
Let Teenagers Sleep In - anoplus
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/opinion/sunday/sleep-school-start-time-screens-teenagers.html
======
lamontcg
I used to need 9.5 hours of sleep as a teenager and probably had diagnosable
delayed sleep phase disorder.

Rules made by 55 year old early risers that only need 6 hours of sleep a night
who have become school officials are just cruel and unusual punishment to a
chunk of teenagers out there. In a better world there could be a class action
lawsuit to make this stop--but its still considered okay to promote "early to
bed, early to rise" and flat-out discriminate against people with sleep
disorders.

If you are an early riser, you should know that as someone with a sleep
disorder I view "helpful" suggestions like "get some exercise" to be roughly
equivalent to suggesting that gay people just need to pray the gay away. I'm
never going to become an early riser. I've gotten in somewhat under control
with melatonin, tweaks to diet and consistent scheduling, but I'm never going
to hop out of bed at 6:30am and its always going to take me 2-3 hours to wake
up.

~~~
dpatrick86
6:30AM is just some other city's 11:30AM... the difference in between is just
light exposure, food consumption, and activity (the three big zeitgebers).

Unless you think you'd never resynchronize after moving across the world, it's
pretty obvious that your wake and sleep time would have to be a lot more
malleable than you suggest.

~~~
pdpi
I think you’re missing the point. At least I do resync to new locations. Just
not the way you think.

I used to travel from London to the Bay Area for work with some regulatity.
The first few days were amazing, because the combination of westwards jet lag
plus night owl meant that I was getting to the office nice and early every
day. As the jet lag went away, and I started to acclimate to the timezone, it
usually took me less than a week to be back to a night owl routine, even
without the usual stimuli.

~~~
FabHK
Flying west is great. The flights east are brutal.

~~~
Corrado
I'm an early riser and I always hated flying West. At 4:30am (local time) I
was up and ready to go before anyone else in the office was even thinking
about getting up. And since I didn't usually have keys or a way to get into
the office my morning was wasted waiting on everyone else to arrive. Flying
East is easy (for me). :)

~~~
FabHK
Fair enough! I'm a night owl, so flying west brings me closer to the "early to
bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise" crowd...

------
rerx
One of the many fascinating facts I learnt from Matthew Walker's "Why We
Sleep" is that the biorhythms of teenagers are shifted to later hours compared
to those of adults in all human cultures of the globe, even in those rare
societies hardly affected by technology. In evolution this was likely
beneficial to make it easier for teenagers to socialize among themselves
without adult disturbance, which was necessary to drive their tribe out of its
ruts, to pioneer innovation and adaptation to changed conditions. In modern
society we are stupid to undermine this by depriving the upcoming generation
of their sleep.

~~~
RustySpottedCat
yea but we're not in tribes, are we? People take this evolutionary bullshit
way too seriously, like we still run around with sticks and stones. None of
that crap matters when we live in a modern society. Teenages are going to
"socialize with themselves" whether they sleep in or not, no matter what,
because, guess what, that's what people do in modern times. They can choose.

~~~
hrzn
What they meant is that we evolved in a way that made teenagers having shifted
cycles, going to sleep later and waking up later. We're not living in tribes
anymore, but evolution is slow and we still cary these biological traits. It
therefore hurts teenagers to wake up as early as adults. The point here is not
about leaving them more time to socialize in the evening.

~~~
mysterydip
Wouldn't accommodating them make evolution slower? Those that have traits
making them able to wake up earlier should be "rewarded" if you want to bring
change.

~~~
YokoZar
Well, I didn't come to this thread expecting a eugenics-based argument in
favor of medically unsound school start times, but here we are.

~~~
mysterydip
I was trying to comment on the irony in adapting to our evolution instead of
the other way around. I wasn't trying to advocate any solution. Clearly it
didn't come out right based on the replies I got.

------
nicolashahn
My high school started at 7:45am, unless I had zero period, in which case it
was 7am. Throughout the entire four years I was there, I was never able to get
my sleep schedule to match up. I would wake up at 6am groggy, irritable, and
stupid. This would not change throughout the day, and I'm sure many people
thought I was just an idiotic asshole all the time. Sometimes I could catch a
nap at lunch.

After school, I would immediately pass out for 2-3 hours, and wake with tons
of energy. I wouldn't be able to fall asleep until around 2am because of this,
and then the cycle continued.

Now as an engineer with a much more flexible schedule that lets me sleep in,
I'm a more attentive, happier, and smarter. I'm convinced that if I had gone
to a school with a schedule that matched mine, I would have achieved much
more.

------
emodendroket
> Changing the operating hours of an institution so central to the community
> is far from easy. It requires strong leadership and adjustments by school
> bus companies and businesses offering services like child care and
> extracurricular clubs.

Here's the elephant in the room. High schools start and end earlier with the
idea that older kids can watch their siblings.

I'd say a lack of public commitment to child care is also a big reason for the
low rate of young people having children commentators like to wring their
hands about.

~~~
boomboomsubban
>Here's the elephant in the room. High schools start and end earlier with the
idea that older kids can watch their siblings.

I've always been under the impression that start times were staggered for
transportation reasons, as you can't drop everyone off at the same time. My
experiences are limited to small towns, so I could be way off, but the
differences seemed too small for sibling care to be the motive

~~~
emodendroket
That means you have to do some kind of staggering. But the order is always
older-younger, although younger kids are naturally awake earlier.

~~~
boomboomsubban
So I looked at the CDC paper that seems to have influenced this article[1],
the average start time for middle school is 8:04, and for high school 7:59.
Elementary schools weren't sampled in it.

A later journal article just sampling Kentucky[2] shows elementary starting at
8:05, middle at 8:00, and high school at 8:0:1. Elementary is also the most
likely to start before 8, but their average was raised by ten percent starting
after 9.

There doesn't seem to be any forced order currently, and you'd likely see
younger students get later starts as well.

[1]
[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6430a1.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6430a1.htm)

[2][https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/06/school-
start...](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/06/school-start-times).

~~~
emodendroket
With elementary it's probably a result of doing morning and afternoon classes.

~~~
boomboomsubban
The elementary range was 7 to 9:10, though two were removed from the sample
for starting at 1:40.

------
digitailor
Well, no one else has said it, so I guess I drew the short straw.

Teenagers are most likely wired for later nights because they have reached
initial fertility. They will sneak off in the night to fool around, especially
if they haven't had a child yet. At the risk of sounding patronizing, this is
how babies are made. Adolescence is the age when women would first become
pregnant, and the ancient's concept of marriage was probably not the same as
ours. (There is evidence of monogamistic tendencies in humans for a long time
but that isn't synonymous with marriage.)

Teenagers are biologically wired to want lots of sex and they tend to do it at
night. I would put a lot of money on the fact that that hasn't changed in
millennia.

Obviously, this is a critical aspect of the process that allows for the
continuation of the human race. Humans didn't have the consistent ability to
wait to reproduce until 30 as is common now. And probably not the desire too;
I can't see career-building interfering.

The initial party must have ended pretty quickly. Poor ancient teeenagers.

(Edit: considering this speculative is reasonable and factually correct. But
speculating there's been behavior change is currently more speculative. What
reason do we have to think teens had daytime sex in ancient times and our
behavior has changed? What about for mature adults? Never heard of an existing
tribal culture that mostly has sex during the day, and that's how we get much
of our anthropological evidence.

Humans tend to have sex at night, and the most fertile, desirious and
energetic would be wired to _spend more time at the time people have sex_
doing it: that would be selected for because of our primary biological
directive. Is there a more logical evolutionary reason?)

~~~
majos
I'm not sure this is true. Yes, adolescence is when childbearing ability and
the associated hormonal incentives start, but where is this "sex must happen
at night" component coming from? If anything, I would guess that's a modern
phenomenon being retrofitted onto the past.

~~~
wmeredith
It’s pure conjecture until the commenter posts some sources. Now I feel
patronizing pointing it out, but you don’t have to stay up late to have sex. I
think this is modern cultural norms being propped with pseudo science.

~~~
randomdata
_> but you don’t have to stay up late to have sex._

That doesn't mean that having a 'late night' trait wasn't advantageous to
mating. For example, when humans started pair bonding, infidelity may have
been more common among those who could sneak out under the cover a darkness
while their partner was asleep, spreading that trait further than those who
remained monogamous. It is easy to think of many possible reasons why a late
night trait could have been advantageous in spreading that trait further than
those who naturally followed a more daytime rhythm during teenage years.

Or it could just be random chance. Either way, it's fun to discuss. We don't
have to dismiss all fun discussion because it may be conjecture. It is only
the comments section of HN, not a respected scientific publication. Time and
place.

~~~
FabHK
Also, when your jobs are a) finding berries and hunting mammoths and b) having
sex, it is not implausible that doing a) during the day and b) during the
night gives you more reproductive success than vice versa.

It is fun speculation, but still, OP's self-assured "this is so trivial" tone
was not called for.

------
lordnacho
This teenager sleep cycle thing is a bit of a revelation to me. I thought I
just had bad habits, but when I was that age, I'd play games most of the
evening, maybe do one or two bits of homework at 10om, and then possibly stay
up to 1am with some essay that I'd procrastinate on for ages. I'd wake up at
something like 7am and sleep on the train until I got into school, and then
sleep after getting home at about 4pm for an hour or two.

It would have been a lot more comfortable getting in for maybe 10am and
leaving at 5pm. I remember sometimes you'd have a special day in the week
where there were no classes in the morning, meaning you started late. And then
maybe an extra lesson or activity in the evening. But similar length of day,
shifted, felt much better.

Having worked for longer than I went to school for now, I think the school
calendar needs an overhaul. There's no reason to take a huge holiday in the
summer. In fact, why have any holiday at all? Just have school on all the
time, and let people take holidays whenever they want, like at work. You won't
forget things as easily taking week or two week holidays as against 8 week
ones. Also it means parents won't have their holidays dictated by the school.

Within the day, I also wonder about the frequency of context switches. You
might be taking 6 classes a day: PE, French, Math, English, History, Physics.

Now image you are coding, and you do this: Troubleshoot the rendering issue on
the website, install a lock free ring on your trading system, write a SIMD
function in CUDA, fix your cmake file dependencies, add unit tests to your CI
script, and set up Kubernetes.

Would you do those things one at a time, or in little pieces where you have to
pick up where you left off arbitrarily?

It seems you should have large blocks, maybe just morning and afternoon,
rather than dozens of little classes each week.

But then possibly as a teenager concentration is an issue, I don't know. I
certainly think it's better to focus on one thing at a time, quite a long
time, before changing contexts.

~~~
jrnichols
I agree with this as well. No matter how hard I tried, I could not fall asleep
early enough to get a decent nights sleep before having to be back at school
in the morning. "Just go to bed earlier" and all of the other unhelpful
suggestions lofted my way did not solve the problem. As a result, I suffered
greatly with chronic fatigue throughout high school and beyond.

Had I been able to sleep properly during those years, I might be a completely
different person now.

To this day, I cannot (and will not) work a Monday-Friday 8-5 job.

~~~
chillacy
This bothers me too. Knowing the sleep requirements of teenagers and how much
I actually got, and knowing the effects of sleep deprivation on cognition and
growth, I can only imagine that I’d be smarter and taller with proper sleep
(and better nutrition) while growing up.

------
QML
I wonder if it'd just be easier for high schools to convert over to a college
model: students are free to pick courses corresponding to their preferred
times, and to leave and enter campus on will. Of course, there will be
incentives to consider -- why would a high schooler attend their classes if
they're not paying directly out of pocket? In contrast, a school district
would try to maximize the attendance rate as that's how funding works (at
least in California).

In hindsight, there's always a tension between high schoolers and those who
administrate them; it's never a partnership since teenagers are quick to abuse
/ misuse a privilege.

~~~
darkerside
This seems like a great way to kill the public secondary school system. What
percentage of kids do you estimate would stop going to class under this model?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Make attendance mandatory and create some comfortable spaces for in-between
classes.

~~~
notyourday
We all know that the same teenagers that want to sneak out of their houses at
night to go on their escapades (typically 2:1 supervision) would totally
follow the rules of mandatory attendance (40:1 supervision )

~~~
Broken_Hippo
To be fair, I snuck out from time to time and rarely missed school. Those
things dont really go together like you imply. Missing school has totally
different consequences and besides, I never really found school useless. I
even took AP classes.

Some kids skip school. I did... twice in my school career. I imagine some kids
would still skip school, but there is no real reason to think it would be
higher than it is now.

------
boulos
This was actually an opinion piece a while back that seemingly got updated
around the actual news [1]: Governor Brown vetoed the bill in California to
start at 8:30 AM or later.

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-school-start-
time-...](http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-school-start-time-
vetoed-20180921-story.html)

------
pimmen
I'm an early riser, always has been. My brother and mother are night owls but
I somehow got my father's gene for getting up very early in the morning. All
through high school I had a long walk to the train and had to get up at 6. I
don't think I was ever late because of my tardiness. Today when I get to work
at 8.30 I've already done my workout and some work on hobby stuff. This has
been the case since my early 20s.

On the flip side, staying up late at night is absolutely horrible. I love
hackathons and have been to three of them with my colleagues this year and I'm
always such a buzz kill when I have to get some sleep past midnight. I wake up
and a lot of the best code has already been written by them.

We're all different. I wish society was more adapted to people of all
configurations, with more adaptable work schedules. And party schedules, even
though missing out on them is not as bad as all the ways night owls are judged
as lazy by ignorant people.

------
hrasyid
I'm not sure I like the reasoning in this article. They go to bed later
because of FB and other stuff, which makes them not have enough sleep before
school. Then it's the school, rather than the FB-ing that has to give way?

If they wake up and start school later, what's to say their FB-ing won't shift
even later, causing them to sleep even later, and then again we're back where
we started?

~~~
chillacy
Because teenagers have delayed melatonin release even in controlled lab
conditions: [http://www.neurologytimes.com/blog/teenage-circadian-
rhythm](http://www.neurologytimes.com/blog/teenage-circadian-rhythm)

------
DenisM
I was in a boarding school with hundreds of other teenagers. My classmates
never* slept in (always attended the first class), and I’ve never seen anyone
sleeping in from other classes/groups. We went to classes and were in a good
shape, I don’t recall anyone complaining.

There was one exception - a classmate that I believe was secretely drinking
alcohol. Even for him it was an exception to sleep in. Also I’ve see the
monitor looking for the sleepers, like that guy, so the problem was not
entirely unknown.

We were not selected based on our sleep, but on academic performance. This was
long ago and we were poor enough to allow no electronic devices whatsoever,
alcohol was forbidden, and lights-out were strictly enforced. Not much spare
food either after dinner.

The “teenage owl” thing has to be almost entirely environmental in order to
explain my experience.

~~~
Zak
What were the consequences (both formal and informal) if a student slept in?

People can do things that are both unpleasant and harmful to them for extended
periods of time if subjected to sufficient coercion, social pressure, or
reward.

~~~
DenisM
No one ever complained about poor performance due to lack of sleep the way
modern-day "owls" do. I don't think it matters how they (we) were forced to
observe the regime, only that it yielded the result - lark sleep and good
performance for near 100% of students. My point is that the "owl" thing is
environmental.

To answer your question, tardy students would be admonished by the
teacher/supervisor/monitor and possible written up. After several incidents
(and several escalation layers in between) they would be expelled. Never
happened in practice.

~~~
pseudalopex
You didn't mention when you woke up or when classes started. An hour can make
a world of difference.

Selection based on academic performance usually means above-average
intelligence, which is still an asset when you're tired. It also means you
were selected partly based on how well you dealt with your previous schools'
start times.

You mentioned this was long ago. The subject is better studied now and people
are more aware of it. Even still, a lot of people insist it's a matter of
discipline. Would it have been socially acceptable for someone to complain
about it publicly or even among their friends? Did most have anything to
compare it to?

~~~
DenisM
You’re right about the selection bias, there was a competitive aspect in the
admission process. But it wasn’t all competition, a brainy owl kid would only
need to rise so high before being swept into the school.

I’m pretty sure they would complain. Also they would point out something about
learning much better in the evening than morning like the owls do, and that
never happened. We had kids complaining about not enough hours in the day, for
example.

I think there’s a lot of insight to be gained from the pre-iPhone days of
various boarding institutions with diffferent selection criteria - STEM,
religious, military, arts (?), wealth.

------
k__
I still sleep from 03:00 to 12:00 and I'm 33.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Similar here if left to my own devices, and I'm 40. I think we are a minority,
though.

~~~
Const-me
I'm 36. We aren't necessarily a minority, it's possible most people would do
it too if they could.

------
unit91
> Anyone who talks about sleep as if it’s some kind of inconvenience and
> getting less of it is a virtue should be challenged. These people are
> dangerous.

This statement was bizarrely totalitarian. I actually agree with the
fundamental premise that many schools probably start too early. But to say
those who take the other side are dangerous people who need to be challenged?
Too far.

Ironically, I think this Soviet-esque mentality that "people who disagree with
idea X are dangerous" _is_ dangerous!

~~~
qrbLPHiKpiux
> Ironically, I think this Soviet-esque mentality that "people who disagree
> with idea X are dangerous" is dangerous!

Every, single social media platform, political show, talk show, no matter the
side.

~~~
kakarot
As Vi Hart explains here[0], it's critical that you establish enemies for your
followers if you wish them to crusade for you. Playful banter and "agreeing to
disagree" don't cut it. You have to dehumanize them.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deg1wmYjwtk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deg1wmYjwtk)

------
captainmuon
Wouldn't the average teenager just stay up even longer? It's not like they are
hardcoded to wake up at a certain clock time.

I think it would make much more sense to change the _content_ of school during
those years to reflect the interests of students better. Let them take a
break, do something practical, do projects, etc. instead of trying to cram
facts into their heads. A lot of stuff I headed to learn when I was 13 I
learned easily 5 years later, and vice versa.

~~~
YokoZar
> Wouldn't the average teenager just stay up even longer? It's not like they
> are hardcoded to wake up at a certain clock time.

They literally are. And that time is later than adults. That's what circadean
rhythms are.

~~~
anticensor
If this difference exceeds two hours, they have a problem.

~~~
YokoZar
That difference may be delayed sleep phase syndrome, which affects about 1 in
7 teens. You can mitigate it around the edges with sleep hygiene, but even
doing everything correctly they're still going to behind adults with earlier
chronotypes.

------
butterfi
This is nothing new. What's more irritating to me is that these articles
generate lots of conversation, but not one school will adjust its hours. Put
up or shut up.

~~~
lilgreenland
They passed a law in CA a few weeks ago. All urban public schools must begin
no earlier than 8:30 a.m.

[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB328)

~~~
boulos
Yes, but then it was vetoed. See my other commment, or follow your link and
click on status to see the Governor’s Veto Message.

------
noobermin
>Three out of every four students in grades 9 to 12 fail to sleep the minimum
of eight hours that the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends for
their age group

Do 3/4 teens fail in life? Do they develop debilitating disorders and such?

I guess I've heard for years we need more sleep yet we don't sleep and we
continue living. May be certain things like stress and work are troublesome
and such but that seems more like the issue than lack of sleep is.

~~~
yurishimo
It’s not necessarily that they become failures but rather that they are being
deprived of the mental capacity to reach their full potential every day.

They would be more successful if they got more sleep, so it makes sense to
give teens a couple more hours to benefit society as a whole, even if only
marginally.

~~~
noobermin
I don't think my point is clear so let me restate it. 75% is a majority of
people. 75% of people aren't deficient in some way, as far as I know, staying
up all night as teens and living a life didn't make them maladjusted or
deprived in some sense. Moreover, I don't know or feel like there is evidence
that high performers in society sleep more than anyone else.

The whole "sleep more" mantra feels like the "eat less fat" mantra of the 90s
which turned out to be not only false but detrimental to public health as fat
became replaced by sugar.

~~~
ecnahc515
Just because you can't see if people are drastically affected in ways you
perceive; especially years after the fact, doesn't mean it's not affecting
people.

It's just as possible the "high performers who don't sleep" are the least
healthy people in society, and our society rewards unhealthy habits...oh
wait...

------
pkelly2505
On my way to work today I saw a couple of school buses picking up students at
about 6:45. Now if you think that's too early and we should have schools open
later, I see a real problem. By law where I live, all traffic, in both
directions, has to stop when school buses pick up kids. Put those buses on the
road between 8:00 and 9:00 and the already horrible rush hour traffic would
get way worse. Along with making everyone's commute longer, every school bus
route would take longer. Students would have to be picked up earlier relative
to the school's opening time to allow for the slower traffic.

------
topkai22
One problem for adults in the US at least, the center of gravity for many
institutions is on the East Coast, New York for finance or DC for the
government. Huge numbers of people on the west coast start their workday at 6a
or 7a to align to accommodate east coast peers or organizations. If the
European settlement of the US had been done in reverse, I can easily see a
world where Virginians are regularly staying at work till 8p because that’s
when their customer is available.

------
speleding
My daughter's school just changed all lessons to start an hour later for a few
cohorts, as an experiment. My daughter likes that she gets to sleep longer.
But it also means we don't get to see each other at breakfast, however brief
that is.

I'm worried that more or less halving the number of times we see each other
will have an impact on social cohesion. Of course, one solution would be for
everyone to just started an hour later. Or two :-)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I 'm worried that more or less halving the number of times we see each
> other will have an impact on social cohesion. Of course, one solution would
> be for everyone to just started an hour later. Or two :-)_

As a teenager I would hate you for that :). Part of the reason I seem to be
wired for night life since my teenage years is probably because that's the
time _everyone else is asleep_ , giving time to think, concentrate, enjoy
experiences without interruptions, and generally not be interrupted by other
people's random nonsense.

------
vm
School starts early because of parent work schedules.

------
upveto
This rings so true to me.

Throughout high school I had the worst attendance record in the entire grade.
For a few days after having stayed home, though, I was much sharper than the
other sleepy kids. Then I started to feel tired again.

Come on.

------
honkycat
Schools are daycare and not optimized for the students to learn. That is why
they start early: so the parents can go to work

------
ricardobeat
[http://archive.is/ulQnm](http://archive.is/ulQnm)

------
unhammer
I highly recommend the interview with "sleep diplomat" Matt Walker at
[http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew-
walker](http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew-walker) – I was scared
into going to bed early at least :-)

------
lngnmn1
In asia, especially in rural areas, it is common to wake up early, between
5:30 and 6:00 and do a lot of things, including playing football, before
reaching school at 9 am. And, you see, they are perfectly healthy and smart.

Of course, almost everyone is going to bed about 9 or 10 pm.

Failure to take into account cultural and social differences plague so-called
studies all the time.

Rice as the cause of health problems is another example. Almost 2/3 of
humanity consume rice on a daily basis, sometimes few times per day.

------
another-cuppa
But maybe not too much? My parents let me sleep. School started at 9:00 for me
but on weekends and holidays I would sleep for more than ten hours and default
to a >24 hour circadian rhythm. I would eventually become completely nocturnal
which is kinda funny and considered typical for a geek like me, but it really
messed up my mental health for a number of years afterwards. I wasn't able to
maintain "normal" sleeping patterns until my late 20s.

------
shawn
Or better yet, bring back apprenticeship and give them something to do other
than worthless high school. I almost didn't get my first programming job
because I had to be paid under the table at 17 due to child labor laws.

If you want to enrich teenagers' lives, offering them something other than a
prison sentence where kids ruthlessly torment each other seems a decent way.
It worked for most of history.

~~~
renjimen
Each to their own. An apprenticeship wouldn't work for something like the
sciences where you need to understand the theory before you can work under
someone more senior. But you're right, for vocational training where you learn
by doing having the option of an apprenticeship may be far more fruitful than
staying in school.

I believe Germany has this kind of system.

~~~
earthnail
German here.

We have this kind of system, and it works extremely well for most professions
that don’t require a master’s degree, and where the field doesn’t change too
quickly. It is a mix of school and apprenticeship. Great, for example, for
becoming a nurse, less great for programming since the field moves so fast.

For higher education, we still have the old school university system. Students
usually leave university with little industry experience beyond a few
internships, but especially the technical universities put a lot of focus on
preparing their students as well as possible for the real world.

All in all it works quite well.

~~~
bosie
Not sure why it wouldn't work for "fast" changing fields like programming as
well. The basics are the basics.

Learn the basics at school and the day-to-day activities through the
apprenticeship? Not sure what else would be better than the dual-system

~~~
earthnail
It‘s just an observation. The apprenticeship system stems from the old guilds.
There is no support yet for learning programming that way. It will take a
while, the system evolves very slowly.

~~~
detaro
You can become a web designer/developer through apprenticeship at least. And
there's the "dual studium" ideas that at least follow a similar model in some
ways, which a bunch of large technical companies offer.

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baxtr
That’s probably a good reason to stick to wintertime in winter and not
summertime (the EU decided to drop time ch ages 2x a year)

~~~
vinay427
There isn't even a definite proposition yet for eliminating DST shifts. There
is still a long way ahead for something like this to happen.

~~~
paulie_a
Half of my last year is dealing with bugs related to dst. It needs to go away
completely. It is a stupid and unnecessary concept. The proposition is very
simple "we won't be shifting the clock by an hour, deal with it"

~~~
wruza
If paid, half of your year may be worth having dst, if it turns out to be
important. Hope they make their best decision, since it may affect too many
things.

Btw, did you deal with it or it’s still a mess? Long ago I wrote a library
that manages dst, leaps, even ancient calendar changes, for fun. Datetime is
hard topic, but still manageable. What problems did you meet, specifically?

~~~
paulie_a
No it wasn't worth it. I'd rather work on actual projects instead of fixing
undocumented nuances related to poorly implemented systems. Yes I got paid for
it, I'd rather not deal with a never ending set of database queries in a
legacy system. Specifically one problem was consistently being given incorrect
info from a vendor, then incorrect specs and data that would not match with
the first. How do you compare a day with 25 vs 24 hours.

Tldr: fuck dst, it has no purpose and should go away.

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coding123
Or you know have them go to bed at 10 instead of let the play video games
until 2am.

~~~
Coding_Cat
Teenagers natural sleeping cycle is markedly later than any other age bracket.
When I was one, I wasn't allowed to play any videogames past 20:30, and I
would often spend the evening reading books by a nightlight. Everyday I cycled
for almost 2 hours (at ~20-25 kmh), so I got some regular exercise each day
too.

Nevertheless, I would still on occasion go to bed at 10:30 (had to get up at
6:30) and lie awake in bed till 01:00-02:00am.

~~~
derekp7
Would that still be the case in the middle of winter, when it gets dark at
5:00 PM?

~~~
GordonS
Not the parent, but I grew up in the North of Scotland where it gets dark
between 4-5pm for several months of each year, and as a teenager I could never
sleep before 1-2am.

I was always forced to get up early, which of course resulted in me being
extremely tired during the day, which negatively impacted upon my life
(academically, relationships etc).

Seems like there has to be a better way.

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RoutinePlayer
F*ck that. What's next? Let them do cocaine!?

[joke]

