

To Keep Teenagers Alert, Schools Let Them Sleep In - danso
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/to-keep-teenagers-alert-schools-let-them-sleep-in/?hp

======
prostoalex
Overemphasizing high school sports leads to a schedule which causes sleep
deprivation for most of the students and subsequent drop in academic
performance.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/the-
case...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/the-case-against-
high-school-sports/309447/)

"During football season in particular, the focus of American principals,
teachers, and students shifts inexorably away from academics. Sure, high-
school football players spend long, exhausting hours practicing (and according
to one study, about 15 percent experience a brain injury each season), but the
commitment extends to the rest of the community, from late-night band
practices to elaborate pep rallies to meetings with parents. Athletics even
dictate the time that school starts each day: despite research showing that
later start times improve student performance, many high schools begin before
8 a.m., partly to reserve afternoon daylight hours for sports practice."

~~~
josefresco
Substitute football for "ballet" and pep rallies for "debate team practice"
and drop the completely non-relevant (and severely biased) quote about head
trauma and see if you get the same reaction.

I know it's fun to pick on Football and _jocks_ in general but I don't think
we can have a serious debate on the subject when the bias is so obvious.

What about we make athletics _part_ of the school day? Shocking I know, but if
we recognize athletics as an important key to youth development and not
something that has to happen after "real school" than maybe we might be able
to tackle this issue of kids being so overwhelmed and having to stay up late
just to stay afloat.

~~~
ANTSANTS
I don't think it's fair to make every student wake up unnaturally early for
the sake of those with _any_ kind of extracurricular activity, not just
sports.

Harming school performance and sleep depriving developing children in the time
that they need sleep the most, just to give a self-selected portion of the
student body extra time for sports, debate team, student council, etc. makes
absolutely no sense to me.

>What about we make athletics part of the school day?

We already did, it's called "gym."

~~~
DamnYuppie
Unnaturally early? If we really want to go that route we should consider that
our ancestors, until very recent times, were generally well awake before 8:00
AM on any given day. Also they generally didn't stay up late by our current
standards, generally in bed an hour or two after sundown. So the issue isn't
8:00 am is unnaturally early, it is most likely staying up unnaturally late
that is the culprit.

~~~
ANTSANTS
I wish I could have gotten up at 8 or even 7AM when I was in school. We're
talking about school starting hours, not wakeup times. You can't wake up just
before the bell rings and teleport into class. Depending on how far you live
from school, what transportation method you use (whether you ride a school
bus, regular public transportation, are a spoiled brat that can get mommy to
drive you, etc), what your responsibilities are outside of school, and so on,
you may need to wake up a considerable amount of time before the school day
officially begins.

My school started at 7:30AM, which required I get up just before 6AM, from
middle school onward. I don't think that's a natural time to require growing
teenagers to wake up at. It was still dark outside then, where I lived. Even
amongst grown adults, those that can wake up that early and function without
incurring a sleep debt are rare.

>So the issue.. is most likely staying up unnaturally late.

Kids naturally begin staying up and waking up later after they hit puberty.
Trying to fight that is stupid and harmful.

------
just2n
I never understood this. Parents tend to get off work around 5-6, right?
Schools were so adamant, in my experience, about getting kids out of there
(and sending all the staff/faculty home) by 3:30. This is at every grade
level, including those where the students can not yet drive. This also means
that there's an extra need for school-provided transportation (busses). The
need for more than half of the student body to ride busses feels like a huge
process smell to me, both in that the city should be providing transportation
and that the school is requiring students to come and go at times that are too
inconvenient for _everyone_.

Why not, instead, shift the school end time back to 5:30? Instead of 3:15 (as
it was for me, though I'm sure it varies), this adds 2 hours and 15 minutes to
the day. As a result, the academic day can begin at 10:30 rather than 8:15.
Labs, libraries, etc can all be open during this period to allow students to
catch up on work, get help, etc if they wish to come in early (or need to due
to their parents' work schedule). The cafeteria could even open on a limited
basis to serve breakfast in this time. But there's no rush to get in class by
8:15 and no need to start serving breakfast at 7 AM or earlier.

Then athletics can start early (say 6:30-7) instead of running excessively
late. And further, the school can remain open in the same state it did for
morning for these students and others who wish to stay late and work on their
assignments.

I felt, in HS, so rushed to get in class, "learn" (hard to do when you're
constantly moving from room to room) and then get out and do all the work at
home. Ok that's fine, it was convenient for me since I was able to walk home
in just 5 minutes, but for most people I suspect this was a horrible pressure.
And for people who don't have access to everything at home, this is also
probably damaging to their ability to complete work, and likely discouraging.
Not to mention distractions, etc.

I really liked how it was in college. Because I had to commute, I tended to
stay on campus later. I didn't have my distractions (home, games, computer,
etc) with me, so I'd end up just doing my work or research. Then when I went
home, I had nothing but free time. Time I spent reading articles on hacking,
watching defcon videos, chatting in IRC, playing games, reverse engineering,
etc. All tasks which I thoroughly enjoyed. All made possible because I had a
place to work separate from my home. So the notion of "home work" seems broken
to me. Totally broken. There needs to be work/life balance, and part of that
includes a separation of "home" and "work". I never felt that in HS.

I found it really strange that morning detention was incredibly productive. I
had the pleasure of receiving this once in 7th grade. I brought a book and
read half of it in that time. In fact, working was required, no talking.
Otherwise I would've been just standing outside goofing off. There was no
place for us to go like that at the school to be productive. We had to stand
around outside until classes started. And you realistically had to do that to
be on time to class. Doesn't this seem odd?

Also interesting was the partial schedule I had in my senior year. I had a
calculus course that began at 11 AM, which means I got to sleep in most days
of the week. I would often go to school at 10 AM and go sit in the library and
read or go over my work, then go to class at 11. I don't think I ever received
a B on anything in the class (sure, it was easy, but this was statistically
anomalous to my other grades, I never did homework at home; I always did it on
campus, and my grades reflected that, and I didn't care because "home" was not
a place to do work). I also got a perfect score on the Calculus BC exam and
skipped multiple college courses as a result. And because of that experience,
I realized I enjoyed math far more than I had previously thought and wanted to
learn more, beyond Calculus, and so I ended up getting a math degree.

Are there actually any negatives? Sure, the pay for teachers needs to be
increased to justify spending more time at school, and even more than that, it
should probably be doubled or more realistically because there's currently no
economic incentive for the smartest people to teach. But that's an existing
problem.

------
wycx
What's the deal with classes starting so early in the morning? Is this just a
US thing? All through my schooling in Australia we never started before 9 am.

When I read the title I though schools would be letting teenagers sleep in for
an 11 am start.

~~~
pessimizer
American public schools are so awful and America's hatred for teachers so
strong that many politicians who run on being pro-education immediately try to
lengthen the school day without raising teacher pay. It's an act that says
both that you're not afraid to attack unions, and that nobody has to pay to
improve education, just kick those lazy, stupid teachers into working harder
(because more is better, right?)

Anecdotally, I don't remember any school starting before 8:45 or so when I was
a kid 30 years ago.

------
surge
Teenagers aren't lazy when they won't get up in the morning, their bodies
actually require 9-10 hours of sleep normally to be awake, where as a normal
adults require 8 hours to function at peak. They're still growing/developing,
more to the point their brain is still going through a fundamental stage of
brain development where new neural connections are being made, and a lot of
that goes on during the sleep cycle, on top of holding a full schedule.

[http://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_sleep/how_much_sleep.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_sleep/how_much_sleep.htm)

~~~
josefresco
From looking at the chart referenced in your link, it would seem to me that
our youngest school age kids should get into school the latest, and teenagers
the earliest. If we extend this logic, college age kids should be having
classes even earlier (try to read that without chuckling).

Yet most of the news/research I read is about appeasing groggy teenagers. Why
aren't we focusing on elementary and middle schoolers? One of my other replies
in this thread was about how locally they've shifted high schoolers to a later
start time and as a result the younger kids are forced into an earlier time
schedule. Makes no sense if we're using the data referenced.

~~~
scott_s
Other research indicates that teenager's brains tend to receive the sleep
hormone _later_ than everyone else. Hence the drive for later start times.

------
nathanvanfleet
I find it very interesting how when you are young and developing you require
more sleep than when you are older. But the schedule is set by adults so they
aren't given that latitude. Same for the "early risers" who seem to set the
schedule for everyone in the adult world. I feel like I could more naturally
live my life if work started at 10am but I'm not afforded that latitude either
for arbitrary reasons (I'm not in the service industry).

------
waraey
Can we think of other way's to make teenagers less attractive as part time
employees?

If they don't get out of school until early evening, I would consider them
mostly un-employable. Oh well, its not like they are in an economy that can
support them... and surely this won't lead to a sense of entitlement later in
life.

~~~
ANTSANTS
A first world education system should not prioritize the employability of
minors in manual labor over their health and education.

~~~
waraey
The school of hard knocks is what most teenagers need. Otherwise they end up
in college, in debt, no real skills, and a international communication degree
with no job prospects.

The students who will succeed likely will be able to handle employment and
school. Aren't most high schools now days, you show, you pass?

------
3rd3
I wonder how big of a role artificial light at night plays in this problem. My
experience tells me that the later I have to get up the longer I stay awake at
night. At the moment I am experimenting with blue light blocking sun glasses
that I put on after sunset:

[http://www.amazon.com/Uvex-S1933X-Eyewear-SCT-Orange-Anti-
Fo...](http://www.amazon.com/Uvex-S1933X-Eyewear-SCT-Orange-Anti-
Fog/dp/B000USRG90/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394744494&sr=8-1&keywords=sct+orange)

------
scott_s
The report they linked also looks interesting, although I have only read the
major findings in the introduction: "Examining the Impact of Later High School
Start Times on the Health and Academic Performance of High School Students: A
Multi-Site Study":
[http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/11299/162769/1/Impact%2...](http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/11299/162769/1/Impact%20of%20Later%20Start%20Time%20Final%20Report.pdf)

------
ajcarpy2005
Lately, it's been popular to push for a laptop for every child in schools.
That's all well and good but I think it would he far more economical and
beneficial to the students overall if schools provided a wearable activity
tracker for each student. (Fitbit, etc.) Excercise is well known to promote
brain health and overall alertness, etc.

~~~
pyrocat
Or install f.lux on all of the laptops. Forcing students to wear a tracking
device is maybe not the best idea.

~~~
ajcarpy2005
Why? Many/most fitness trackers do not track your location. They just track
your steps (movement). My idea was that it would help encourage more physical
activity in an era where sometimes video games and television supplant outdoor
activity.

f.lux might help but lack of sleep is not necessarily the problem but rather
quality of sleep. Excercise improves sleep quality.

------
sologoub
Maybe I'm too much of a cynic, but this is such a first-world problem... While
the extra hour may seem like a lot, the quote from the teenager featured as
the "sleep activist" really strikes me how poorly our society sets up
priorities - "“I thought, if that happens, I will die,” recalled Jilly, 17. “I
will drop out of school!”".

Really?! This is how much value you place on your education and your future
life that an extra 30 minutes a day can prompt you to throw it all away?

Growing up fairly privileged in a USSR military family I myself have seen
relatively few hard times (country collapses are rarely fun...), but my
Grandfather's stories of having to carve math equations out on logs with a
knife so he could do his homework because post WWII paper and pencils were in
very short supply... He constantly emphasized how much he had to fight for his
education and it seared in my brain that I must succeed. Dropping out was
never an option I would even consider.

At 17, I managed to work full time, graduate from high school and start at a
university, and have so much fun that I keep worrying some odd photo will
surface that I have no memory of... Yes, I did not sleep as much as I wanted,
but I have no regrets about how I lived life or do now.

~~~
kiba
Because a good night sleep is crucial to better performance in school,
workplace and life in general.

For dangerous jobs, the stake are much higher. It can mean the difference
between death or a really a close dangerous incident.

~~~
scott_s
I recall reading in "Black Hawk Down" that the helicopter pilots - and only
them - got to sleep in air conditioned trailers. Piloting a helicopter is so
dangerous, and the conditions in which they were doing it even more so, and so
many lives were routinely at stake, that making sure the pilots got a good
night's sleep was worth it.

Everyone's job was dangerous, of course, but the reaction time of a well-
rested versus a not well-rested pilot could mean the difference between a
dozen deaths or a routine day.

~~~
sologoub
So now we are comparing high school to piloting helicopters in a war zone?

~~~
scott_s
I was responding directly to the parent poster's comment about dangerous jobs.
But everything is on a spectrum. If we acknowledge that something is important
in the extreme case, it's worth thinking about how important it is in less
extreme cases.

------
kkl232
RELEVANT: [http://i.imgur.com/YUBioI4.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/YUBioI4.jpg)

------
josefresco
Can't say I'm a fan of this as the father of two elementary school students.
The push to accommodate sleepy teenagers means my 5 and 7 year old have to
wake before 6 AM to be on the bus by 7:00 AM. If any segment of school age
kids are better equipped for an early start it's teenagers who can fully
understand the concept of getting a good nights sleep. That kind of
reason/logic isn't quite fully developed in a... 5 year old.

Seriously get off the damn cell phone, shut down your Mac and go the fuck to
sleep. The more of a routine this becomes the easier it is to drag your ass
out of bed early in the morning. Don't force little kids to be in bed at
dinner time just because your teenagers are ...cranky.

Maybe I'm showing my old-age here but I think most of this is bull.

~~~
Scorponok
Maybe it's a US thing, but why does "teenagers starting later" mean that your
5 and 7 year old have to be awake so early?

~~~
cortesoft
I am guessing it is because of buses; the same bus has to take the highschool
kids and the elementary kids. It used to be the highschool kids went first,
and then the elementary school kids.. now they are reversing it, so the
younger kids have to get up earlier.

~~~
josefresco
Exactly.

