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Let Teenagers Sleep

scientificamerican.com

161–170 of 497 posts

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#161

Is smartphone/digital screen attributable to some degree to teenager's late-night habits, and therefore a need for later school times?

I was an avid reader, and my best opportunities to read were late at night. I'd start with a flashlight under the covers, but I found out that the best way to slip by was to go into the bathroom, lie in the dry bathtub with the light on, and read for as long as I wanted. It worked fairly well for a while, I guess. My mom went absolutely nuts over that strategy though. I suppose I was about 10 years old at the time. Later on, when I was 16, I had a so-called "girlfriend" and I would fall asleep during late night phone conversations with her. Or I'd go visit her house and come home late at night.

In high school, I was beginning to feel the onset of a chronic major depression, and I absolutely could not wake up on time. My hair regimen took 60-90 minutes to fix up in the bathroom, and by the time I was driving myself, I found an 11-minute route to rocket to school as fast as possible. Most of the time, it would be my father pouring cold water into my face just to get me roused out of bed. Therefore, mornings became an absolutely traumatic time in addition to all the other childhood traumas I was undergoing, and it took me decades to recover from that.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#162

Pet peeve of mine: some older adults are proud that they get up early. And that’s OK in isolation. The problem though is that older adults rule society moreso than younger adults, and certainly compared to teenagers. So for many older adults it feels natural to go to bed early and to get up early. But then we as a society confuse that with universal “good behavior”/good character, so everyone has to dance to that tun…

I do think there's actual correlation between getting up earlier and achievement. I don't know many successful people who get up super late. Don't know if that's correlation or causation, just that there's something to getting up early to crush it.

There may or may not be a correlation, but how much of that is a vicious cycle?

The kids who grow up to be high achievers tend to have done well in school, which means at the very least they were able to cope with an early schedule. They then observe the correlation that you note and think to themselves "huh, my parents were right, everyone should wake up early" and proceed to preach it to the next generation, who learns it as if it were some fundamental fact of life and not a consequence of the way we've designed our systems.

It's like the problem with math education: the people who dictate the way that the world works tend to be the ones who did well in the existing systems and can't see anything wrong with them.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. My guidance councillor did the same. Well, I wasn’t accepted to a school at the point in which they encouraged me to settle for less, but it was a very heartfelt “don’t even try”. I left the room very confused and upset. Went in with ambition and excitement about my future and left feeling like I must be a complete idiot. I remember her saying “Let’s focus on being realistic. You aren’t actually going to do th…

A bit of an aside but it’s so strange to me seeing ‘trades’ referred to as a lowly thing. Here in Australia, tradies are admired, often earn really good money and get a lot of good attention. They can work hard and put in the hours to get ahead whereas us IT guys on salary have a much more ‘fixed’ earning potential.

I have no aversion to trades and actually worked in joinery for many years before I began programming professionally. I don’t mean to look down on it at all. I actually find it absurd that I earn as much as I do compared to say, a red seal carpenter here in Canada where their breadth of skill and knowledge means more and accomplishes more than my own skill set in very tangible and crucial ways.

If I could support my family as well in trades I might have considered staying — I loved working the giant industrial CNC machine and began to love learning to set it up and create CAD drawings for it. I probably would have enjoyed a career headed in that direction, but I could have ended up earning around 1/3 of what I do now… At best.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#164
post #99

The real blame for early high school is extra-curricular sports. Basketball, Football, etc. For those sports to thrive, teams need to practice, in order for practice to be efficient, it needs to be at least an hour. So 2 hours are allocated (suit up, practice, suit down). In order for children to be able to commit to 2 hours extra of their time BEFORE their parents get home (5pm), class would have to end by 3pm. Now,…

Huh? Sports can practice before school. And high school athletes don't need parental supervision. School hours are set by transportation needs, as you already observed.

School hours are set by tradition. My city provides no bus service to any students (excepting special needs kids). Crazy I know. Kids can ride the city metro buses for free, but those aren't the same as school buses.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#165

The real blame for early high school is extra-curricular sports. Basketball, Football, etc. For those sports to thrive, teams need to practice, in order for practice to be efficient, it needs to be at least an hour. So 2 hours are allocated (suit up, practice, suit down). In order for children to be able to commit to 2 hours extra of their time BEFORE their parents get home (5pm), class would have to end by 3pm. Now,…

> In order for children to be able to commit to 2 hours extra of their time BEFORE their parents get home (5pm), class would have to end by 3pm

Why would they need to be able to complete their sports before their parents get home?

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#166

Its a common misconception that the goal of Education System is to educate. It's not, and the system will never accept 'improvements' that run contrary to it's purpose. In actuality education system serves four purposes: One: make both parents avaliable for the job market. For that it must supervise children during work hours, to make sure they aren't getting in trouble, drugs, or worst of all, into politics and prot…

If the above is all true, that would prepare pupils for future jobs --whether self-employed or working a corporate job.

One cannot run (successfully) a corner bakery without being able to handle routine and carry out mundane tasks or without getting up early and doing basic chores as well as being able to interact with others, keep track of your finances, etc. Corp job is much of the same.

You're getting moulded to have the potential to be a productive human being. The alternative is to have people find out what works and not on their own.

Even drugs dealers and macs know the importance of all the above.

Now, sure some people for various reasons cannot conform and revert to more "chimp self" and don't do well in civilization. But even if they became foragers and lived off the land, they'd have to learn routines, have attention to detail, patience and so on.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#167

The real blame for early high school is extra-curricular sports. Basketball, Football, etc. For those sports to thrive, teams need to practice, in order for practice to be efficient, it needs to be at least an hour. So 2 hours are allocated (suit up, practice, suit down). In order for children to be able to commit to 2 hours extra of their time BEFORE their parents get home (5pm), class would have to end by 3pm. Now,…

The reason that sports dictate school start times isn't difficulty in scheduling practices (since you could, at least on paper, put those practices before school starts rather than after). The problem is that sports are competitive between school districts, so you need shared non-school but school-adjacent time blocks between neighboring districts to schedule games in. Shifting one district much later (to run 9-5, for example) would make it impossible for that school to compete with others after school, which is going to be a practical nonstarter.

In my mind, this is one of the biggest obstacles to changing school timing significantly. Most other objections are internal to a school district, so a single motivated school board could tackle and fix them, but this problem requires coordination between many different school districts all at once.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#169
post #117

What time does school start in the USA? I assumed it would be the same as here but apparently not, never heard of a school formal lesson starting before 8:30 here and 9am start is the norm for all school and always(?) has been. Separate to that how cynical should we be about these psychology studies? As a science it seems hell bent on demonstrating that it is closer to poetry or religion which means we should start w…

My school bus arrived at the school at 7:05 every morning. We were allowed in the building at 7:15. At 7:28 we were allowed to go to our lockers. Classes began at 7:30. My bus time varied by year, but the earliest pickup time I had was 6:20.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#170
post #99

The real blame for early high school is extra-curricular sports. Basketball, Football, etc. For those sports to thrive, teams need to practice, in order for practice to be efficient, it needs to be at least an hour. So 2 hours are allocated (suit up, practice, suit down). In order for children to be able to commit to 2 hours extra of their time BEFORE their parents get home (5pm), class would have to end by 3pm. Now,…

Huh? Sports can practice before school. And high school athletes don't need parental supervision. School hours are set by transportation needs, as you already observed.

In the Friday nights lights states, we lift every other morning at 6am, practice ends at 6pm
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