The tragic truth when I’ve worked at schools that start that early is that it was done so that the kids could work/take care of siblings. Even then many kids would leave school early because they would be asked to come into work. It sucked, I had kids that would sleep through my classes because they had worked extremely late.
Most of the shitty things Public schools do are because we have no money, are trying to feed/clothes/protect kids who have literally no one else. The school I worked at had 100% free breakfast and lunch, because the population was so transient/not in the country legally that it wasn’t realistic to expect them to fill out the forms to get free lunch.
The system is such a brutal grind that is also designed to extract as much as possible from optimistic, well meaning folks. There is no money, so most good things come from teachers spending their own money, staying well after contract hours, etc, etc. The burnout rate is insane, my school has already had multiple people leave mid year (and this has happened every where I’ve worked). Alcoholism is rampant among teachers. The stress caused me to develop epilepsy - and I’m not the only person I know this has happened to.
Republicans have been running a war on education for years now, and this is the result. We are forced to do things that we know are bad and ineffective (like the shitty hours, or allowing physically violent students to stay in classroom because we aren’t allowed to suspend them, or teaching to the test) because we have no resources and are expected to be the entire social safety net.
Scientists: humans have evolved to go to sleep later in the evening and wake up later in the morning during their teenage years. It’s hard to fall asleep earlier and even if they do the quality of their sleep will be less.
Morons commenting on this post: just go to sleep earlier
What if (hear me out) the high school kids can go to bed earlier if they’re sleep deprived? Waking up at a certain time is really only half the equation. The school isn’t making you stay up and get up early.
Going to bed earlier isn’t an effective solution for many kids. Around 1 in 6 adolescents find it difficult to fall asleep before 11:00 PM.
In adolescence, up to 16% of teenagers experience a sleep phase delay. Due to this circadian shift , their melatonin levels don’t begin to rise until later in the evening. As a result, they naturally feel more alert at night, making it harder for them to fall asleep before 11:00 p.m.
Well considering that public schools (at least in the US) are glorified daycares in place so both parents can go work, the obvious solution is to globally push back the concept of “morning” to mean ‘a few hours after the sun rises’.
Luckily, my state understood this and our school hours were like 8-8:30am to 3pm. Still kinda early, but way less of a kick in the teeth as states that make their kids come in at 7am and out at 2pm.
The USA Public School System notoriously doesn’t care about science or education in general. They’ve been isolated groups of independent small governments held to no national standard since their inception. They usually just prepare kids to blend in with their local community: manerisms, speech patterns, bare minimum math and reading skills.
Revenge Bedtime Procrastination! Why would I go to sleep early, giving up time that I enjoy (after school) to more fully experience and function during time I don’t enjoy (during school)?
I seriously do not understand going the fuck to bed earlier. Just go to bed earlier. Your body adapts over time. Sure schools could move the start time, but if not, just start the sleep sooner.
Working off of memory so take this with a good amount of salt. If I recall correctly, studies have found that teenagers generally don’t go to bed later to match if school starts later, but the same applies the other way too. It may be that they technically could get that sleep by going to bed earlier, but as a society that is not a viable proposal to fix the problems that arise from their lack of sleep.
Also just to make sure I’m not misunderstood, I don’t dispute that individuals can get used to a new sleep schedule or will go to bed earlier if they have to get up earlier, just that it isn’t as easy as waking two hours earlier, means go to sleep two hours earlier for teenagers especially.
Lots of the United States is quite rural, so a bus service would never be able to pick up all of those kids. Only school buses can since the school bus routes are specifically designed to pick the kids up where they are.
If they don’t have a regular bus system that works then that’s what they need to start working on first. I’m convinced that it can be made to work if they are solution oriented instead of only looking for reasons why it won’t work and stopping there.
Where I live, buses have dynamic routes. You go on an app to book a journey, then you get a time and place to be where the bus will pick you up (plus a drop-off point). It works for school kids as well as anyone else.
Being solution-based still isn’t going to help kids who live miles from the nearest bus stop catch a regular bus. A complete reorganization of our towns and cities to have bus access for anyone might be nice, but then there’s the parents who really wouldn’t want their kids going on a public bus.
Hiring takes time. It also required a lot more money than was budgeted because you need people who don’t have a 9-5. And lastly, not everyone lives in the city where there are buses.
Unfortunately I have to live in the real world where towns aren’t designed well. Besides, the average yard in my neighborhood is 3.5 acres so general purpose public transportation wouldn’t work either.
Change happens iteratively. The first step is to acknowledge the problem and adjust how future development is planned. Start with the town center and move outward from there. Giving up fixes nothing.
100% agree please don’t attribute this person’s comments with the urbanist movement.
Urbanists want cities & towns to be better places to live for everyone, we want to improve the finances of towns and people, we want to improve the health & quality of life of the average person. Urbanists do not hate anyone’s way of life or want to force them to live differently.
90% of north Americans live in towns or cities. And no you don’t need a large population to support public transportation, here are hundreds of examples in Europe.
Except it’s too late for that. The cities are already built. Fixing it would require tearing down entire cities and building new ones. Sure, you could do it one chunk of the city at a time, but doing just one city would take decades and exorbitant amounts of money.
The Netherlands did it in the 70s and plenty of cities are progressively doing it. All you’re saying is, “we fucked our cities up, guess the only way forward is to double down.”
A small town is 10,000-50,000 people. Average home price is $300k. There are around 2,000 towns of 10,000-50,000. That’s $18,000,000,000,000 to build some of the small towns in the US to be public transportation friendly. Who gets dragged out of their homes to make room for rebuilding?
And you’ll still have to problem that many people don’t want to live in crowded towns. Most people that like crowded cities are already living there.
Also a tertiary function of schools is to act publically funded daycare. Moving the handoff later in the morning means that parents would also need to start work later, or take on fewer hours.
Not saying that wouldn’t be a good thing, but there are knock-on effects that go beyond the clout of a school to tackle.
Middle and high schoolers sure, but elementary schoolers, especially kindergarten and first grade? I know plenty of parents who wouldn’t let their kid walk down the street to school at that age.
Still, if there’s one thing America sucks at, it’s having people do healthy things. I’m very grateful I WFH, for now, and don’t have to wake up until 10AM.
I’ll have to take your word on it. Maybe I’ll bring it up next time a canvasser comes around, if I think of it. So many causes to keep track of these days… 😞
We lived in a city where high schoolers take public transit and that worked well for them, but the district could never hire enough drivers for the elementary and middle schools. Even with the drivers they had, they had to stagger school start and end times so that buses could do multiple routes. Some schools started at 7 and others at 9. Then the problem you highlight comes up, that there are only a few hours between shifts, so it was harder for drivers to have a second job. Many drove Uber between.
lol … I had a nephew like that … at around the age of 12 to 15 a few years ago … I’d be visiting their family, then around 10, he’d yawn, make a big show and say he’s going to bed.
What the parents just ignored was that he was lying in bed with his ipad and phone until early, early in the morning watching movies, youtube or tv all night long and getting absolutely no sleep … wake up like a drunken sailor every morning and not pay attention at school.
The parents didn’t care because the kid wasn’t bothering them and he stayed quiet in his room … he could live their by himself on the wifi connection for all they cared. … high speed internet is a great baby sitter.
Does nobody who says this remember their days in highschool?
Let’s say a bedtime of 9
School gets out at 3
Allot about 2 hours for homework, it’s now 5
Allot an hour for dinner, it’s 6
Congratulations! A kid has a whopping 3 hours of free time per weekday to enjoy the last few years of childhood. These are even relatively conservative numbers, HW could easily stretch into 3-4+ hours with an AP class or a particularly HW heavy teacher leaving a whole hour of free time! How wonderful.
Oops wait, a strict parent(s) now adds an additional hour for household chores, ah well so much for free time.
The whole point is that they shouldn’t have to make that choice…
I also made that choice, so I know exactly how unhealthy it is to either 1) not have any time in the day to decompress and mentally prepare myself for the next day or 2) Revenge stay up so that I can do 1 but only get 5-6 hours of sleep.
And I’m saying, with how dense an average teenager’s schedule is, going to sleep earlier results in them having no free time in their lives. It’s just sleep, school, homework, sleep, school, homework.
That’s no life. I know, I lived through it. What you’re suggesting is an illusion of choice. Not to mention that as a teenager I could get in bed at 9 and just stare at the wall until 3am. One does not simply “go to bed” when your brain is simmering in hormones.
It sucks, but as things are those are the options for them. Either less sleep and more free time or cutting back on free time.
One does not simply “go to bed” when your brain is simmering in hormones.
Worked for us during camp. Took a while to get to the rhythm but worked. Dunno if it’s an actual thing that teenagers have to sleep on a schedule where they have to stay up late. If so, sucks, then they got no choice.
People keep thinking everything said online is an argument. I’m just telling you those are their options. It’s tough titties for them since they really can’t affect when their school starts.
Don’t be angry at me that that’s how it is. I didn’t make it so.
them since they really can’t affect when their school starts.
Don’t be angry at me that that’s how it is. I didn’t make it so.
Well duh. As adults, authority figures and parents that’s our job to push for these things and get it done for them. Just because we had to suffer through it doesn’t mean the status quo should remain the same. That’s the same BS “pull up the ladder behind me” attitude that’s affecting so many other things.
It sucks, but as things are those are the options for them. Either less sleep and more free time or cutting back on free time.
One does not simply “go to bed” when your brain is simmering in hormones.
Worked for us during camp. Took a while to get to the rhythm but worked. Dunno if it’s an actual thing that teenagers have to sleep on a schedule where they have to stay up late. If so, sucks, then they got no choice.
It sucks, but as things are those are the options for them. Either less sleep and more free time or cutting back on free time.
One does not simply “go to bed” when your brain is simmering in hormones.
Worked for us during camp. Took a while to get to the rhythm but worked. Dunno if it’s an actual thing that teenagers have to sleep on a schedule where they have to stay up late. If so, sucks, then they got no choice.
the whole damn point is that teenagers can’t just choose to go to sleep earlier, all that would result in is them laying wide awake in bed and missing out on time to socialize.
They should have thought of that before becoming parents, then. It’s not the kid’s fault the parents can’t think ahead or take responsibility for their stupid actions. School shouldn’t be a babysitter for John and Jane Doe.
Schools act also as daycare, not their primary function but that’s the norm all over the world not sure why you think they shouldn’t or why this implies a lack of responsibility
Our school started at 8:30 for a whole year, it sucked ass. Since it was high school, the classes going until 4:30 was impossible to manage with a job, I’d end up getting home around 12:00 just to get a normal shift in. Extracurriculars lasted until 6:00! No time to do homework. Waking up early is a part of life, considering we can’t just lengthen the day.
That’s like 1.5 hours longer than the school day here what the heck are yall in school for 8 hours straight for. If we started at 9 we’d be out at 3:30.
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