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Let Teenagers Sleep

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#291

Post by stonogo »

gnarbarian wrote: post #267
raincole wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading all of these I still think it's "the bus routes", or more generally speaking, "the commuting". I grew up in an asian country and my parents never picked me up after I was 10. I just took buses from home to school and then from school to home. I'm not saying our system is better than the US, but it's a bit of culture shock that everyone commutes in their (parents') cars there.

I'd wager the public transit is safer in your country.

Safer than, say, Baltimore, which uses the same system?

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#292

Post by anthomtb »

calt wrote: post #237
JenrHywy wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6:15? Holy crap. High school here (Australia) starts at 8:50. And even then I think that's too early for natural teenage sleep patterns. My kids are lucky in that we're close enough to school that they can leave at around 8:15. When I was in high school I had to get the bus at 7:30, which was a real struggle. The idea of starting school at 6:15 is just pure insanity.

My public school in the US always started at 8:00. I've never heard of a 6:15 start time. Also, school was never a full 8 hours. So I'm confused about their reasoning.

I am going on 2 decades removed from my American high school, so maybe things have changed. But I also recall starting school within +/- 10 minutes of 8:00 AM.

The only exception was strictly extracurricular, a men's choir which practiced between 7:00 and 8:00 AM. The expectation, implicitly, was that parents or friends were going to be the ones getting you there.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#293

Post by freetime2 »

joezydeco wrote: post #145
gabereiser wrote: post #57

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,…

This is exactly why. We've been at our administrators for years and the response always is "the bus routes" but in reality it's because of the sports schedules. High school sports is a drain on the educational system, plain and simple. It lacks equity - an disproportionate amount of money is spent on very few children. The football coach in our HS has a Vice Principal title, so he doesn't have to teach classes but kn…

> The football coach in our HS has a Vice Principal title, so he doesn't have to teach classes but knocks down $100K+ to run the team

Presumably being Vice Principal carries other responsibilities beyond just coaching football. For perspective, the Vice Principal at my high school didn’t teach classes OR coach any sports - being Vice Principal is a full-time position on its own. And this was in a school with far fewer than 2000 students.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#294

Post by NoPicklez »

waboremo wrote: post #284
rajin444 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be really big on trust the experts, seek authorities for advice, etc etc. Especially for areas involving mental / general health. Specifics like fixing a broken arm I’m still on the experts side :) Decades later I’ve had many (eerily similar) experiences to what you detailed above. I’ve gotten the best results evaluating issues on my own / with the help of a few trusted sources. Expert advice is about as re…

You don't want to trust experts for mental/general health, and you encourage people find others who "got results". In essence, you have just made random people the experts, but worse, allowed them to run freely without any risk of reputation harm. I can sue a doctor for malpractice, I can't sue user21389 for false results. Why do you so quickly believe these experiences of randoms? This idea modern healthcare exists…

I don't think they were telling you to do this. They were just giving their own experience.

You the reader get to read their experience and decide if you would do that or not.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#295

Post by hdctambien »

burlesona wrote: post #42

My high school in Texas started at 9:05 am. Sample size of 1, but my experience was: (a) It still felt “early” to me at the time, but not “difficult” to be up for. (b) I don’t remember anyone complaining about school starting early or people being generally sleep deprived - if someone was exhausted in school we were all amused and curious what adventures they’d been having to stay out way too late. (c) I do recall th…

I taught in a Texas district that starts high school at 9:05. I appreciated that over the 6:50 start I had in Massachusetts... but it didn't really change much for the students.

I would get up at 5am so I could run before school and I would still be getting emails from students that hadn't gone to bed yet. I don't think any of my students in TX were getting any more sleep than the students I taught in MA. They were just staying up later. But maybe on average, the student body is getting more sleep in TX than in MA ... but no way they are getting 9 hours on school nights.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#296

Post by taberiand »

Waterluvian wrote: post #142
rajin444 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be really big on trust the experts, seek authorities for advice, etc etc. Especially for areas involving mental / general health. Specifics like fixing a broken arm I’m still on the experts side :) Decades later I’ve had many (eerily similar) experiences to what you detailed above. I’ve gotten the best results evaluating issues on my own / with the help of a few trusted sources. Expert advice is about as re…

I don’t distrust modern medical community, but I think it often suffers from overconfidence that leads me to more carefully scrutinize (but not outright reject) expert opinion. I’ve been listening to a podcast called Sawbones where they talk through the history of medicine. It’s basically a tour of all the ways we got things wrong. My conclusion has been: and why are we so confident that this time we’re right? Seems…

I think modern medicine suffers heavily from generalising patients - so much advice attempts to be so one-size-fits-all that it fits almost nobody.

Like story of the fighter cockpit that was designed to perfectly fit the average dimensions of all pilots and was uncomfortable for everyone - no person is average in all dimensions.

On top of that is the absolutist advice - "never do X, always do Y" (particularly when the result of doing X is not shared - it could be a minor inconvenience, or a fatal error, they seem to be treated the same) rather than a nuanced process of tradeoffs and balancing outcomes.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#297

Post by mcv »

> Teenagers need about nine hours of sleep a night—but they get closer to seven.

Mine isn't doing too badly then, I guess. He usually goes to bed way too late in my opinion, after 10 pm, sometimes 11 pm. But he comes out of bed just before 8, so that still adds up to 9-10 hours of sleep.

8:30 is the normal school start time around here, and he can bike there in about 15 minutes. The article doesn't go into what the starting times of the offending schools are, but if it's before 8, then I would definitely agree that's way too early and irresponsible.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#298

Post by karaterobot »

avgcorrection wrote: post #93

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…

There are a lot of different chronotypes, but it makes sense to have a predictable set of expectations for society. Imagine a world where your doctor was only open from 10pm-6am, because he was a night owl, and your grocery store was open from 7am-10pm, and so on. It would be fairly complicated to navigate. Given that, the question is whether to expect society to be oriented around day or night. Of the two I think day makes more sense for most activities: you can see better, for one thing.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#299

Post by hintymad »

gabereiser wrote: post #57

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 real blame for early high school is extra-curricular sports. Basketball, Football, etc.

It seems the real blame is the culture of the US, which values sports above many things. Case in point, people openly despise toiling in academia, yet praise highly toiling in sports. Sports jockeys are popular in schools, yet IMO medalists are not (not that I care. Just to contrast culture differences). It's not enough to get into an Ivy if you are in top positions of AIME, but boy you're going to an Ivy school if are the captain of your school's whatever team.

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