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Let Teenagers Sleep

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#401

Post by thfuran »

Waterluvian wrote: post #142
rajin444 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be really big on trust the experts, seek authorities for advice, etc etc. Especially for areas involving mental / general health. Specifics like fixing a broken arm I’m still on the experts side :) Decades later I’ve had many (eerily similar) experiences to what you detailed above. I’ve gotten the best results evaluating issues on my own / with the help of a few trusted sources. Expert advice is about as re…

I don’t distrust modern medical community, but I think it often suffers from overconfidence that leads me to more carefully scrutinize (but not outright reject) expert opinion. I’ve been listening to a podcast called Sawbones where they talk through the history of medicine. It’s basically a tour of all the ways we got things wrong. My conclusion has been: and why are we so confident that this time we’re right? Seems…

>and why are we so confident that this time we’re right?

I don't have to be confident that the current scientific consensus is entirely correct to believe that it's virtually guaranteed to be more correct than whatever alternative I'd come up with in some area I completely lack expertise.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#402

Post by prawn »

justinlink wrote: post #45
tptacek wrote: post #7

One big reason this shift isn't happening is that it creates coordination problems: for many families, everyone leaves for school at the same time, so if you move grade 9 forward an hour, you have to do the same with grade 4 to get any benefit; the 9th grader is taking the 4th grader to school. That problem stopped this shift dead recently where I live.

To answer some of the questions posed to this comment, I really think the problem is many school districts do not have enough buses and drivers to transport their entire student body at the same time. By having secondary start first, you require 50% less buses. If we were to switch secondary goes second and primary age students go first, your primary age children would leave for school around 7am and arrive home at 3…

Why not ditch the buses and just start everyone around the same time? In Australia, all levels are starting around 8:45am (3-18yo). There's a bit of flexibility in that a school yard is monitored a bit earlier, or the first session is free play ("Investigation") which allows children to be dropped off sequentially if parents are handling that. Ends up being a window of about 8:35-8:55 so my school run can get two both schools in time.

There is affordable and easy to book out of school hours care for anything earlier or later.

Outside of formal lessons, I'd fill gaps with investigative play, extracurricular at-school sport, or casual activities to line up various year levels.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#403

Post by TurkishPoptart »

I hope to pilot a unique sort of homeschooling cooperative with other participating parents. It would be open to those adults who have demonstrated ability to teach a class/subject decently well enough. On Tuesdsays and Thursdays, kids would learn government, on Mondays and Wednesdays, math or foreign language. Parents would teach groups of children of hopefully similar age groups. I'm not sure if this is even possible or likely, but it sounds better than subjecting them to the hell that is public school, with the increase of suicide risk and the recent obsession with exposure to transgenderism among very young children in some school districts, anything seems better than the public school status quo.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#404

Post by freetime2 »

myko wrote: post #398
freetime2 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Fair point about diet contributing more to obesity than exercise. And I am 100% on board with making school lunches healtier, and teaching kids about the importance of nutrition.

But exercise is also important for managing weight [1], and preventing/managing chronic disease [2]. And only about a quarter of adults in the US meet the HHS' activity guidelines [3].

[1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesi...

[2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/fitness/in-dept...

[3] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db443.htm

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#405

Post by eggsmediumrare »

robg wrote: post #70

Really amazing that two key bugs in schools work actively hurt the brain’s ability to learn, remember, focus, and make decisions: 1. Long school days mean brains are overworked and so don’t function well 2. Multi month summer breaks actively overwrite what was learned the prior year When will schooling be built to best optimize brain power?

Summer vacation was awesome though.

I don't mean that flippantly. Especially in grader 8/9/10 when summer jobs weren't as common. There are things you don't learn in school, and time for the sake of time is a precious gift.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#407

Post by freetime2 »

jrumbut wrote: post #389
freetime2 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'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 (there were girls' teams but not boys), I could totally see myself as enjoying those sports.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#408

Post by fknorangesite »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #92
ArchOversight wrote: post #51

> This shift reverses at adulthood. The biological nature of this daily rhythm means that sending a teenager to bed earlier won’t necessarily mean they fall asleep earlier. No, this shift does not reverse in adulthood for some people... I am in my 30's and I still fall asleep midnight to 1 AM, and wake up "late" by most adult standards at around 8/9 AM. I can not shift my sleep schedule to earlier, I've tried many ti…

do you consume any caffeine after 12:00 noon? Caffeine's half life is 6 hours. So if you consume at 3pm, you still have 1/2 that caffeine in your body at 9 pm. 1/4 of it at 3am.

I'm in the exact same boat as the commenter you're responding to: I'm in my 40s, been a night owl my whole life. I very, very rarely fall asleep before 1am, despite decades of trying. I usually (but not even always) have a cup of coffee when I get up in the morning, but that's it.

Why is it so difficult to imagine that people have different sleep schedules? Like, we do not blink at the thought that, say, height exists on a bell curve. Why wouldn't a circadian rhythm?

God save me from the early-riser moralists.

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#409

Post by [deleted] »

moonchrome wrote: post #234
password11 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree with your criticism of the education system as an instrument of filtering/segregation but I would argue school has some practical value. > Three - grade people into quality batches, based off their punctuality and ability to perform meaningless tasks to arbitrary and meaningless quality standards For example, doing math is a useful skill, not a meaningless task. > Four - because the management has g…

> For example, doing math is a useful skill, not a meaningless task. I can't define trig relations, I sort of remember how to do multiple unknowns/linear algebra, can't even remember the definition of a quadratic equation and I couldn't do derivations if my life depended on it. Funny thing is I used to know this stuff and actually used some of it when I was in to game dev. 10 years later anything that's above element…

[deleted]

Re: Let Teenagers Sleep

#410

Post by HDThoreaun »

hgsgm wrote: post #105
jameshart wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sequencing in districts where high schools start earliest, then middle schools, then elementary feels backwards to me though. Elementary school parents who have jobs to get to wind up needing preschool care to fill that gap between their departure time and school start - high school age siblings aren’t even available to cover. Late elementary school drop off times impact parents’ options for work and commuting. H…

The obvious solution is extdended day care at school, on both sides, not focing5 older kids to run parenting around their own school commute.

Biden tried that. Manchin shut it down. For now this is the best we can have.
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