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It is simply another perspective. Every teen is not struggling to get to school early. Just as with adults, some people are morning people and some are not. There are kids who would struggle to maintain focus in the afternoon. It seems to me the issue is amount of sleep not when that sleep occurs.
I was not aware that differing thoughts were unwelcome.
Perhaps your son is different. I was in high school, and still am, a morning person. But he and I are just two data points. Neither he nor I necessarily change the balance.
While it may seem to you that the issue is amount of sleep, what some of the research suggests is that teen-age individuals struggle with when, as well. You can argue that the data is invalid, or insufficient to support the assertion, but you can't fight data with feelings.
Perhaps your son is different. I was in high school, and still am, a morning person. But he and I are just two data points. Neither he nor I necessarily change the balance.
While it may seem to you that the issue is amount of sleep, what some of the research suggests is that teen-age individuals struggle with when, as well. You can argue that the data is invalid, or insufficient to support the assertion, but you can't fight data with feelings.
It doesn't matter what time you go to bed if you can't fall asleep. That's my problem in the winter when I don't see sunlight. My brain doesn't stop when the clock says it's time for bed.
Someone left me rep telling me to go to bed earlier. Obviously, they've never had a problem falling asleep. Going to bed and going to sleep are two entirely different things. There is also the fact that sleep quality is different at different times. Just ask anyone working the midnight shift. They'll tell you they're tired during the night even if they get enough sleep. I worked midnights for about a year and never adjusted. I did get to the point where I felt awake until about 4:00 AM but then I was sleepy tired even if I had plenty of sleep. I found that sleeping during the day time is not like sleeping at night.
We don't expect everyone to mine coal, but we do expect everyone to be schooled. 96% of students, a rapidly shrinking yet still vast majority, go to some kind of a school. How many adults mine coal in a coal mine? They don't constitute a majority even in coal country, and in most places no one mines coal.
There is extremely strong scientific evidence that nature (including natural light) and green space are good for people, and even just being able to look at green space and nature is quite beneficial to health, performance, and learning. People have always liked windows and views, from the intuitive sense that windowless rooms were bad to live in to coveting window seats on plane and bus rides, so whoever designed your school was either a nut or just didn't care. In my experience architecture is one of the largest components of the hidden curriculum and is certainly the least studied.
That's what safe rooms and basements are for, but of course that would require whoever designs these schools to care about what they're doing and not cut corners. It would also cost more, although I can't imagine that it would be more than a small fraction of the extra money put into administrative bloat over the past 40 years. The primary goal in this area should be enabling students to learn well and be comfortable to the greatest extent possible, using or trying any means conceivable within long-term funding limits. The typical American school seems to have architecture and furnishings one would design to promote discomfort, poor health, and poor learning, fit more for prisoners than students.
Indeed. What many don't seem to realize is that plenty of workers do not rise at 6:00 or 7:00 to go to work. Banks traditionally opened at 10:00, malls even now rarely open before 9:00, and many people work evening shifts where they don't even show up until well after lunch. Night owls and evening people fill many niches that early birds would do poorly in, and vice versa; those in the labor market understand this for a population that needs accomodation less than the school-aged do. Indeed they may accomodate it too well, considering that nearly every major social activity or gathering in our society takes place in afternoon or evening, well past the time early birds have had it. Even if early birds were in control they would schedule gatherings and activities at 8:00 or 9:00, not 6:00 or 7:00; 6:00 and 7:00 is when they'd like to start their day and do things that need to be done at home.
People went to bed early primarily because they had two sleeps in earlier times; they went to bed around sunset, they woke up in the middle of the night for an hour or two to read or do some other things, went back to bed, and woke up around sunrise. People in a more natural environment revert to that schedule within a few months, suggesting that it is the default sleep pattern for most humans. They probably spent about as much time up at night as a non-sleep-deprived person does today, but they didn't do it before they went to bed.
When the sun sets at 18:00 or 19:00 sunrise occurs long before 10:00. Days are (supposed to be) centered on noon, so an eight hour day by the sun should be 8:00-16:00, not 10:00-18:00 (that's centered on 2 PM!). Of course it's usually not quite that simple. The edges of standard meridian-based time zones have noon as early as 11:30 or as late as 12:30 - 12:00 is close enough to that, but daylight saving time shifts noon an hour later, making 12:30-13:30 the center of daylight hours. On top of that most time zones spill over their western boundaries producing even later noontimes at the western edges. What all this means is that scheduling days by the sun will vary by location. Noon at Terre Haute is almost as late as 2 PM most of the year, whereas in eastern Maine in winter noon occurs at 11:30 AM. So eastern Maine should work from 7:30 to 3:30 and Terre Haute should do as you suggest and work from 10:00 to 6:00.
It makes President Harding's proposal to shift work hours an hour earlier in the summer in lieu of DST seem downright simple . At any rate 12:00 for standard time and 13:00 for daylight time is a good enough approximation in most places.
I am older than a lot of people on this forum (65) and I don't remember banks opening at 10:00 AM. I do remember jokes about "banker's hours" though. Most people never had such a deal. Social activities occur in the evening b/c people are at work during the day!
I had never heard the blue until this thread. I have never known anyone who ever lived like that. Please provide some documentation before repeating this.
I had never heard the blue until this thread. I have never known anyone who ever lived like that. Please provide some documentation before repeating this.
Neither have I, Kat. I'd like a definition of what "earlier times" means. Getting up in the middle of the night to read would suggest electricity. Even Abe Lincoln wasn't getting out of bed in the middle of the night to build a fire to read by. Especially in the winter.
Last edited by DewDropInn; 09-03-2014 at 07:05 PM..
^^Exactly! And none of this has anything to do with school start times. I personally think an 8 AM start time is early enough. I want to make that clear. I just don't buy some of these odd arguments.
Neither have I, Kat. I'd like a definition of what "earlier times" means. Getting up in the middle of the night to read would suggest electricity. Even Abe Lincoln wasn't getting out of bed in the middle of the night to build a fire to read by. Especially in the winter.
Maybe they were getting frisky in the middle of the night? It's been known to happen.
Perhaps your son is different. I was in high school, and still am, a morning person. But he and I are just two data points. Neither he nor I necessarily change the balance.
While it may seem to you that the issue is amount of sleep, what some of the research suggests is that teen-age individuals struggle with when, as well. You can argue that the data is invalid, or insufficient to support the assertion, but you can't fight data with feelings.
Yup. Two counter examples do not disprove the rule. MOST high school students are not morning people. Rules like school starting times should reflect what is best for MOST students not the outliers.
I had heard that before but we're talking Waaaaay back - Your Ancestors Didn
Quote:
The existence of our sleeping twice per night was first uncovered by Roger Ekirch, professor of History at Virginia Tech.
His research found that we didn’t always sleep in one eight hour chunk. We used to sleep in two shorter periods, over a longer range of night. This range was about 12 hours long, and began with a sleep of three to four hours, wakefulness of two to three hours, then sleep again until morning.
I had heard that before but we're talking Waaaaay back - Your Ancestors Didn
I happened into this information a few years ago when I experienced a gradual transition to bimodal sleep. My pattern is typically 9:00-2:00 (sleep), 2:00-3:00 (awake), 3:00-5:15 (sleep). At one time, it bothered me a great deal, but now it feels normal.
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. At any rate 12:00 for standard time and 13:00 for daylight time is a good enough approximation in most places.
Yup. Two counter examples do not disprove the rule. MOST high school students are not morning people. Rules like school starting times should reflect what is best for MOST students not the outliers.
