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Let Teenagers Sleep

scientificamerican.com

431–440 of 497 posts

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#431

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 da…

A doctor’s office can have multiple doctors. A grocery store is staffed on shifts.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to see obesity and our production of elite athletes as two sides of the same coin. When I was in high school my baseball and football practices were 2-3 hours long and I would be exhausted and wheezing by the end of them. I have a knee injury from freshman year that still bothers me 20 years later. That's an insane time and energy commitment, I see why a lot of kids end up doing nothing. I'd like to see mor…

I agree that the emphasis should be more on increasing participation rather than producing elite athletes - at least in public schools. I went out for football my freshman year and the practices were just way too intense/violent for me, and I eventually ended up getting injured and quitting. That experience pretty much turned me off from school sports for good. If my school offered boys' badminton or volleyball (ther…

Football and baseball are tricky cases because it takes a lot to get 11 players to work in anything like unison and if someone like the left offensive tackle (for a right-handed quarterback) forgets their job or is incompetent it's quite dangerous.

In baseball, the very basic skill of hitting is just hard to accomplish. It takes a lot of practice hours to get the bare minimum of competency.

But I think these are two very important cultural games and I would be sad if they weren't played in public schools, it would be a real loss.

So once again we face a problem and I really don't know what the solution is.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#433
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My son's internet goes out at 21:30. He did once rack up a tremendous phone bill by using his phone at night, but I think he learned not to do that any more.

21:30? Is he 5 years old?! Poor guy.

What are you talking about? No a teenager is not 5. And five year olds don't get their own phone and internet access until 21:30.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#435
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but that's insane. That's fine for high-level near-professional sports, but for some basic school sports, training every day is ridiculous and sacrificing the health and education of the students for it is just plain stupid. Why does this happen? Why does everything have to move for this? And if they really absolutely want to do this during daylight hours, why not have the sports before school, and have just t…

I'm gonna be real with you: it was fun. I was never the best athlete or trombone player when I did marching band but myself and many other kids who honestly didn't have a future playing sports at a collegiate level had genuine fun playing and practicing. And after school is literally the most convenient time to practice for everyone involved including coaches, parents, and students due to the peculiarities of America…

I'm all for everybody doing sports, and I can see massive advantages in integrating it with school life. My teenager refuses to do any sports or other extracurricular activities other than gaming and D&D, so he only gets the regular couple of hours of PE at school. I'd love it if I could get him to do more than that.

But training every day sounds a bit much. As far as I know, even youth football clubs around here only train 2 or 3 evenings a week. Maybe more if you've got a shot at going professional? I've heard of fanatical swimmers swimming every morning before school, but those are exceptions. I did martial arts, and that was just once a week.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#436
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but that's insane. That's fine for high-level near-professional sports, but for some basic school sports, training every day is ridiculous and sacrificing the health and education of the students for it is just plain stupid. Why does this happen? Why does everything have to move for this? And if they really absolutely want to do this during daylight hours, why not have the sports before school, and have just t…

Sorry, but that's insane. That's fine for high-level near-professional sports To be clear: high school sports seasons typically last for only 3 or 4 months. So that schedule doesn't seem excessive to me. We're not talking about 52 weeks x 5 days x 4 years. Not sure if you were already aware. Or if this impacts your thinking. Now, some parents book their kids' lives so full of sports (multiple sports, multiple leagues…

So everything is crammed into 3 or 4 intensive months, and nothing the rest of the year? That seems less insane but more imbalanced. Over here I think it's all year round, except for a stop in winter for outdoor sports (sometimes filled in by an indoor variant), and during summer vacation.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#437

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…

This is a deeply cynical view and mistakes what makes educating children challenging for the goals of education. Some educators suck. Some educational systems suck. Some engineers suck. Some tech companies suck. But to paint the entire educational system with the same shitty brush is absurd. I know many teachers and many people who work in education who go above and beyond to try to give kids the best experience poss…

> mistakes what makes educating children challenging for the goals of education.

It would probably be more accurate to call them constraints.

> to paint the entire educational system with the same shitty brush is absurd.

I am not claiming it's shitty - I do believe you actually have to socialise kids, and familiarise with functioning of modern society, many families parents won't be able to do it.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#439
post #181

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…

I argue that the school's purpose is to educate. These effects you describe are merely incidental to the process of education. It's not about producing disciplined workers for an industrial era, it just a story we concoct after the fact. Now, could we reform the system? I supposed we could, but society relied on a set of assumptions on how schools work. If you need to implement reforms, you cannot focus on school sys…

> Now, could we reform the system? I supposed we could, but society relied on a set of assumptions on how schools work. If you need to implement reforms, you cannot focus on school systems in isolation.

Indeed, but now we are talking about change in two systems.

Like we have 100% proof that starting school later is better for the kids, but many people don't even realise that their taxes are funding childcare, so convincing them to fund additional childcare will be very difficult.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#440
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most state universities cost nothing near this, especially if you discount room and board. You need to live somewhere and eat, so it’s not sensible to include those costs with the cost of college.

While students need somewhere to sleep and eat, the cost of doing so on campus are much higher than anywhere else (in my limited experience). For example, the cost of on-campus room and board my junior year was 4x the cost of my off-campus room and board the following year. Some schools don't allow for off-campus housing for some or all students, or still require commuters to purchase a meal plan. So perhaps while it…

Non big city schools aren’t a 4x multiple or even 2x. And most schools aren’t in New England.

And most schools don’t require dorming, especially for all 3/4 years. The average student loan debt for a graduating undergrad is 23k. If college costs were truly 100k that just wouldn’t be the case.

Edit: median

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