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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

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you sleep through European history, you can still learn American history. If you sleep through biology, you can still learn chemistry. If you sleep through algebra, you can't do calculus, period.

so true. STEM master race. that's why anyone can just sit in a history or physics graduate level course and be fine because they don't build on each other. Organic chemistry would never depend on bio or chem 1. however, if you sleep through algebra 1, its not used at all in geometry so its fine. And neither are used in discrete math. such a bubble.. what if i told you most students don't learn anything past algebra a…

Organic chemistry is not an elementary school course. Science taught in grade school usually has few inter-dependencies because it aims to cover a very broad range of topics at a very basic level. Ditto history.

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

#392
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to go to bed earlier because of interruptions and noise levels on campus, but if they can be managed, so can this problem. The idea that there is some innate biological problem is silly IMO. Young people have no unusual difficulty adjusting to time zones when traveling, but they do have computers and cell phones that are like brain cocaine and very difficult to self manage. I started scheduling shut off tim…

It's not silly. It is in fact a real thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder

I just want to say thank you for that link. I just read it and that is exactly how I feel. Really nice to get an explanation.

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

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That emphasizes that the purpose of school isn't as much to educate children as it is to provide an economy of scale for babysitting so that more adults can participate in the workforce. I wonder how that dynamic will interact with the decreasing need for adults in the workforce.

It's not just economy of scale for babysitting, though that is a big component. In fact, the timing of compulsory education being enacted into law coincides with men coming back from the world wars and the creation of child labor laws, denying children the right to work so their parents could have better jobs. I'm not here advocating putting kids back in the factories, just pointing out the history. In addition to th…

>In fact, the timing of compulsory education being enacted into law coincides with men coming back from the world wars and the creation of child labor laws, denying children the right to work so their parents could have better jobs.

Compulsory education in the US started in 1852 in Massachusetts and ended in 1918 in Mississippi:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education#United_St...

The first modern compulsory education was enacted in Prussia in 1763.

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

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

That doesn't source the actual claim that these reforms increased productivity. Everyone knows about vacation time rules in Europe, few have read economic analyses of them.

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

#395

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…

The actual problem began when humans invented candles and lightbulbs and started staying up past 8pm, and going to bed at inconsistent hours, therefore waking up tired the next mornings.

Our optimal sleeping time is based on the rotation of earth around the sun. We have removed our brain's natural sleep trigger (lack of light) so our sleep habits have been getting out of whack for the last couple of hundred years.

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

#396
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not silly. It is in fact a real thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder

So they have a hard time getting to sleep on time - but it is because of behavior patterns. If it were due to maladaptive body clock regulation there would be evidence of poor adaptation when traveling to different time zones. If it were due to melatonin dysfunction there would be some wild swings in affected populations between summer and winter periods. Instead this is fully explained by routines. Just ask the coll…

It's a biological thing and there's plenty of research on it. And there _is_ evidence of "poor adaptation."

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1440-1819....

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

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you sleep through European history, you can still learn American history. If you sleep through biology, you can still learn chemistry. If you sleep through algebra, you can't do calculus, period.

> If you sleep through algebra, you can't do calculus, period.

Despite my best efforts in high school

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

#398
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not caused by different natural rhytme, that is caused by them not going to sleep till they are exhausted. It does not happen if they are not allowed to watch TV or browse the net or chat of social whatever and are sent to bed by parents. That pop culture cliché also have only kids who don't give a fuck about anything doing that. And it is fuelled by it being perceived as cool. Overwhelming majority of studen…

I mentioned it because I was one of those kids. There was nothing "cool" about it, and I found my persistent insomnia, relative to high school schedules, frustrating at best. I got detentions several times for falling asleep in the middle of classes I personally found interesting.

I am pretty confident that that level of insomnia is not cause by normal teenager sleep patterns. If you can't sleep so much that you sleep in sch ool, then your problem is medical.

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

#399
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mentioned it because I was one of those kids. There was nothing "cool" about it, and I found my persistent insomnia, relative to high school schedules, frustrating at best. I got detentions several times for falling asleep in the middle of classes I personally found interesting.

I am pretty confident that that level of insomnia is not cause by normal teenager sleep patterns. If you can't sleep so much that you sleep in sch ool, then your problem is medical.

[deleted]

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

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The actual problem began when humans invented candles and lightbulbs and started staying up past 8pm, and going to bed at inconsistent hours, therefore waking up tired the next mornings. Our optimal sleeping time is based on the rotation of earth around the sun. We have removed our brain's natural sleep trigger (lack of light) so our sleep habits have been getting out of whack for the last couple of hundred years.

What is really interesting is that human's natural sleep cycle is not to sleep continuously for 8 hours. Our natural sleep cycle is to go to bed when it gets dark and then to wake up for a few hours in the middle of the night and get up and do things (apparently this is also the time when most sex happened since other family members in the same room were still asleep) and then go back to sleep and get back up at dawn.
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