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Let Teenagers Sleep

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Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#391

Post by JohnBooty »

mcv wrote: post #323
uncletaco wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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, etc) that it DOES become insane in my view. I'm sure that we at least agree on that.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#392

Post by dsfyu404ed »

dkqmduems wrote: post #383
jandrese wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the entire purpose of the school system. To make them into workers that can produce value for companies.

Can't have them read Marx in high school. Everything would collapse.

Doubtful.

They read Orwell and Huxley and based on the state of the world those lessons don't appear to stick.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#393

Post by cafard »

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.

I commute to work most days on the bus in Washington, DC, and depending on the hour of the morning will see unaccompanied school children, admittedly more from middle-school age up.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#394

Post by crazygringo »

kingbirdy wrote: post #371
crazygringo wrote: post #332

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 w…

You're missing two things, one for each age group: For the younger kids, each hour earlier they start is an hour earlier they finish, which means parents need to either finish work earlier (not possible for most people), or pay for an additional hour of after-school child care (expensive). Having free child care to cover the gap between school finishing and work finishing is extremely rare, and the acceptable age to…

Definitely can see what you mean about the younger kids in the afternoon, thanks -- I'd definitely been missing that in my thinking.

Funny I never thought about it till now -- in my public elementary school back in the day, the (minority of) kids who didn't have a parent at home in the afternoon, stayed an extra 2-3 hours at school for the rest of the afternoon at no charge, mainly doing art activities like finger painting etc, and they even provided snacks. I remember joining a few times just because I wanted to hang out with my friends there. It was very minimally structured/supervised -- just something to do to maintain interest but not be rowdy, not intended to be "educational" or anything.

I've never heard of that kind of thing since though. But it sure makes a lot of sense for that to be provided standard by elementary schools, now that 2 working parents is the norm.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#395

Post by cafard »

Symbiote wrote: post #367
closeparen wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

What did you do in gym class? In England, we had a short "physical education" class once a week. That varied between gymnastics, swimming, badminton, indoor cricket, athletics, and occasionally other indoor-ish things. We also had an afternoon ice a week of "games", which was football, rugby, hockey, cricket, softball or similar. Longer, always outdoor sports. (This will probably vary within England, I don't think I'…

It depended on the season: touch football and soccer in the fall, basketball and wresting in the winter, softball and running in the spring. There would be also calisthenics--push-up, sit-ups, jumping jacks, occasionally burpees. And their would be drills such as "touchlines"--running on the basketball court.

It has been fifty years, but I think that PE was twice a week. Class was about an hour.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#396

Post by myko »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #392
dkqmduems wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't have them read Marx in high school. Everything would collapse.

Doubtful. They read Orwell and Huxley and based on the state of the world those lessons don't appear to stick.

True, most folks don't even realize Orwell was a Democratic Socialist.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#397

Post by throwaway2037 »

ajmurmann wrote: post #216
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.

That's another difference between Europe and the US. When I grew up in Germany there was a huge amount of sports available that were taught by volunteers. Soccer, judo, karate all for free even in the rural area I grew up in. I wonder if it's possible because everyone isn't constantly threatened by looming bankruptcy if they don't save big piles of cash.

Thank you to share about your childhood experience.

This part:

    I wonder if it's possible because everyone isn't constantly threatened by looming bankruptcy if they don't save big piles of cash.
I'm confused. What does it mean?

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#398

Post by myko »

freetime2 wrote: post #382
anthomtb wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not where I grew up. Sports teams, theater and music programs were all funded equally. All extracurriculars came with fees and fundraisers. One of the gym teachers, also the basketball coach, was useless if the team was likely to make a playoff run. One of the English teachers, the theater director, was equally useless during the weeks leading up to a performance. I thought the GGP was being unfair to athletics. Scho…

And in a country where 69% of adults are overweight, and 36% are obese [1], I would like to see even more emphasis on physical education (including after-school sports) rather than less. [1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesi...

I think the US has a food problem more than an activity/exercise problem. Over the long term one cannot outrun a poor diet.

Attempts to fix this problem are met with derision and quickly toppled due to politics over reason, see: https://letsmove.obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/healthy-school...

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#399

Post by sushisource »

enragedcacti wrote: post #314
sushisource wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a completely absurd and nonsense take. Where does this "purpose" get decided? Some secret cabal that controls the education system? Insane. There are some flaws in our education system that are likely the result of the fact that it is huge, serves an incredibly diverse set of people, and thus is a very complex and difficult to manage system. There's no secret back room of evil people controlling the populace via…

I don't endorse the GPs view in totality, but I don't think its necessary to have some secret cabal deciding things in order to have a discussion about the 'purpose' of complex social systems. taking just the example in the OP, parents need to go to work from 9 to 5 to feed their family, so they need their kids to be in school sooner than that so they can get them out the door, so they go to school board meetings and…

That's just not what the word purpose means. Take your example:

> If I start living in my van to renovate my house

Keyword here, "to". "To" imbues the purpose. If you then completely fail to actually do the renovation, sure, that's absolutely a problem, but the van's purpose was still to help you renovate the house. You just happened to fail at it. Intent matters, and the comment I replied to implies a whole lot of malicious intent that is more likely just incompetence or unpredictable outcomes. The difference is important in understanding how to address the issue.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#400

Post by myko »

JenrHywy wrote: post #206
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,…

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.

As a middle / HS student in the rural US I got on my bus at 5:55 to start school at 7:30. When I wasn't in sports I would leave school at 2:30 on the bus and get home at 4:30 (we stopped at the elementary school to pick them up and take them home in the afternoons).

When I had sports I would usually get home from practice at around 6-630 at night. Ideal time management would mean I'd eat and do an hour or two of homework, but usually I'd stay up until ~2AM using dialup internet to MUD with friends. I was exhausted! Playing MUD did help lead me to my career though, so I suppose it wasn't all bad.

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