Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Let Teenagers Sleep

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 497 posts

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#331

Post by usefulcat »

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,…

That’s crazy (6:15 start time). Where did you go to school? I also graduated early 90s and our schedule was always 8:10 - 3:10. This was in TX, where football is king and education spending is not.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#332

Post by crazygringo »

I seriously don't understand why schools don't simply swap elementary and high school schedules.

When I grew up, and what seems to still be the common pattern, is that the buses go out first for high schoolers to start school early, then do a second route to pick up the elementary schoolers who start school later.

Can't we just swap those?

Elementary school kids wake up earlier naturally, and this helps the parents who need to get their young kids off in order to get to work. While high schoolers are perfectly capable of waking up and catching the bus on their own, even if their parent left for work two hours ago.

It seems like it's better for parents' logistics. Am I missing something here?

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#334

Post by syntheweave »

Zetice wrote: post #20

Maybe just schedule the not-intellectually-heavy stuff earlier in the day, if we can't screw up the parents' schedules with a later start time. For example, start school with a study hall (that you can miss if you're so able e.g. if you can drive yourself to school), and let the kids nap. Honestly that would have been a game changer for me, as I never did my homework until the last second.

There are definitely tons of ways to satisfy this issue that we seem to be predisposed against because it would introduce slack in the system, and at multiple layers, the school system is designed to be a "precision engineered watch" - the staff never has time, the parents never have time, the kids never have time, and the measures of success are built around bureaucratic elements and adversarial dynamics. Thus every homework assignment I had came with a pit of anxiety about formal structure: "Am I following the exact format? Or will it come back with a zero because I didn't correctly read the teacher's mind about what's being asked for?"

That kind of thing is resolved if there's slack, but in many schools it isn't there: it's just pushed downwards until it hits the students and they get marked late, absent, failing on their work, and blamed for being irresponsible.

I once had a band teacher in high school that wanted us to do an "optional" practice session after school. I did not show up, and the next day she gave me an earful in front of the class because by optional, she meant you had to attend unless you were excused. I explained that that is not the definition of optional, and she should find a different word for it, but she was uninterested in using correct nomenclature.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#335

Post by runarberg »

Etheryte wrote: post #276
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,…

I'm not convinced this is the real root cause, this is just a reasonable sounding theory that's easy to nod along to. Other countries don't follow this time pattern and have extra curricular activities and nonsense school hours all the same. As a single data point, where I'm from you usually have a gap after school so you can do your homework and then you do extra activities in the evening. Transportation is handled…

I agree, I think the culture around kids activity is not optimal in the US, and I think the primary culprit is weird urban planning. Schools are often located far away from population centers, and there is no walking and biking infrastructure for kids to get them selves there safely, so they have a massive amount of school buses to make up for that, and the whole schedule and culture is organized around limitation with school buses and drivers.

In Europe it is normal that school and kids culture is detached. There are cultural activities (including sports) which kids get them self to after school. In USA all these activities are organized by the school it self and if it is outside of the school area, a school bus is organized to take kids there. This could be so much easier if they would just build the schools close enough to population centers with enough biking and walking infrastructure that kids could get there by them selves.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#336

Post by alistairSH »

RangerScience wrote: post #268
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.

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.

At the same time, the kids in my neighborhood are bused to school. The school is a mile away with zero road crossings (one short pedestrian tunnel). The rest is walking paths. Parents and kids sit in the idling cars at the edge of the neighborhood waiting for the bus. They could just about walk to school in that waiting time.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#337

Post by jobs_throwaway »

legitster wrote: post #47
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we have school busses. Why are children being tasked with transporting other children to school?

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.

> So teenagers get the first bus, then middle schoolers get one an hour later, then grade schoolers.

Where I grew up it was the opposite. Grade schoolers started first at 8:00, middle-schoolers at 8:30, high-schoolers at 9:00. As a high schooler you finish school at 4PM, hardly a very late school day. Younger kids naturally go to sleep and wake up earlier than teens anyways, it's not unfair or harmful to have them start school earlier.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#338

Post by mcv »

tmpz22 wrote: post #40

As a teenager I used to stay up until 2-3am watching movies on my ipod touch - which had a ludicrously small screen by todays standards. I'm in favor of moving back start times but we should also better study and educate on the consequences of bad personal habits.

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.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#339

Post by irrational »

xster wrote: post #290
SoftTalker wrote: post #193

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…

That’s PE (physical education). Worse class ever, but required.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#340

Post by crazygringo »

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,…

Wait, 8 hrs of classes? My high school was 8 am to 2:15 pm, only slightly more than 6 hours. I've never heard of a school day that was 8 hours long of classes.

Also, I don't know many office jobs where employees are home by 5 pm either. If you have a 9:30-4:00 school day with 4:00-6:00 for sports, is that a problem? Family dinner at 6:30 or 7:00 pm.

Post reply on HN