes, feeding low-income students is critical. However, we have to ask if the school-lunches provided are indeed better than a bag of Cheetos? I worked in the top 3 worst middle school in my state in the poorest city in my state, and I found their school lunches to largely be processed carbs like pizza, burger+fries with no veggies. The veggies that were on offer were in tiny sauce-containers that hardly any of the ki…

"Is a burger actually less nutritious that a Cheeto? The answer may surprise you."

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

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a mischaracterization to say this is all the result of bad habits. Asking teens and young adults to perform between 6 and 9 is like asking a fully mature adult to perform between 3 and 6. > I am a night owl myself, but our "natural" sleep cycle certainly more or less falls in line with school times. This is absolutely not true for adolescents continuing through young adulthood. Adolescents naturally have a dela…

> It is not (necessarily) poor sleep hygiene which causes teens to stay up later, but their own biological processes. I'm genuinely curious about this, do you have links to evidence of this? You're asserting a certain causal order, but everything I've seen such as the article this thread is purely observational so doesn't say anything about the causality of it.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN