> This map shows which parts of the U.S. ignore the science.
I'm starting to dislike the phrase "the science", since I usually hear it used as a conversational bludgeon. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended 8:30 AM as a minimum start time, that's not the same as "the science" definitely saying one thing or another. I don't have kids, and don't really care when schools start, so this is less a comment about that as it is about how annoying "the science" is as a phrase, how it's not a good description of how science works, and how it's usually misapplied to end conversations in favor of your prior opinion.
> I'm starting to dislike the phrase "the science", since I usually hear it used as a conversational bludgeon
This also goes up there with the "in this house we believe SCIENCE IS REAL" signs.
We're currently living through the replication crisis and are awash in fraudulent academic journals. I don't think people who say this stuff would actually engage with you in a conversation about proper p-values for given sample sizes. So it's really just shorthand for trying to associate yourself to a certain intellectual class.
> trying to associate yourself to a certain intellectual class.
In general, it's filling the vacuum left by religion. One part of that is what you identified: people generally need something greater than themselves to identify with, and "intellectual" is a tempting option.
Another part of it is that people generally crave certainty and fear the unknown. Religion fills that need by providing crisp, clean answers that don't provide a lot of room for questions and "what if"s. In the absence of a traditional organized religion, people try to fill that void with what seems to be the new, popular replacement—science.
Unfortunately, science is by design all about uncertainty. As soon as it becomes a dogma it ceases to be science.
> Another part of it is that people generally crave certainty and fear the unknown... Unfortunately, science is by design all about uncertainty.
It's not a surprise that people put "science" up on a pedestal when science education is too often about getting the correct answer to questions. Instead of asking questions and understanding the limitations of any approach to answering them. Restraint and humility aren't exciting, but they're so important.
A reasonable amount of skepticism is fundamental to science. But skepticism can be taken too far. The goal should be to maximize the number of true beliefs that we hold. If I choose not to believe in the mass of the proton or the structure of DNA because of my skepticism, then I have a false belief. The best strategy for maximizing true belief is to accept most of the claims of science at face value, while acknowledging that they might change in the future and that we should update our beliefs when new evidence comes to light.
> The most fundamental element to science is skepticism.
We probably agree on the right way to apply “skepticism” re science.
But the self-described “skeptics” I know often ignore evidence. Which is one way the word (Words! They suck!) can be validly interpreted.
I would say the fundamental element of science is “the evidence based search to continually improve our current understanding”.
I particularly like how “understanding” inoculates against the more static, subjective, bias friendly, identity and ideologically based, implications of “belief”.
"Believing", "trusting", "following" science means using information from an entity that presumably follows the scientific method to ascertain their information, and is otherwise fallible and subject to change pending new data.
This is in contrast to "believing" information from an entity that did not procure information via the scientific method, and is usually infallible and not subject to change pending new data.
Yes and no. Obviously, blind and religious faith is not reasonable when we are talking about science. However, a lot of structures in science are are about making "belief" or "trust" a bit more objective than what you could do as an individual. (Peer) reviews, academic journals and conferences and even things like SciHub are, in the end, to a large degree about trust.
What's the alternative? Following every single argument every researcher makes back to the beginning and replicate their work before you base any further work or thought on what they did or said? That's not really feasible in most domains.
And, personally, I'd rather call the basis of science curiosity and not (just) skepticism.
I This House We Believe That
Simplistic Platitudes
Trite Tautologies
And Semantically Overloaded Aphorisms
Are Poor Substitudes
For Respectful And Rational Discussions
About Complex Ideas
The "in this house we obey the Laws of Thermodynamics" signs used to be kinda popular. I guess that's the dumbed-down version of them that gets accepted by the masses.
I wonder if whoever coined the phrase knew it was a joke deprecating whoever buys it. Like those movies where the point is "those monsters are horrible, aren't they? yeah, you are doing basically the same right now."
i don't think there is a connection. the first one is a joke for people that know about the laws of physics, rather like this sign: "Obey gravity! It's the law!"
Those signs are usually accompanied by a few other slogans that should tip you off that they're a response to certain cultural force in the world that lauds ignorance and hate - they're not trying to say they're intellectuals, they just listen to their doctors and do their best to take a kind and informed approach.
It strikes me as a response to a trend callousness and deliberate ignorance.
Those signs are just as guilty of pushing ignorance and hate as the cultural force you're alluding to—you perceive them to be different because their ignorance overlaps with yours and they hate the things you hate.
Signs like these take a strawman version of "the other side" and define the residents of the home in opposition to that strawman. It's evidence that the person who put it up views themselves as part of the culture war, not evidence that they strive to be kind to and understanding of people who are different than them.
I agree with you about having annoyance with the phrase especially in the use of divisive topics.
I disagree in that, I don't think this is a divisive topic. I have not heard of a valid critique for school start times should be later aside from schools being a daycare supplement for working parents. But that's not science, its politics/economics. "The science" is, in my experience, very clear that young people should be allowed to wake-up later in the day to better conform with their natural sleep cycles.
This can probably be addressed in itself by separating "aftercare" into an hour in the morning of "beforecare" in cases where parents really need to drop their kids off early. It's far from convenient for parents to pick their kids up at 3:30 PM, especially after waiting in a long line of cars, so we already have buffer times for that.
For a personal perspective, when I was in high school, if I had needed to take the bus, I would have had to get on it before 6 AM, since I was at the beginning of the route (first or second stop, IIRC). Luckily, some family friends had a daughter who was an upperclassman at the same school, and she drove me. I would guess there are few parents well-served by their teenagers getting up at five in the morning.
It also depends on how far the parents have to commute. I grew up in the LA area and my parents both worked in downtown LA. Getting up at 5 am was the routine for my parents.
>“The science" is, in my experience, very clear that young people should be allowed to wake-up later in the day to better conform with their natural sleep cycles.
That already crosses into politics. Science can answer if-then statements. Once you start using the word "should", you are talking about morality, preference, and tradeoffs.
> That already crosses into politics. Science can answer if-then statements.
In that case, I will also cross over into politics by expressing the opinion that answers to if-then statements should, when they are available, be taken into account in political decision-making.
That is correct. They should be taken Into account. However, Politics is the process of weighing the against cost and tradeoffs. Science can say if later sleep is better for learning. It can't tell you about f better learning is worth it
To avoid being diverted by broad generalities, let's note that with regard to this specific issue, the political decision-making progress will be sub-optimal if it does not take into account the existence of objective evidence concerning the effect of students' circadian rhythms on their ability to satisfy the politically-chosen, yet still objective, goals of education policy.
Fully agree that it should be taken into account.
My point is simply that taken into account does not mean it clear or defacto decision. Even education policy is not a issue that trumps all other considerations.
The process of comparing and weighing inputs is making policy, not science. You can try to reduce policy making to some weighted equations, but that doesn't make it science. Science doesn't encompass all logic and mathematics.
I'm having a hard time putting this into words but your viewpoint really feels like, to phrase it as a software engineering analogy, a new developer that comes into a 20 year old project, looks at what currently exists, calls it all trash, says the people that came before you were dumb and didn't know what they were doing, and you just start rewriting all the code.
Do you really think all the states and people that decided these things in the past were all stupid, or not following "the science" back then, or just picked start times at random? Do you really think you know better than all those states and people? Did the science change since then? Did the reasons to start school early/late change since then? Maybe they did. But if they did, you could maybe elaborate on that rather than just saying "the science is so clear" and dictating the way things should be.
that assumes that science had a factor at all in deciding when school should start.
let's look back at the 1800s when school became commonplace. at that time science decided what was the best time to get up and milk the cows. and how to make the most of the available daylight. work and school had to fit into that schedule. so in a way science was used to decide school times indirectly. what is important is to consider that school has not changed since then.
however in the meantime new research suggests that we should rethink schools, and so here we are questioning whether current school starting times are still adequate. this is not saying that in the past people were stupid or picked the times at random, only that the factors that led to those choices have changed.
> Do you really think all the states and people that decided these things in the past were all stupid, or not following "the science" back then
Yes. Why do you believe otherwise?
> or just picked start times at random
No, they chose based on when they needed daycare to start, because the workday was starting. Or, because the children needed to be available to work the fields during certain hours. Things have changed.
> Do you really think you know better than all those states and people
Yes.
> Did the science change since then
Yes.
> you could maybe elaborate on that rather than just saying "the science is so clear"
Does every discussion need to re-articulate the accumulated evidence? Can't there be some assumption of informed debate?
> Do you really think all the states and people that decided these things in the past were all stupid, or not following "the science" back then
I don't really disagree with your point, but... Have you looked at the overall quality of the decisions those people made?
They were not stupid, but the overall amount of real information they dealt with was ridiculously low. And the overall amount of fake information they dealt with was ridiculous high. The odds of any random choice they made being a good one aren't very high.
I am opting to interpret your response in the best way possible and am responding in kind spirit.
> your viewpoint really feels like, to phrase it as a software engineering analogy, a new developer that comes into a 20 year old project, looks at what currently exists, calls it all trash, says the people that came before you were dumb and didn't know what they were doing, and you just start rewriting all the code.
Do you think society has peaked and our understanding of civics hasn't evolved? That nothing can ever be better? To continue your analogy, your (unstated) viewpoint is like the stodgy programmer stubbornly sticking to PHP "because it works" and refusing to accept that webtech has evolved and there are better tools. Or a more contemporary way, an old C programmer stubbornly refusing to learn Rust because "C just works". Does it make sense to put Rust into the project? Possibly not, there are many excellent reasons not to. But its a discussion worth having.
> Do you really think all the states and people that decided these things in the past were all stupid, or not following "the science" back then, or just picked start times at random?
If I were to hazard a guess, I imagine most school systems are still bound by the legacy of farmwork and the start/end times are holdovers from that. I doubt the timing has significantly changed since schooling became a primary factor of our lives. But that's just a guess. I would certainly hope that the people who start a new school district are taking into account many factors before dictating a start time.
> Do you really think you know better than all those states and people?
I do not feel the need to be beholden to history for history's sake. My own post acknowledged (one) challenge with changing the start time. But...
> Did the science change since then? Did the reasons to start school early/late change since then?
This is exactly what I and others have posited, yes.
> Maybe they did. But if they did, you could maybe elaborate on that rather than just saying "the science is so clear" and dictating the way things should be.
Others in this thread have posted extensive good research on this very subject for your consumption. I myself have posted a reference to a book I found useful and entertaining. Not every single comment needs to be a doctoral thesis containing every possible scrap of information or interpretation on a subject. This, and other subjects of the like, are artifacts _with context_. Within context of this post, it is in direct response to an article that explains the reason with even more links and a friendly bulleted list.
A mildly provocative analogy is demanding a link to every peer-reviewed journal when discussing climate change. I don't feel the need to point out every scrap of research to state a claim that "Climate change is real". I will merely state, especially in a comment to an article discussing legacy policy around climate change, that climate change is real.
"The science" has become religious dogma to many people, the complete anthesis of science. When people say they (follow) "the science" I don't even bother listening to what they have to say anymore.
IMO, the problem runs deeper than that. Using the same word for the natural sciences and the social sciences makes little sense. It is a quirk of the language which lends a great deal of undeserved credibility to the social sciences. The two are in desperate need of a lexical divorce.
It is now being used as a term to divide and pick sides. Data can be a bunch of different things and life is about trade offs. When someone says ignoring science I always think they are a hiding an economic or other fact they don't want someone to look too closely at.
> The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended 8:30 AM as a minimum start time, that's not the same as "the science" definitely saying one thing or another.
This is a nitpick at best. From outside a given field, one generally has no option but to pick one or some sources as authoritative and refer to them (or to declare no source is authoritative).
In other words, if I say “the science says XYZ” this is shorthand for “my preferred authoritative sources of information on the relevant field assert XYZ”
Can this be incorrect? Yes. Is this often used as a bludgeon? Yes, and reasonably so: without piercing the research veil, what discussion could exist besides disagreeing on a sources’ authority?
If I say “the science says kids shouldn’t wake before 8 am”, and you respond with some neuroscience argument that childrens brain can adapt to waking up before 8 am, you are essentially making an off topic argument: I am referencing an authoritative position, not arguing why that position is correct. In that sense, yes, I am applying a bludgeon; and I right well should, because I can’t have a meaningful engagement with your scientific position anyways.
I see your sentiment often and even though I agree that usage of “the science says” is a poor description of how science works, nonetheless language is an evolving construct and “the science says ___” is a mainstream construct in English language dialogue at this point
There’s nothing wrong with appealing to authority. Often times it’s the best we can do. Sometimes authority is not sufficiently convincing and in such situations it’s fine to point out that whatever “the science” refers to needs more evidence supporting their claims
It's appealing to authority without having to even do the absolute bare minimum of mentioning what the authority you're appealing to is. Is the authority some person's blogpost? Is the authority the FDA? Who knows. "The science" is the authority, whoever that might be, which doesn't mean squat.
Yes it’s laziness. It’s essentially equivalent to hearsay without proper citations. However it opens the door to less lazy conversation for those who care to ask for sources, and most importantly it sets the baseline expectations that those sources will be grounded by science and not like, my reiki teacher told me kids should wake up after 8 am
There’s something to be said by beginning a conversation with a shared understanding of what is considered a reasonable ground truth.
> I'm starting to dislike the phrase "the science"
I dislike it when it is used to describe something that is not science.
> I don't have kids, and don't really care when schools start
As a taxpayer, your money is being wasted trying to teach sleepy teenagers who are not the right physical state for learning. Given that these are future coworkers and the people that will be funding the government when you are retired, it might be wise to suggest maybe spend monty teaching teens when they are awake and physically ready to learn?
It's pretty much typical late 2010s/early 2020s "I f'n love science" pop culture mentality. People who actually love science would view scientific claims with a critical eye, because that's what someone practicing good science would do.
The primary function of state funded K-12 is childcare to enable two parents to work. Unless and until that is not the case, school will start earlier than parents need to be at work. If it started later, that time would be replaced with pre-school care/activities.
Or just legalize 'neglect' (aka letting school age children be latchkey again without someone constantly lording over them).
This bizarre and historically unprecedented scenario where parents simultaneously must both work but be prosecuted for doing so will likely be a blip in history.
I don't know. It seems to be getting worse. Entire neighborhoods now come to a standstill because hundreds of giant cars converge on a school to deliver or pick up one kid at a time.
And this is in L.A., home to probably the least-challenging weather in the country. We have entire generations of junior-high and high-school kids who are apparently too feeble to ride their bikes, walk, or take the bus to school. Pathetic.
> And this is in L.A., home to probably the least-challenging weather in the country. We have entire generations of junior-high and high-school kids who are apparently too feeble to ride their bikes, walk, or take the bus to school. Pathetic.
Weather is a minor factor vs. the population-size/density/quality of a place like LA.
Just watch some of the George Floyd protest videos from LA to get a sense of what likely really concerns LA parents. No amount of snow, sleet, wind, and sub-zero temps can hold a candle to those apocalyptic scenes.
L.A. is a giant county masquerading as a city, spread out with many areas' density being that which is generally called "suburban."
Nobody is advocating sending kids out into a riot. So that leaves... I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say probably 364.8 riot-free days a year suitable for playing or moving about outside.
Except the highly visible destruction and violence by its residents leave a lasting impression of what the community is actually composed and capable of at any given moment. The riots just put it on display front and center.
You can just stay indoors when the weather forecast is bad. There's no way to keep all the riff-raff locked inside while your kid walks home from school. In a place like LA, there's a lot of riff-raff. Just because there's no active riot doesn't mean the riff-raff is gone, they're just not all in a frenzy showing their true colors simultaneously. They continue to exist, and continue to be a potential risk, at all times.
What "destruction and violence" are you talking about? No neighborhood I visit or have lived in is rife with "riff-raff," and kids are still mollycoddled door-to-door.
> What "destruction and violence" are you talking about? No neighborhood I visit or have lived in is rife with "riff-raff," and kids are still mollycoddled door-to-door.
Are you wilfully ignoring the actual thread of context we're discussing? I was replying to your reply to the following:
> Just watch some of the George Floyd protest videos from LA to get a sense of what likely really concerns LA parents. No amount of snow, sleet, wind, and sub-zero temps can hold a candle to those apocalyptic scenes.
That's ONE incident that was known to be incipient, and into which you would never send children. As I said, there are typically 364+ days a year of riot-free peace prevailing. The "riff-raff" in my neighborhood consists of girls' softball players, people walking their dogs, and bicyclists. Cowering at home in fear because they might explode into violence at any moment would be a pathetic way to live, but hey... that's your choice.
In my county the kids are not permitted to walk or bike to the school; they can only take the bus or be driven (and they have to be picked up by a parent or someone on an approved list). I assume that stops when they're of driving age but I wouldn't be shocked if the 16-year-olds are allowed to drive but not to bike....
For those who haven't found it, Let Grow [0] is a great organization pushing for this kind of change. They have resources for parents and have actively worked with a number of states to get free range kids laws on the books.
I'm sure that's true for some kids. But it's also true that many young kids are perfectly capable, although perhaps not all environments are conducive to this. I walked approximately half a mile to kindergarten with a friend every day, starting at age 5. I never had an issue with tardiness until high school, when I started driving.
Some of my fondest childhood memories involve conversations with peers from these walks. I think it's an incredible shame that I can't let my children do the same, even at 8, and even though my 8yo is miles more mature than I was at his age.
I'd rather ask: who didn't? The only reason to not come to school on your own by that age is if the school is far away and hard to get to by public transport, which usually isn't the case.
I live in Poland. Wherever the distance to your nearest school is more than 4 kilometers (or 3 kilometers in the early grades), the municipality has to provide transport - which is usually the case only in rural areas. In cities you'll most likely have multiple schools within 1km, which is perfectly walkable even for younger children. The high school I went to was 3.5km away from my home and I was getting there by tram, but if I went to the nearest one it would be 250m away, just like the primary school I went to. Same with kindergarten in fact, but IIRC I wasn't going there on my own back then. I live in suburbs now and the nearest primary school is 700m away - no reason to drive (nor walk) a ~10yo kid to their school here either.
(for the record: primary school encompasses what US calls elementary and middle schools here)
My very liberal definition of "far away" would probably be something like "more than 1.5km" (the distance I was going by foot to a swimming pool as a kid), more if we consider public transport and bikes too - though those of course won't necessarily be viable options everywhere and at every age.
being late for school had consequences that most kids would try to avoid, so no, if a kid is capable to come home on their own, they are also capable to go to school on their own.
at one point my oldest was in a school that did not allow kids to go to school or go home on their own. so in the afternoon i had to go to the school and pick him up. they would not let him leave until i showed up. however they could not force me to accompany him in the morning. because, well, what were they going to do when the kid was at the school gate and i wasn't there?
I would not call it the primary function, as state-funded K-12 has existed far longer than dual-income families.
Though I admit I'm just making this up and I could be completely wrong. How common was it to mothers to work in the 60s, 50s, and before? Was state-funded K-12 as ubiquitous back then as it is now?
It is my understanding that in general the ‘mandatory’ nature of education was less enforced prior to ~mid-70’s. Especially when considering rural, and agriculturally intense, locales.
I grew up in Indiana, literally in the middle of cornfields. Farm kids went to school, and sometimes smelled like they'd just got done with chores. But no one to my knowledge got cut slack because they had farm work to do. And what parent wants their kid to grow up uneducated? Even if they're supposed to grow up and take over the farm later, you'll never go to Purdue for that ag degree if you don't go to high school.
Granted, just one piece of anecdata from just one U. S. state. But without evidence to the contrary, I'm having a hard time picturing any adult in the process, parents or school employee, being content with uneducated ignoramuses as long as they get the pigs fed.
Cartoons often are not a reliable basis for assessing actual practices. All those comics indicate is that most people would understand, in context, the notional function, it tells you nothing about the degree of practical enforcement.
Whether we want that to be true or not it is. If every school were to close the immediate emergency would be that people would have no one to watch their kids.
We actually have strong, immediate evidence of this as a result of COVID, where a prominent issue that even parents working from home encountered was a sudden new need to find stable work-life balance in an environment where the two had been ram-rodded together, happening in the same room. For a lot of parents, it was a disaster.
> If every school were to close the immediate emergency would be that people would have no one to watch their kids.
If the pipes in your house burst right now, your immediate emergency would be to pretty much stop everything and stop your house from completely flooding.
That doesn't mean that the primary purpose of your life is a pipe-fixer.
I think you made the classic mistake of confusing urgency with importance.
In this thread, we're not talking about the primary purpose of one's life, we're talking about the primary purpose of school as it relates to parents. In that way, the pipes are analogous to the school and, as you said:
> If the pipes in your house burst right now, your immediate emergency would be to pretty much stop everything and stop your house from completely flooding.
Just like
> If every school were to close the immediate emergency would be that people would have no one to watch their kids.
Specifically because the schools are as important to watching kids as pipes are to moving and containing water.
True, but the purpose of schools isn't the immediate problems/outcomes. It's the long term outcomes of having an educated society.
We could argue about whether the schooling system is sufficiently meeting those long term goals, but that doesn't mean they take a back seat to the immediate consequences of school closures.
Baby-sitting has always existed as a need; in the past it may have been done by various family members, but the modern ‘daycare’ model has its roots in the Industrial Revolution: as long as there have been machines for both parents to work, there has been someone offering to watch their kids for Money. Industrializing England had ‘baby mills’ where working class mothers could leave their kids (often in appalling conditions).
The initial argument for public education was civics- if you want a nation of competent and driven citizens, they need to be armed with a good, comprehensive education.
A lot changed in the Post-War era. Women entered the workforce, and the role of the public school has mutated to the point that many families depend upon it as the primary caregiver for non infant children (hence the complaints when the school week gets shortened from 5 days to 4).
Also you seem to believe that school being expensive somehow guarantees it’s primary purpose is education. Many districts spend that money incredibly inefficiently. We have lots of touchscreen devices and giant stadiums. And yet teachers are forced to provide their own basic school supplies for the kids every year. Ancient musical instruments failing in kids hands due to rot. It’s really not good out there.
>Also you seem to believe that school being expensive somehow guarantees it’s primary purpose is education. Many districts spend that money incredibly inefficiently. We have lots of touchscreen devices and giant stadiums. And yet teachers are forced to provide their own basic school supplies for the kids every year. Ancient musical instruments failing in kids hands due to rot. It’s really not good out there.
Indeed, I am making a cost based case to define the ordering of goals.
Education, or even the wasteful pretext of education, is the primary driver of cost. Therefore, it is clearly the focus of our spending.
Education is also the primary driver of the structure and form of our schools.
If the primary goal was just daycare, they would look very different.
California, for example, spent ~$24k/student in 2023. For that cost, you could pay for a home babysitter.
For that cost you could get a highly qualified elementary school teacher for every 3-4 kids. But instead you get 1 per 25-30. Schools would be structured very differently if the primary focus was education.
Imagine for a moment you are on half of the earners in a median-income household. You make $37,290 a year (the median household income in the US is $74,580). You have two kids: 7 and 10. The school they go to announced that, due to constant feedback from parents about the curricula and teacher performance, all education will need to be supervised by one of the child's primary guardians. This means that from 7:30-3:10, Monday-Friday, either you or your spouse must sit in an observation room and monitor your children through specially installed video surveillance. You are not allowed to work during this time. Your earnings will be $0.
There's an alternative, though. Instead of monitoring your child for the entire school day, the school will put your child in a room with all the other children of parents too busy to monitor them. They'll be given an iPad, Wi-Fi, access to a bathroom, and a reasonably nutritious meal. They will receive no formal education, but the staff will make sure they don't hurt themselves or anyone else. This will enable you to go to work. Your earnings will be $37,290 a year.
These are your only two options. The state requires you to choose one of them, or you'll go to jail. Also, if you choose the second option, your taxes won't go up next year.
Which would you choose? Which would people in your demographic choose?
There is an old Paul Graham essay to that effect (https://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html). It's a pretty good essay (though I think there's plenty of room to argue the finer points).
The tl;dr of how it applies is tht industrialization mandates finding something for young people to do (that isn't working) in a way that previous eras did not. In the era of, say, sail, you could be a 14-year-old sailor. A 14-year-old in a factory was decided (over years and lessons paid in blood) to be not only counter-productive, but dangerous for the 14-year-old. We outlawed it. But that does cause the demographic problem: you can't have these young folks roaming free getting into trouble, so what do you do with them?
The hypothesis that forms is high school is less about education and more about containment (making sure, essentially, that we babysit / warehouse our young adults until they ripen enough to be productive industrial-society members).
Well, that and brainwashing young minds into bowing down to the almighty dollar so they can subjugate themselves to The Man and become another grazing sheep, meat for the grinder of the Capitalism Uber Alles machine and the military-enslaverist complex!
I might be wrong though. I haven’t completed my Cynicism 101 course yet.
Schools in my area start elementary schools way too late for that, unless you're paying for pre-care and not using the bus.
They do this so high school—and nb many high schoolers can get themselves to school in the morning, so parents don't necessarily have to be home for that—can start earlier (no district has so many buses they can start all schools around the same time—they have to stagger them), to leave more time after school for sports practice and other extracurriculars (but really, for sports).
> If it started later, that time would be replaced with pre-school care/activities.
Even without ours being the way it is, that would still just mean more time in (typically paid) after-school care. The hours absolutely do not overlap well enough to provide convenience, only relief from part of the cost of childcare.
the article states the recommendation is for middle and high school students so maybe a little overlap. I assume most kids can be autonomous when they are in high school.
Went to high school in Louisiana. School doors opened at 6:40am, First bell at 7:20am. Was absolutely brutal. Worked fast food until 11pm most school nights. The chronic fatigue was miserable. On top of that the majority of my school was on free/reduced lunch (myself included). So you end up with an understaffed school full of exhausted, hungry teenagers that are still expected to give 100% to their schoolwork.
This would be illegal in Germany, where it is legally required that there are 11 hours of resting period between work days, or work and school. So students and workers can not work later than 9pm if they start at 8pm on the next day.
There were similar laws in my US state 30 years ago when they would have applied to me. I was limited in the hours, and needed a permit from my school to be employed at all.
7:35 start time here. Worked 4-7 most nights, age 15 on. Only saw briefly saw the (low-in-the-sky) sun during a ~30 minute gap between those things, 5 days a week, for months on end (Winter).
Took me years to get over a kind of situation-induced SAD that I'm pretty sure was caused by that. Like, 15 or so years.
More broadly, how many folks have nightmares about school for years into adulthood? Mine didn't stop until my mid-30s—they were practically the only nightmares I still had, and were frequent. And my experience in high school was relatively good!
High school's... kinda horrible, as practiced. Being cooped up in bad lighting during Winter with at least a few total assholes you can't escape and the school can't kick out unless they get really bad, and add hormones to the mix. Work expectations and judgement harsher and far less flexible than anything I've experienced in the "real world". No wonder people have nightmares. I'd drop a job with those conditions as soon as I could find another, if not sooner.
Is anyone here actually familiar with the science? If so, I would LOVE to hear more about it. A cursory look through links provided in other threads, it seems like the recommendation is based on the following facts: teenage sleep patterns shift to an avg of 11pm, and teenagers need at 8-10 hrs of sleep. Hence, 830am start. But that seems too simplistic to actually be how that conclusion was reached.
As others have said, my instinct is that if you gave high school me a later start time I would have simply stayed up later. My bedtime was almost never dictated by sleepiness, but rather things like homework, hanging out on AIM with friends, video games, etc.
Surely this is something that has been studied already. Is there a correlation between school start time and student bed times? Or a statistically significant difference in teenage bedtimes between standard and daylight savings time?
School has become a place where children stay so that their parents can work. While there is nothing inherently bad about trying to solve two problems with only one solution, for the specific case of the educational system, conceptualizing schools as places for taking care of kids instead of a place for learning is very problematic in so many aspects that it's hard to even start.
I routinely have to drag our eldest two kids out of bed at 6.25am for breakfast in order for them to leave the house in time to walk to our local station to catch their 7am train to get them into town to walk to school in time for their lessons.
What would happen if you just let them get up and get to school on their own? They might be late initially, but I bet they would figure it out and be on time after a short adjustment period.
I think their problem is not actually the part about having to drag the kids out of bed, but about the kids needing to be up before 6:30a in order to walk->train->walk to school on time.
It does eventually settle into some kind of rhythm, although the agreement that they should not take their devices into their bedrooms at bedtime definitely helps with them actually going to sleep at a sensible time.
I think the cynicism about the school system here is not warranted. You may face voter pressure in the 20s, but the school system does not exist to enable dual-income households. Putting aside that they weren't even common when public school first became mandatory, this article seems to be largely talking about high school. High schoolers do not need their parents to be home every minute they're also home, and if this were the case, schools would also not be able to let children leave until parents were home from work, which is not the case. I don't currently have any teenagers, but at least in the 90s when I was still in high school myself, it was not uncommon for kids to end the day and go home as early as 2 PM. California had and has no laws about miniumum babysitting age, but typically 12 was the recommendation I always heard, and where US states do have laws, the minimum age for a babysitter ranges from 6 to 14. There is no US state where you can't leave a high school age child home alone for an hour or two.
Whatever the actual reason for the schedule, it is not this, at least not as the only or original reason. There are plenty of other reasons. It may be difficult or dangerous to practice outdoor sports after school in some parts of the country if you end the day too late. There's some housekeeping that needs to be done by the school staff after the kids leave, whether that be literally cleaning the school or grading homework, and the staff probably doesn't want to be doing that super late into the evening. It's fairly sensible to intentionally be offset from office-induced rush hours, so the day may start earlier than a typical workday for that reason. Kids who work after school can more easily do so if they get off school before the typical start of a late work shift.
I'm not intending to personally endorse any of these as good enough reasons to continue the early day, and I will also gladly admit that I've been an early bird my entire life so the schedule worked out fine for me even as a child. For what it's worth, my elementary school actually had two different schedules for cohorts called "early birds" and "late birds." The early birds started the day at 7 AM and the late birds at 10 AM. This was in LA County in the mid 80s. I have no idea how widespread that ever was or why my middle school and high school didn't do the same thing.
I get downvoted every time but sometimes I wonder if the school bus was invented by General Motors to give people an early experience with buses that will make people think riding the bus is like putting your hand in a toilet.
I appreciate your perspective and am immediately reminded how miserable and uncomfortable everything about school busses was. Very cramped "pleather" seats, often broken windows, no real AC or heat, bus driver with questionable background talking to herself, bus driver forgetting stops.
I used to work on a roller coaster which used the exact same solution 30 seconds prior to boarding the next guest! I wish they would at least have given us a hose.
I drop my two elementary school kids off before the 7:20 bell every morning. We're too close for school bus service, but I checked the schedule and the first stops begin before 6:45.
Our son's high school has a late start option, so he starts at 9am and goes until 4pm, all three of us are happy with it! I'm shocked more people don't use it - it seems there is a slight undertone of it being the "lazy" option. We could care less, it works so much better for us!
As a note, my kids go to a state school here in Scotland, and school starts at 8:50.
As we both work, we pay for a school club that will look after the kids from 7:40, and after school until 18:00. Although thankfully our work is flexible enough that we generally only have them in there from 8:30-17:00.
The only reason public education has survived in the US is because industry needs a tax-payer funded babysitting service for their underpaid workers...
So the time of start is really determined by when people need their kids out of their hair so they can work, not because it's some optimal time for the kids...
For most school systems is because of limitations of available buses. They use the same set of buses for hs, ms, elem, and it’s generally discouraged to have the youngest kids waiting in the low light morning.
> Why do American high schools generally start so early? One large part of the answer: school buses. A lot of school districts re-use the same buses to pick up students from different schools: first the high schoolers, then the middle schoolers, and finally the elementary schoolers.
Not sure what the solution they are suggesting here. Triple the number of buses and bus drivers on the road? Let high schoolers sleep in so that grade schoolers can stand on dark streets at 7:30am? Have grade schoolers stay home until 10:30am stay at school until evening?
Also, having been a teenager [citation needed], I have strong doubts about the "the science" as presented. Had school started two hours later, my natural sleep cycle would probably have... also been delayed two hours.
One option would be to eliminate dedicated high school buses and instead ensure that there are sufficient public bus routes running at that time to fill the role (with free passes to all high school students). That would cut down on the total number of buses on the road since you aren't duplicating public and school buses, and decrease the number of shifts that the school buses have to run.
Another is to have high schools start last so they can watch their mid-school age siblings while parents go to work.
Your entire premise ("duplicating public and school buses") assumes a public bus infrastructure in the first place. That... is not in general a good assumption for any but the largest US cities.
In my experience the issue is with medium density cities and suburbs, which account for the bulk of the US population.
In the rural area where I grew up, and the few others I am familiar with, the school bus picked all students of all ages at once, because the routes were up to 25 miles one way and it was more efficient to drive them once rather than three times.
In my hometown, all schools started at the same time but where I live now, the lower grades start earlier than the upper grades. Reuse of the same buses might be part of the reason but at least here, the bigger issue is being able to have the same bus driver run multiple routes. The district probably could afford more buses but every year they have more difficulty in finding enough drivers.
This is how it works in my town. My elementary school kids start at 7:20, but I checked their future high school and they start at 8:15.
Logistically it makes sense-- high school kids can get themselves to school even if their parents have already left for work. Sucks for little kids though. My five year old has to be in bed by 7:00pm and even then waking him up is a chore. He sleeps until 8:00 or 8:30 if left undisturbed on weekends.
I would have thought school starts before 8:30 because most parents have a workday starting at 9. And, starting earlier may avoid that rush-hour traffic for the busses or parents dropping kids.
I feel like I have been hearing about this research for years, yet nothing has changed. Are there any districts which have meaningfully pushed back star times?
I was overscheduled in high school and constantly sleep deprived from doing too much. However, shifting the school day forward 1 hour or 2 would not have helped me since it would have just shifted my whole day forward 1-2 hours, as I was completely 'booked' with sports/homework. I think another problem is that a lot of people plan for a certain amount of sleep, but then stay up late due to devices, which is a new, modern problem that I think is actually very severe given the addictiveness of apps. Judging other commenters here, I am pessimistic about people's ability to self-delude themselves into thinking they or their kids don't have a screen problem, and just need the schedule to be shifted forward.
tl;dr The infographic misrepresents its own data source. The following is how I proved this to myself in roughly stream-of-consciousness how I followed what was happening.
I had questions about how this is averaged... I know that in Seattle schools start after 8:50am. But it has Washington as a dark orange.
But given that Washington's 2 most populous urban areas (Encompassing Spokane, Seattle, and Tacoma) both start their schools after 8:40am, I'm wonder how this has Washington as averaging 7:56am to 8:05am.
Additionally, the more I check the counties in Washington, the more I doubt that this is correct. School start times seem to be consistently after 8:30am, which would align with what I know about the state.
Changing this would require parents en masse caring about their own children's well being more than the convenience of the pseudo-daycare services a school provides.
It was proven definitively that sending children back to school during covid was putting theirs and others’ lives at risk, yet there wasn’t a big outcry about it, quite the opposite even. It’s easy to draw conclusions as to why - school provides free day care to most parents. Valuable day care. It’s not a remotely controversial statement. It’s why you’re never going to win this battle on the merit of the science or the kids well being. I guarantee you if they proved sending kids to school at 9am daily would prevent a majority of childhood illness there’d still be a big push against it. It’s come up many times over the last few decades.
> It’s easy to draw conclusions as to why - school provides free day care to most parents
That's one conclusion but not the only one. Another is that COVID was never shown to be a severe risks to children (symptoms were generally mild, in great majority of cases) and being out of school would stunt their education and impact their friend relationships, mental health, and more. Parents who pushed for their kids to stay in school (whether one agrees with the argument) did so out of concern for their well-being.
The risk was not zero, and kids for a long time were not even able to get the vaccine. Additionally, they could spread to faculty or other family members, and many young kids have immune issues. This isn’t even mentioning long covid, which is a real risk, and the elevated risk of stuff like stroke in fairly young people.
In other words, you’re just parroting the propaganda of that time that was fairly provably wrong. Maybe some parents thought it was actually “better” for their kids, but they were still accepting some risk over convenience even if they believed the lie.
it should be a legal right to accommodate working times and locations so that parents can take care of their kids. there need to be benefits for companies hiring parents so that they are not favoring childless employees.
Two things that can help anyone here if they actually try them instead of whining:
1) The reason melatonin does not build up in kids anymore is because the lights are on, and the screens are on. Those actually prevent melatonin build up in the brain.
Turn off the lights in the house, and get the screens dimmed to nearly the lowest level.
2) Wake up early on purpose. Your body will SET your go to bed time based on your wake up time. Even if you miss some sleep because of it, waking up at 6 (and staying up all day) will almost certainly make you wake up at 6 the next day and cause your body to get tired when it is supposed to.
But, you're all right, just keep whining about this. Maybe if whining keeps wining we'll all have school at 8pm at night because people keep shifting things for the next 100 years. But don't worry, because education is racist, school will only last 15 minutes.
This dissection is, on its own, full of inaccuracies.
It may be true that the book is based on some weak studies but anyone can cherry pick a few individual sentences out of their context and from that write an essay about how wrong someone is (essentially the first 4 points that don't relate to a data error are summed up this way).
In fact, even some of the studies that person is referencing don't agree with the theses presented.
As one real basic example: The author of that blog is disingenous when they take the sentence:
> the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life span
Within context it's clear the author is speaking about specifically getting too little sleep as short sleep. In that context, shorter doesn't mean what is implied by the blog author's response (less in hours).
Ironically, you're cherry picking from the cherry picking.
It's not just weak studies. Guzey provides multiple examples of demonstrably false statements in the book. There is also evidence of flagrant data manipulation. For example, rather than reproducing a chart from a study, Walker presents a modified chart with the data removed that contradicts the claim he wants to make. This calls into question the quality of the entire book and Walker's integrity as a researcher.
At the same time, I think Guzey's analysis is often brought up in order to dismiss the core claim of the book, which is that most people should be getting more sleep. I'm willing to believe that in fact people should be getting more sleep, and I'm also willing to believe that 90% or more of the scientific research referenced by the book is valid. It's just unfortunate that the book seems to be sloppily (and borderline fraudulently) written and researched.
No, I provided one example, made it clear it's one example, and did not remove the surrounding context (in fact, providing more of it, which the author of that blog fails to do). Those are very different things.
> It's not just weak studies. Guzey provides multiple examples of demonstrably false statements in the book. There is also flagrant data manipulation. For example, rather than reproducing a chart from a study, Walker presents a modified chart with the data removed that contradicts the claim he wants to make. This calls into question the quality of the entire book and Walker's integrity as a researcher.
I did not see any examples of actual research being misrepresented. Where does this happen?
Throughout the post, Guzey is effectively saying: "Walker's book says X but a study says Y" without mentioning the study was released after the book, sometimes years. This is literally the first study linked to that suggests there's no correlation between sleep length and longevity (2018 meta analysis, book released 2017), which is a point the author isn't making in that first section, when viewed in context. If the argument is it's poor communication on Walker's part in the book, sure, I'll agree to that. That's not what Guzey is arguing though; rather he's arguing a statement that doesn't seem to be made. To put it plainly, these two statements are very different:
- If you do not get enough sleep, there is a correlation to worse health effects, worse health outcomes, and less lifespan
vs
- If you don't sleep a minimum number of hours, you will have a shorter lifespan
Walker appears (in context) to suggest the former, while Guzey is arguing against the latter. One of the first problems with any study (let alone meta-analysis) in sleep has to contend with is the fact that the individual data points may require a different number of hours of sleep to be properly rested, and that sleep quality can vary greatly. Simply counting the hours is insufficient.
Really, maybe there's a bigger discussion to be had around the reproducibility crisis as a whole and what it means for people who author books. The problem with books and subjects like this is that they can be an in-time snapshot of knowledge, which are often incorrect when further reviewed (see: Power posing and related). Maybe ethically social scientists should be barred from publishing.
The manipulated graph is shown in Guzey's section 19, originally from a paper called "Chronic Lack of Sleep is Associated With Increased Sports Injuries in Adolescent Athletes". Walker left out the column which showed fewer injuries in the group with 5 hours of sleep than 6 hours of sleep.
Beyond that, there are plenty of examples of Walker making strong claims without citing sources. For example, there is no citation for the claim that sleeping less than 6 hours per night doubles risk of cancer, the existence of fatal insomnia (a neurodegenerative disease) doesn't prove that lack of sleep will kill somebody, the WHO never declared a sleep loss epidemic, etc.
The graph in s.19 from the blog (which, again, you could have provided direct links) is manipulated in that it shows that 5 hours of sleep does indeed receive fewer injuries. However, looking at the study[1] and its actual graph though, Guzey is misrepresenting things quite a bit via omission. Here's what the study itself notes is their sample size:
> Of the 112 athletes studied, 64 athletes (57%) sustained a total of 205 injuries; 48 athletes (43%) were not injured. Of those who were injured, 42 athletes sustained >1 injury (38%). Table 1 includes a summary of the injuries by anatomic location.
And then:
> Sixty-five percent of athletes (56/86) who reported sleeping <8 hours per night were injured, compared with 31% of athletes (8/26) who reported sleeping ≥8 hours per night. Figure 1 shows the likelihood of injury over the 21-month period of reporting, based on hours of sleep per night.
And then the graph is provided which shows the likelihood of injury very strongly correlates to lack of sleep. With a sample size of 86, that 15% difference in the <5hrs group is basically 1 person. We don't know because we don't have the study's raw data that I can find (quickly, at any rate) but 3/5 people reporting < 5 hrs of sleep seems plausible, given that the < 5 hrs group is exactly 60% and given the other percentages for other groups present on the graph.
You can choose to believe dropping the < 5 hrs group is malicious manipulation I suppose but we're probably talking about a sample size of 5/112 for that particular data point. Would it have been better to show the full chart with the raw numbers of participants? Absolutely.
Ironically, Guzey then goes on to indicate the following:
> As an aside, that 9 hours of sleep column is based on exactly 1 child being injured out of 6 children who reported sleeping for 9 hours.
Whenever I see someone being this disingenuous (mentioning the detailed numbers when advantageous, leaving it out when disadvantageous) it makes me question their motives.
Absent knowing the real raw data, I have to consider that Walker's omission on the graph is still in line with the findings of the referenced study:
> In conclusion, lack of sleep and increasing grade in school appear to be associated with increased injury risk in an adolescent athletic population. Encouraging young athletes to get optimal amounts of sleep may help protect them against athletic injuries
Guzey's omission seeks to undermine this point. Perhaps criticism should be levelled at the study itself if that's the goal. Certainly sample size is probably an important factor, or other limitations identified by the study's authors, such as:
> A limitation of this study was that it was conducted at a single academically demanding, urban, private, combined middle school/high school, and the findings may not be generalizable to other populations in different geographic, socioeconomic, and educational settings. Further, the data are based on the self-reported survey responses of adolescents. Another possible limitation is that this study examines the adolescents’ reported chronic sleep deprivation. Acute sleep deprivation, such as getting minimal sleep on a more limited basis, may also put the athlete at increased risk of injury but would not have been captured by this survey as the average amount of sleep might be sufficient. In addition, the athletes were not asked about their dietary intake or specific medications, which may have an effect on their sleep or injury risk. We also did not account for napping in this population as a source of additional sleep. Several authors have shown that daytime napping can improve performance of both athletic and cognitive tasks.
Neither kind of omission are good approaches to presenting science and IMO raw numbers should be as available as possible for all of this kind of data.
Thanks for the link. I read the book with the popular-science-ness of it in mind and was glad to have done so. It was produced right in the middle of the replication crisis... which isn't a particularly good look. I agree there are _a lot_ of ridiculous claims that are tenuous at best in the book. He also repeats himself a lot in a quite annoying way.
I still think the book has merit as an accessible way for people to learn more about sleep.
You sent me down a rabbit hole on this person's blog. I found their 2022 reflections very interesting and tangentially relevant (does not dismiss the point made about Why We Sleep, I just found it interesting.)
Just because you're going to bed earlier doesn't mean you're going to sleep earlier.
When I was a teen, I didn't get tired until nearly midnight.
Even when I was getting up for school at 6 AM. My parents would send me to bed some time between 9 and 10, and I'd toss and turn wide awake for 2 hours. Even with sleep deprivation stacking up over the week as I was only getting 6 hours of sleep, I still couldn't get to sleep as I was simply not tired.
A lot of studies have shown it's common. Maybe not quite to the level I had, but teens in general have circadian rhythms that are shifted later.
The problem of course is that they make high school start earlier than middle school despite the tendency to want to rise and sleep later so that high school kids can arrive home before their possible younger elementary school siblings and watch them.
The article does briefly mention bed time, though I'm not sure how scientifically supported the claim is:
>Early school starts are not the only cause of teenage drowsiness, but they are a crucial factor—especially because natural sleep cycles make it difficult for post-puberty teenagers to fall asleep before 11 p.m.
…even if it were the case that schoolchildren's sleep cycles were dictated by the sun (which several comments in this section indicate isn't the case, and contain references which I suppose one could follow) … my school, for example, started at 7:50am. That meant waking up well before sunrise during some parts of the year (~70 minutes before sunrise, in the darkest portion¹). I remember always being very tired for first period … all the more amazing that I passed AP Physics, which I had first period.
¹(sunrise ~7:11a in the winter, we'd wake up at 6a. ~40m for breakfast/morning routine, ~1h for transit, and a little bit of wiggle, since you'd want to be there by ~7:40a at the latest.)
(… and there are routinely threads on HN where people advocate for moving that wakeup to ~5a standard by futzing with DST.)
Sleep Science is ongoing and very much an active area of research. Sleep can be informed by biology, diet, lighting, comfort, heat... among a vast host of other factors. Ask yourself this -- why do you get tired? ("Because I'm sleepy" -- why?)
The answer is (surprisingly to most) complicated and illusive.
Your entire body runs on an internal clock, down to portions of your immune system that switch over to work differently at night.
Laying down in bed at 9pm doesn't guarantee a person falls asleep right away. For some people, yes, their natural cycle syncs up with an ideal work/life sleep schedule, or their bodies are just better at adapting.
This implies that if you simply move time zones sufficiently then your natural cycle would match up with your work/life sleep schedule. Does that actually happen? If not, what other frame of reference is your natural cycle syncing up with?
Light. Especially sunlight, the exact effects of artificial light are not completely clear (or rather, it seems to have an effect, but it's not completely obvious which parts and how: this is part of the theory of why avoiding blue light in the evening can help with sleep but it's not actually been demonstrated that it works as an intervention).
People's daily clock is naturally (i.e if kept in a dim light constantly) slightly longer than a day (exactly how long varies by a few hours), but it becomes synchronised to changes in light level (there are actually specific light receptors in your eyes that do this, independent of vision). Exactly what 'phase' this clock has compared to the change in light levels varies from person to person, and throughout their life. There's a decent body of evidence that teenagers naturally shift towards being more delayed as they go through puberty. There are even disorders where it can become very far out of whack: people who will want to sleep very early or very late, or in the most extreme case (usually people who are totally blind in a way that also disrupts these specialised receptors, but also some people who have functioning sight), where the synchronisation doesn't work at all and their natural sleep cycle will drift freely with respect to the day-night cycle.
A lot of biological processes are kicked off by light exposure, and by "number of hours of light exposure".
For example, the change in an animal's coat type (summer vs winter) is triggered by the number of hours of sun they are exposed to. Once the days get shorter, the summer coat falls out and the winter coat starts growing in.
Presumably that means someplace your body has the equivalent of an accumulator running measuring hours of sun exposure. :-D (This is also why people deprived of light, or exposed to non-stop light, quickly find a lot of their body's rhymes get way out of wack.)
Anyway AFAIK that system is part of how we adjust, eventually, to changes in time zone.
Because the circadian rhythm of a human body can vary drastically from person to person, that's why some people are more naturally night owls, or have cycles closer to 23/25 hours than 24. You can try and make a teenager go to bed at 10pm, but if they're unable to sleep for an hour then it doesn't matter 'when' you go to bed.
This gets even more important for kids and teenagers because your chronotype can shift drastically as you transition towards young adulthood until it settles into a certain rhythm.
I have 2 children, school starts at 845 and it's within a 15 minutes walk. We get to sleep until 745,which is great.
Our bedtime is always the same 8 in bed, about 830 asleep and for the adults between 1030 and 11 (I need 9 hours).
As you can see pretty consistent sleep schedule.
My sleep is somewhat disturbed, as in I wake up a minute 2-3 times per night. Not alwaya, but frequent.
Last time with new year (no alcohol), I went to sleep at 3 am, and I forgot how good is it. I'm a former night owl, at 3 am ny body feels tired, it takes zero effort to sleep, I closed my eyes and I passed out, deep sleep for 6 hours, the use washroom and another 2 hours of sleep.
It was incredible. Society doesn't allow that, but the difference between "have to go to bed" and "go to bed when ready" is huge
You can at least attempt to aim towards the average and allow for flexibility in it where reasonable, as opposed to viewing the incompatibilty as some moral failing on the part of people who's rhythm does not match up.
We don't all fall asleep simply because we're in bed; some of us, at some stages of our lives, will toss and turn and fidget, waiting for tiredness to arrive - potentially for hours! - if we go to bed earlier than our body clocks demand.
depending on which physician you ask, it can actually be worse to just lie in bed for hours and hours without sleeping.
it's definitely bad to put yourself in a situation where you must go to sleep at X PM and wake up at Y AM, and then you're repeatedly failing to fall asleep so now you rely on things like sleeping pills, or you're perpetually exhausted and underperforming at tasks like classes or work and the stress creates a feedback loop of even worse sleep.
it certainly wasn't good for me when i was younger!
sunlight and circadian rhythm and the relationship between the two are pretty well established, 'about 11pm' is simply a useful way to communicate the practical impact of that to a broad audience.
> Early school starts are not the only cause of teenage drowsiness, but they are a crucial factor—especially because natural sleep cycles make it difficult for post-puberty teenagers to fall asleep before 11 p.m.
> natural sleep cycles make it difficult for post-puberty teenagers to fall asleep before 11 p.m
(We have one post-puberty teenager and two other kids) ... our experience is that this does depend on whether you let your kids keep their phones and tablets in their bedrooms.
As many adults will confirm, going to sleep sure is easier without distractions.
It's incredible how so many people just fail so hard to consider that other people may not share their exact same experiences.
Yes, you can probably distract someone into not sleeping who would be sleeping well otherwise. Most people however will struggle with sleeping at unnatural hours regardless of any distractions, and may use their phones and tablets in their bedrooms in hopes to help themselves fall asleep earlier.
Source: I was a teen once in an era without smartphones. Turns out lights out at 10pm didn't help me sleep at all, I just tossed and turned for a few hours until my body said it was time to sleep.
I'm not a parent per se, but I routinely see my own childhood self in my nibling¹. It makes me always say a silent "I'm sorry, Mom" for all the same grief I caused her when I was a child.
I figure this is why parents (and moms, in particular, since historically they've been the one to rear children) are so revered: they put up with all that crap, and now we all feel guilty for it.
and on the other side of this, adding an hour or two will not solve the problem if kids then stay up an additional hour or two on their apps, which will certainly happen. People are being incredibly dishonest with themselves on this issue.
I'm starting to dislike the phrase "the science", since I usually hear it used as a conversational bludgeon. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended 8:30 AM as a minimum start time, that's not the same as "the science" definitely saying one thing or another. I don't have kids, and don't really care when schools start, so this is less a comment about that as it is about how annoying "the science" is as a phrase, how it's not a good description of how science works, and how it's usually misapplied to end conversations in favor of your prior opinion.