5 ms·

While some studies have indicated that adolecents would benefit from starting classes later in the day, I don't believe it's the silver bullet that you believe

While some studies have indicated that adolecents would benefit from starting classes later in the day, I don't believe it's the silver bullet that you believe it is. I'm 27, and I quoted that when I was in High School. But the truth is, I seldom was wound-down and in bed by 9 or 10 PM. I was irresponsible with my bed time. All my friends were the same. I think you would be surprised at how much of the "misery" you and your peers are self-imposing. Do your homework when you get home, skip the Daily Show, shut off the computer by 9PM, and in bed by 10. I understand you'll think "easier said than done" but if you're truly miserable, take some responsibility for it!

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
dunstad 17y ago
While some of the staying-up-lateness may be self imposed, my Google searches show that puberty brings with it a natural change in circadian rythym, which isn't something the teens can do much about. http://www.healthcentral.com/sleep-disorders/caregiving-270879-5.html http://www.healthcentral.com/sleep-disorders/caregiving-2708... http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/adolescent.html http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/adolescent.html
mechanical_fish 17y ago
I think you would be surprised at how much of the "misery" you and your peers are self-imposing. It's a pity the article is so long, because otherwise you might have encountered this sentence before composing a reply: It won't be enough to demand an early hour for going to bed. If you ban the late evening Internet surfing, you will just swap a dose of evening education for an idle tossing and turning in bed. You can't necessarily change your biological clock by an effort of will, even if you know exactly what you are doing -- which few people do. Your biological clock has a "mind" of its own. No matter how much "responsibility" you take for your schedule, and how much intelligence and full-spectrum lighting you apply to the problem, you may find yourself unable to be optimally awake at 7am. Especially if you are a teenager. Meanwhile, I'm afraid that everything about this reply rubs me the wrong way. It is a textbook example of its kind [1], and it illustrates why broken designs persist for decade upon decade. School day starts too early for the typical young person's biological clock? We survived it, so should you! Third-shift workers causing accidents at 3am? Your grandpa worked third shift and survived with 80% of his fingers intact; so should you! Medical interns forced to work continuous shifts of 24 hours or more, even though studies have shown that they therefore make avoidable errors that harm patients? We survived it, so should you! It's so much easier to instruct the victim on coping techniques than it is to contemplate changing the system that it becomes a reflex: You poke an adult, and out pops a sanctimonious lecture. --- [1] The world would be a better place if every text editor came with an alarm that rang every time someone typed the word peers. ("Hi! Microsoft Word has noticed that you sound just like your mom! Can Clippy help you with that?")
- encoderer 17y ago
  The trouble I see here is you're equating a propensity for high school kids to push the envelope on _everything_ with medical residents and shift workers. Sanctimonious lecturing? I think you need more time in the field. Stop by any house with kids on a Friday night about 2300 and you'll see kids and adolescents alike dozing off, barely able to keep their heads up. When bed is suggested they sit up a little straighter and protest "I'm not tired." What you missed in my original post (somehow, it was only a paragraph) is that I spent 4 years in high school quoting these sleep studies. Just like I spent 4 years quoting the Tinker decision, and debating Hazelwood. But the truth is that staying out past curfew and putting my homework off until the last possible second and staying up to watch Conan and the Daily Show had absolutely NOTHING to do with my "biological clock." It was me, dozing off, and snapping to, my backbone stiff, saying "I'm ok, i'm not tired."
  - dgordon 17y ago
    I got a head start on you, so I spent six years in school condemning Hazelwood and other criminally unconstitutional decisions, but what's more important are all the years since. I didn't learn to justify eliminating the rights of "minors" for their age alone, like most people seem to. And, more to the point, I never "got used" to waking up before 7 am in school, because you don't get used to sleep deprivation. You just get less and less healthy. Was I perfectly responsible with my sleep time, doing of homework, etc., in school? Of course not. No one was. But that fact doesn't disprove that it's very difficult for most teenagers to follow the sleep schedule that American schools impose on them, and not just because they like to stay up late.
  - jacobolus 17y ago
    > ... I spent 4 years in high school quoting these sleep studies. Just like I spent 4 years quoting the Tinker decision, and debating Hazelwood. What do Tinker/Hazelwood have to do with sleep? Or are you suggesting that siding with the Warren court decision was some kind of youthful indiscretion that thankfully the Rehnquist court backed off on? Though I was never a writer for a high school newspaper, I’m damn glad in CA we have some legitimate protection for student journalists and other student speech. > But the truth is that staying out past curfew and putting my homework off [...] had absolutely NOTHING to do with my "biological clock." How can you possibly assert this? First, your suggestion that you personally would have been fine if you’d just been less stubborn is counter-factual speculation. But second, your assertion is flat out contradicted by careful scientific research on the subject. The whole “personal individual willpower is the only causal mechanism in the world” fallacy so pervasive in our society is really distressing to me. It leads to terrible policy aimed at blaming the suffering rather than trying to help them achieve better outcomes. It’s great that poor diets; low-paying menial jobs; living in physically dangerous gang neighborhoods; getting stiffed out of insurance, pensions, etc. by unscrupulous businesses; deaths from “reckless driving” on poorly planned streets; getting imprisoned for decades for drug possession; getting straight-up scammed by not carefully reading through all the fine print on contracts intentionally designed such that their real implications differ substantially from the signatories’ mutual understanding; becoming pregnant as a teenager; catching a venereal disease; etc. etc. are subject to free will, and can be avoided by the smart and careful. But while that’s good advice for individuals trying to navigate the society – “do your work”, “get enough sleep and exercise”, “eat right”, “read the fine print” – it’s atrocious policy, because it ignores cognitive biases and intuitions and focuses only on narrowly construed technical responsibility. The result is inefficiency, poor health, unnecessary death, &c. &c. And we “teach” people to be “personally responsible” by condemning large numbers of them to bad outcomes, with nearly no evidence that any learning actually occurs as a result. Most importantly, it eliminates empathy for those in rough situations. After all, if all outcomes are based mostly on personal merit, the down-on-their-luck must just deserve what they get.
mburney 17y ago
If you were seldom in bed by 10 and your friends were the same, it is unlikely that high school students today will do any different. Why not propose a solution based on what people generally do rather than telling them what they should do.
jamii 17y ago
I went to a military boarding school. Plenty of exercise and fresh air. In bed and lights out by 10, with roaming patrols to ensure no noise was made. And still I tossed and turned until the early hours of the morning and was exhausted all day. Every fourth week on Sunday there would be no enforced wakeup time. Without exception the entire house would sleep in till early afternoon at least.
Goladus 17y ago
When I was in high school, I frequently got home at 7:00pm or later. Or else, I got home at 3:00 and then had to go back for rehearsal or practice by 5:30. The time I did have free would be broken up by changing clothes and eating dinner (making it if parents weren't home) and taking a dump. I've now been working at a company for 3 years where hours have been flexible (core 10am-4pm). I use an alarm clock once a week (a 7:00 AM meeting on wednesday) which I only need about half the time. Yes, sometimes I have sleeping problems and I can trace them directly to choices and habits (often, though, they are really hard choices-- eg spend time with girlfriend or not). But it's still enormously easier to avoid chronic tiredness when you don't get stuck in a bad-sleep cycle where you can't fall asleep at night and get forced out of bed every morning before the sun comes up.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

dunstad 17y ago

While some of the staying-up-lateness may be self imposed, my Google searches show that puberty brings with it a natural change in circadian rythym, which isn't something the teens can do much about. http://www.healthcentral.com/sleep-disorders/caregiving-270879-5.html http://www.healthcentral.com/sleep-disorders/caregiving-2708... http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/adolescent.html http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/adolescent.html

mechanical_fish 17y ago

I think you would be surprised at how much of the "misery" you and your peers are self-imposing. It's a pity the article is so long, because otherwise you might have encountered this sentence before composing a reply: It won't be enough to demand an early hour for going to bed. If you ban the late evening Internet surfing, you will just swap a dose of evening education for an idle tossing and turning in bed. You can't necessarily change your biological clock by an effort of will, even if you know exactly what you are doing -- which few people do. Your biological clock has a "mind" of its own. No matter how much "responsibility" you take for your schedule, and how much intelligence and full-spectrum lighting you apply to the problem, you may find yourself unable to be optimally awake at 7am. Especially if you are a teenager. Meanwhile, I'm afraid that everything about this reply rubs me the wrong way. It is a textbook example of its kind [1], and it illustrates why broken designs persist for decade upon decade. School day starts too early for the typical young person's biological clock? We survived it, so should you! Third-shift workers causing accidents at 3am? Your grandpa worked third shift and survived with 80% of his fingers intact; so should you! Medical interns forced to work continuous shifts of 24 hours or more, even though studies have shown that they therefore make avoidable errors that harm patients? We survived it, so should you! It's so much easier to instruct the victim on coping techniques than it is to contemplate changing the system that it becomes a reflex: You poke an adult, and out pops a sanctimonious lecture. --- [1] The world would be a better place if every text editor came with an alarm that rang every time someone typed the word peers. ("Hi! Microsoft Word has noticed that you sound just like your mom! Can Clippy help you with that?")

encoderer 17y ago
The trouble I see here is you're equating a propensity for high school kids to push the envelope on _everything_ with medical residents and shift workers. Sanctimonious lecturing? I think you need more time in the field. Stop by any house with kids on a Friday night about 2300 and you'll see kids and adolescents alike dozing off, barely able to keep their heads up. When bed is suggested they sit up a little straighter and protest "I'm not tired." What you missed in my original post (somehow, it was only a paragraph) is that I spent 4 years in high school quoting these sleep studies. Just like I spent 4 years quoting the Tinker decision, and debating Hazelwood. But the truth is that staying out past curfew and putting my homework off until the last possible second and staying up to watch Conan and the Daily Show had absolutely NOTHING to do with my "biological clock." It was me, dozing off, and snapping to, my backbone stiff, saying "I'm ok, i'm not tired."
- dgordon 17y ago
  I got a head start on you, so I spent six years in school condemning Hazelwood and other criminally unconstitutional decisions, but what's more important are all the years since. I didn't learn to justify eliminating the rights of "minors" for their age alone, like most people seem to. And, more to the point, I never "got used" to waking up before 7 am in school, because you don't get used to sleep deprivation. You just get less and less healthy. Was I perfectly responsible with my sleep time, doing of homework, etc., in school? Of course not. No one was. But that fact doesn't disprove that it's very difficult for most teenagers to follow the sleep schedule that American schools impose on them, and not just because they like to stay up late.
- jacobolus 17y ago
  > ... I spent 4 years in high school quoting these sleep studies. Just like I spent 4 years quoting the Tinker decision, and debating Hazelwood. What do Tinker/Hazelwood have to do with sleep? Or are you suggesting that siding with the Warren court decision was some kind of youthful indiscretion that thankfully the Rehnquist court backed off on? Though I was never a writer for a high school newspaper, I’m damn glad in CA we have some legitimate protection for student journalists and other student speech. > But the truth is that staying out past curfew and putting my homework off [...] had absolutely NOTHING to do with my "biological clock." How can you possibly assert this? First, your suggestion that you personally would have been fine if you’d just been less stubborn is counter-factual speculation. But second, your assertion is flat out contradicted by careful scientific research on the subject. The whole “personal individual willpower is the only causal mechanism in the world” fallacy so pervasive in our society is really distressing to me. It leads to terrible policy aimed at blaming the suffering rather than trying to help them achieve better outcomes. It’s great that poor diets; low-paying menial jobs; living in physically dangerous gang neighborhoods; getting stiffed out of insurance, pensions, etc. by unscrupulous businesses; deaths from “reckless driving” on poorly planned streets; getting imprisoned for decades for drug possession; getting straight-up scammed by not carefully reading through all the fine print on contracts intentionally designed such that their real implications differ substantially from the signatories’ mutual understanding; becoming pregnant as a teenager; catching a venereal disease; etc. etc. are subject to free will, and can be avoided by the smart and careful. But while that’s good advice for individuals trying to navigate the society – “do your work”, “get enough sleep and exercise”, “eat right”, “read the fine print” – it’s atrocious policy, because it ignores cognitive biases and intuitions and focuses only on narrowly construed technical responsibility. The result is inefficiency, poor health, unnecessary death, &c. &c. And we “teach” people to be “personally responsible” by condemning large numbers of them to bad outcomes, with nearly no evidence that any learning actually occurs as a result. Most importantly, it eliminates empathy for those in rough situations. After all, if all outcomes are based mostly on personal merit, the down-on-their-luck must just deserve what they get.

mburney 17y ago

If you were seldom in bed by 10 and your friends were the same, it is unlikely that high school students today will do any different. Why not propose a solution based on what people generally do rather than telling them what they should do.

jamii 17y ago

I went to a military boarding school. Plenty of exercise and fresh air. In bed and lights out by 10, with roaming patrols to ensure no noise was made. And still I tossed and turned until the early hours of the morning and was exhausted all day. Every fourth week on Sunday there would be no enforced wakeup time. Without exception the entire house would sleep in till early afternoon at least.

Goladus 17y ago

When I was in high school, I frequently got home at 7:00pm or later. Or else, I got home at 3:00 and then had to go back for rehearsal or practice by 5:30. The time I did have free would be broken up by changing clothes and eating dinner (making it if parents weren't home) and taking a dump. I've now been working at a company for 3 years where hours have been flexible (core 10am-4pm). I use an alarm clock once a week (a 7:00 AM meeting on wednesday) which I only need about half the time. Yes, sometimes I have sleeping problems and I can trace them directly to choices and habits (often, though, they are really hard choices-- eg spend time with girlfriend or not). But it's still enormously easier to avoid chronic tiredness when you don't get stuck in a bad-sleep cycle where you can't fall asleep at night and get forced out of bed every morning before the sun comes up.