There was a movement in my town to push back school start times. However, there are some non-immediately-obvious consequences. Due to limited school buses, school start times need to be staggered, so the options were either to push all school start times back or swap school start times so adolescents start later and younger students start earlier. Pushing all start times back would have resulted with some schools ending around 6pm or 7pm, and swapping start times would have elementary schoolers arriving home before their middle/high schooler babysitters. While it still could have been all worked out, the district came to the conclusion that it would require too large a logistical shift to be practical.
School closures led to more sleep and better quality of life for adolescents
141–150 of 222 posts
Re: School closures led to more sleep and better quality of life for adolescents
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thinking that lockdowns are a solution to anything, including a pandemic, was a neat way to drive many people insane. I won’t tell my personal… happenings… but I double on your difficulty.
Please elaborate how are lockdowns not a solution to stop the spread of a pandemic, because they most certainly are, and stopped every country's health system to get to the terrible state Italy's got at the beginning. It's actually quite easy - the virus is airborne. If most people stay indoors and don't meet other people, the spread is significantly stopped.
Re: School closures led to more sleep and better quality of life for adolescents
#143And led to a huge retardation (in the literal sense) of learning. My kid was way more active and alert, but the schools weren't prepared for this and they basically just read books together; she's way behind in math still. That all said, school hours were set mostly because public schools double as a daycare. I don't know many people who drive in at 7am anymore, it's definitely time to reset expectations here.
And led to a huge retardation (in the literal sense) of learning.
Which is fine (from the point of view of the people who run these schools). Because the modern HS process is designed around passing tests, and generating positive signals for admissions to elite schools. Which sometimes overlap with the goal of learning -- but in general are orthogonal to it.
By and large, "learning" as such has come to have at best anciliary value in the modern HS experience.
Re: School closures led to more sleep and better quality of life for adolescents
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but 13 year olds cannot secure their own transportation. Pretty much everyone here bikes to work at that age. Even if its 20km through wind and rain. On top of that, being dropped off by mommy and daddy does not impress your fellow students!
Genuine question: where do you live where biking 20km to get to work is a norm?
Rural areas in the east of the Netherlands. My cousins were about ~25km ride from high school, I was much closer at 6 or 7km.
Re: School closures led to more sleep and better quality of life for adolescents
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Biking isn't a sport. That's the root of the normality of the above situation.
Biking 40km a day does amount to sport. Walking is not sport either, but hiking 8 hours a day amount to one too. If nothing else, both take huge amount of time. If you go those 40km slowly (or environment prevents it), you are looking at very long commute. If you go them fast, then you cant claim it is not a sport.
Maybe, but you'll find that the first thing that needs to go if you're serious about bike-centred commuting is the idea that it is a sport. It's not, just like how commuting by car isn't a rally.
Re: School closures led to more sleep and better quality of life for adolescents
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please elaborate how are lockdowns not a solution to stop the spread of a pandemic, because they most certainly are, and stopped every country's health system to get to the terrible state Italy's got at the beginning. It's actually quite easy - the virus is airborne. If most people stay indoors and don't meet other people, the spread is significantly stopped.
https://gbdeclaration.org/
Did you even read it? They're arguing that keeping a strict lockdown for long has too serious negative effects, not that it isn't effective in combating an airborne virus, which it is.
Furthermore, it's from October 2020, more than a year ago. We have vaccines now and they're helping, but not stopping the virus fully. Hospitals are still filling up in some places, and for that various stages of restrictions up to lockdown are the main ways stop it.
Re: School closures led to more sleep and better quality of life for adolescents
#147I noticed kids playing outside more in parks. But also, think of the benefit of missing out on hours and hours of preaching from their teachers. They can just research things on the internet now. And come to their own conclusions.
I think a huge part of the problem with the American education system is exemplified right here with belittling the role of teachers.
No. It's about empowering the students with access to the mute button. It's a beautiful thing!
Re: School closures led to more sleep and better quality of life for adolescents
#148I remember waking up to go to school every morning at 6:45 and taking the bus every day at 7:05 when I was in high school in France. Most months the sun hadn't even risen yet. It was punishing, and I definitely was sleep deprived by the end of the week. Because of the schedule, my parents had me go to sleep around 9pm but I had a hard time sleeping then and tended to not fall asleep before midnight/1 am. I'd either l…
I was the same as a kid - I really struggled with the early mornings, and could never sleep before midnight. Come the weekend, and I was so tired I'd sleep until midday. When I first started at high school, I was a great student, for example winning multiple prizes over the first 18 months. But the tiredness really took a toll, and for most of the rest of school I was a half zombie - I still did well at school, but I…
Just start school later in the day. That's the solution. The real problem is that the rest of society wants to start at set times. People don't want their kids "home alone" after they've left for work or before they come home from work. All of society just isn't geared toward flexibility for its constituents.
Re: School closures led to more sleep and better quality of life for adolescents
#149There was a movement in my town to push back school start times. However, there are some non-immediately-obvious consequences. Due to limited school buses, school start times need to be staggered, so the options were either to push all school start times back or swap school start times so adolescents start later and younger students start earlier. Pushing all start times back would have resulted with some schools end…
Cite this next time people are wondering why no one's having kids.
Re: School closures led to more sleep and better quality of life for adolescents
#150And led to a huge retardation (in the literal sense) of learning. My kid was way more active and alert, but the schools weren't prepared for this and they basically just read books together; she's way behind in math still. That all said, school hours were set mostly because public schools double as a daycare. I don't know many people who drive in at 7am anymore, it's definitely time to reset expectations here.
High schoolers do not need daycare; they also do not need parents to dress them and get them to school. They should be able to manage those things on their own, and take care of themselves for a few unsupervised hours a day.
I think the idea is that you need to stagger the bus trips (so once bus can service 2-3 schools a day). And the high school students should be last since many families rely on older children to watch younger children in the morning.