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Let Teenagers Sleep

scientificamerican.com

301–310 of 497 posts

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#301

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…

It's all in the numbers.

1. In 1945, corporations paid 50% of federal taxes; now they pay about 5%.

2. In 1900, 90% of Americans were self employed; now it's about 2%...

It's called consolidation; strengthen governments and corporations, weaken individuals. With taxes, this can be done imperceptibly over time.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#302
post #179

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…

There should be two categorizations for students: highly creative students should be placed on a different path to adulthood, everybody else could use the current system. Highly creative people are more likely to be successful dropouts. To force highly creative people into this routine, is dictatorship of the mind. That's how it was for me. Edit: I upset the academics :)

I would love to see your system/tool for predicting future creativity. Or some evidence that creative people are more likely to be successful dropouts. The evidence I've seen at least suggests the biggest predictor of success is grit: the ability to grind through and stick with something longer than others. Now, you might argue the measure of success also needs to be updated to accommodate your "creative people" hypothesis, but then you're basically designing the question to meet your predefined outcome.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#303

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,…

But teenagers can easily train for sports in the evenings. Plenty of sport clubs here train in the early evening around here. Most afternoon activities start around 4 or 5. The local scouting clubs start at 18:30 or later even for primary school kids (which does sound a bit late to me).

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#304
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private sports outside of school are too expensive for all but the well-off families. School sports are basically free for the participants, and they are good for kids' social development and physical health. Sports keeps many kids in high school, certainly if my oldest hadn't had cross-country and track he probably would have dropped out.

Sorry if it's an ignorant question since my kid hasn't reached sports age yet. But athleticism doesn't seem like it should be an optional choice that detracts from other educational resources. Why not make it mandatory, 1h a day for everyone? Saves on travel, saves on transition time, saves on economy of scale and it's more equitable since everyone pays through taxes and everyone benefits in the short term (more pare…

If only. I think the social dynamic around mandatory sports in school basically ensures that some 70% of kids are turned off from any kind of sports at an early age. If you want athleticism (or really just healthy habits desperately needed in our chair-fixated lifestyles) you probably need to practice it with them yourself.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#305

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 1) is such a priority, why not have a hogwarts style boarding school rather than what we've got already?

An alternate implementation might be a larger condo / apartment where there's a dedicated 'house mom / dad / babysitter' to mind the kids during the day.

In a later stage society with strong / real AI I could see the supervision role entirely as part of the social infrastructure.

+++

Long term we probably need to engineer society for less children and a target of gene propagation at equilibrium / replacement rates.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#306
We need to start running these schools like a tech company. Institute a performance management system like OKRs, and put students on a PiP if they need it. If students still fail to perform, punish the parents.

Student achievement should be individual but also partly tied to the performance of the school.

Work should be managed via Agile manifesto, with students having stand ups and participating in planning poker. Velocity should be monitored and getting done as many tasks as possible should be encouraged.

Also I think all student work should be done via git.

Just think of the possibilities! We would already have a legion of workers right out of high school! This would put downward pressure on tech salaries, making the workers far less costly!

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please have him do a sleep study. It turned out that I had undiagnosed narcolepsy for decades. Sleeping 15 hours is exactly what I used to do. It's a low cost high return kind of thing. If I'd had early diagnosis, I wouldn't have been fired due to getting jobs that really, really wanted my butt in a chair at exactly 9am. ( https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1392213804684038150 ) That said, the rate of narcolepsy is…

Add sleep apnea to that. I don't have it myself, but some of my friends had a night-and-day difference in their life as a result of getting their obstructive sleep apnea treated. Significant weight loss, depression gone, no headaches, doing well in life instead of struggling every day.

This was me in high school and early college. Sleep apnea, not even overweight (which is pretty rare, especially for a kid). It was a pure miracle that I was functional at all but yeah, slept easily 14 hours a night and looked like a zombie during the day. Principal thought I was depressed.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#308
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private sports outside of school are too expensive for all but the well-off families. School sports are basically free for the participants, and they are good for kids' social development and physical health. Sports keeps many kids in high school, certainly if my oldest hadn't had cross-country and track he probably would have dropped out.

Sorry if it's an ignorant question since my kid hasn't reached sports age yet. But athleticism doesn't seem like it should be an optional choice that detracts from other educational resources. Why not make it mandatory, 1h a day for everyone? Saves on travel, saves on transition time, saves on economy of scale and it's more equitable since everyone pays through taxes and everyone benefits in the short term (more pare…

Generally everyone has to take gym class. Sports are additional. Teams are competitive to get into and different kids will specialize in different ones depending on their strengths and interests. Some schools do require every student to choose at least one sport. There are other extracurriculars such as drama, speech & debate, and special choirs or chamber orchestras that may or may not be compatible with different sports.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#309
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add sleep apnea to that. I don't have it myself, but some of my friends had a night-and-day difference in their life as a result of getting their obstructive sleep apnea treated. Significant weight loss, depression gone, no headaches, doing well in life instead of struggling every day.

One of my friends effectively dropped out of university due to sleep apnea. He just wouldn't be able to get up for lectures or engineering labs, or be so out of it he had difficulty absorbing the material. A shame as he was a sharp guy, and has struggled with things in the decade since due to various knock-on reasons. We used to laugh about how loud he snored echoing through the house - but looking back this was more…

> It's a failure of modern western society IMHO where we see people actually needing sleep as "lazy", rather than a requirement to actually be their best.

another one is that we let the morning people set the rules. If your butt isn't in a chair at 8am cranking out widgets you're "lazy" but the morning people can go home and be in bed at 8pm and they're virtuous and hardworking.

Our society has an implicit bias in favor of the morning people and against the evening people. And I think that amplifies a lot of the "people who need sleep" problems because it's not just needing sleep in general, your sleep patterns had better align to the prevailing social norm too. If you'd rather live 10-7 instead of 8-5... tough shit. And even remote jobs sometimes have meetings/etc that you can't avoid.

One of the interesting ideas about autism is the "night owl" tendency may have been socially desirable in the past... when your life is on the line, it's good to have someone who can reliably be awake all night and focus on small details that might signal danger. But now it's maladaptive since everything runs 8-5 and we are in considerably less danger of being eaten by predators.

(it is unnecessary to medicalize everything, even if it's just that some people prefer to work later, that should be enough. But there seems to be some basis to the connections between autism and sleep problems, something like 80% of asperger's diagnosees have comorbid sleep problems. That seems like the kind of link you really don't see that often or strongly.)

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#310

As a teenager I was diagnosed with "ADD". Very intelligent, but unable to focus or complete assignments. My life habits were carb heavy unhealthy food (from the cafeteria), soda, lack of sleep due to long school commute, not much exercise As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is laser sharp. They tried to medicate me with all sort…

>As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is laser sharp.

I need carbs to think.

If I do not have rice for 3-4 days, I can not do research work. I can write code, or read papers, but new ideas or brainstorming others' ideas don't happen as naturally.

Could be a genetic thing, I guess.

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