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Let Teenagers Sleep

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#261
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This showcases other problems with American society. With poor social support structures and urban design, kids can't simply walk to and from school, take public transportation, or ride school provided transportation to remove parents being chauffeurs.

Got any citations to back that up? I remember everyone in high school in Philadelphia commuting via public transit. And what do you meant can't walk to school? The whole city is a grid, completely covered with sidewalks. Go pull up an online map if you've never seen it before. The only thing impeding people from walking everywhere is the fear of getting mugged or worse in certain neighborhoods.

You probably know this, but Philadelphia is a particularly large & dense city - which is not really representative of the country at large. There was an article about 15 minute cities on HN a few days ago. Philly is a lot closer to a 15 minute city (especially if you include public trans to walking and biking in the defnition) than most other places in the country. That's a great thing, and I wish more places in the US were like Philly.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Men make ~20% more than women. This is so disingenuous it really shouldn't be repeated. The pay gap within the same job is miniscule. Men and women make different career choices. There's just no accounting for the lack of women applying for high-paying positions as roughnecks.

Well the numbers are coming from the dept of labor so idk what you're talking about.

what are the numbers within the same role?

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#263

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…

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.

Canada, I started finding my own way to and from school around 10 too

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School busses are shared across age ranges. So teenagers get the first bus, then middle schoolers get one an hour later, then grade schoolers. So if you punt the highschool bus to later, you are either making for a very late school day, or making younger kids wake up earlier. Or the solution could be to triple the cost of school transportation.

Or locate schools closer to where people live. It seems like it ought to be possible to locate at least elementary schools within walking distance of the kids homes.

Well, most do. But culturally we are moving in the opposite direction - there are quite a few stories of parents getting cited or arrested for letting their kids walk to school on their own.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#265
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the high school aged kids can make sure to not oversleep and be responsible enough to ensure that their parents won't get a call at 9:15 when they've failed to show up on time.

The vast majority of them are... to the detriment of their health and learning. Did you read the article?

I am recalling some of my coworkers at a previous job where they (the parents) started early in the day and would get a call mid morning either from the school or the child ("oops, I missed the bus").

As that workplace wasn't extremely flexible with time, this involved rescheduling any meetings coming up, leaving, driving home (30 min), getting kid to school (15 min), getting back to work (45 min) if everything was good. Taking an hour and a half to two hours out of a person's work day can be very disruptive.

The issue isn't 9:00 rather than 8:00 or 8:30 but rather a refutation of "are teenagers responsible enough to get to school on their own without any parental coaxing."

Consider the chain of comments:

> > > if the family includes one of each (elementary, middle and high school kids) you still have to make breakfast for them, get everyone ready and head out.

> > Surely high school aged kids can make their own breakfast.

> Surely the high school aged kids can make sure to not oversleep and be responsible enough to ensure that their parents won't get a call at 9:15 when they've failed to show up on time.

---

If you're getting all the kids up and ready to go to school at 8:00 am, you've missed the advantage of having a teenager sleep in and get to school at 9:00 am.

If you (the parent) aren't making sure that the teenager is getting to school at 9:00 because you're at work, and aren't getting them up at 8:00 am (with the rest of the kids), then you're going to deal with "teenager slept through all the alarms."

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#266

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…

Don't forget: separate students into age cohorts so they can't learn from each other. Set the expectation that the oldest cohost will disappear forever after a token yearly celebration.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#267

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…

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.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#268

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…

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.

AFAIK this has a lot to do with cul-de-sac / suburbia development, combined with the US's chronic non-investment in public transit, combined with the comparative perceived-and-real safety levels.

AKA -

You literally can't take buses from school to home in most cases, and when you can, they're probably way to sketchy for kids to do.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno man, pre-civilisation and education wasn't exactly much fun either. I'd rather be a part of the system that basically gives us everything from food to iPhones and the Internet than fight against it (while avoiding predators in the wild). This is not to say that education, especially for boys and young men couldn't be made considerably better.

The older I get the more I'm realizing "pre-history", "pre-civilisation" are very Western European Concepts. Like when the Conquistadors "civilized" mexico Or when the Portuguese and French "civilized" West Africa.

Here we go again. Just because people living in huts in the wilderness are seemingly happy doesnt mean you can rewrite history. No one is arguing colonialism isnt bad or cannibalism et cetera.

Once you really dig deep into history you can see humans have been wiping off other nations and civilizations left and right. Assyrians, babylonians - all gone. One could make an assumption genocide and warfare are almost instinctive to us.

What's left are few rocks standing, if even that, all ruined by our own hubris and violent nature.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was probably more accurate to say before their parents get off.

I still don't really understand why this is important. Presumably kids aren't playing sports every day of the week, so they'll have plenty of time to spend with their parents on the other days. I used to play Tennis from something like 5pm to 7pm a couple of days a week when I was a kid and that didn't seem to cause any problems.

Practice is every day of the week in the US

For high school football players it's basically practice Monday-Thursday then game on Friday. For basketball players it's basically any day during the week that they don't have a game. I was in marching band and we practiced after school every day.

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