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Teenagers allowed to wake up later have fewer absences from school
- duck 17y ago10am? That means they were going at 9am? That seems really late compared to when I went to school and it started at 7:30am! I can see where later would cut down on absentees, but it seems to be at a cost of pushing after school activities later and taking away from family time. I think the four-day school week is a better idea. I think it would help in terms of attendance and would cut costs: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=four%20day%20school%20week&aql=&gs_rfai=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=four%20day%20school%...
- andrewcooke 17y agoi'm pretty sure school in the uk always started at (around) 9am. at least, i think it did in my comprehensive, many years ago.
- philh 17y ago10am is when lessons start. My school expected us to be in by 8:30, with lessons starting at 9.
- Kliment 17y agoWell, the data speaks for itself. Did you read the article? The official school hours are the same, they just shifted classes from the morning to the afternoon slots for that group. And they still get out of school earlier than the typical adult workday ends.
- smackfu 17y agoAnother factor is that in the US, there's often a bottleneck in the bus system. It's more efficient to use the same buses for multiple levels of school, but a "bus cycle" may take an hour, and you may have three schools to service separately (high school, middle school, elementary). As a a result, the elementary school may start at 9 AM, but that pushes the high school to 7 AM. And you don't really want to reverse it.
- gwern 17y ago> As a a result, the elementary school may start at 9 AM, but that pushes the high school to 7 AM. And you don't really want to reverse it. Why not? I'm one of 4 children; every single one of us in elementary school would get up on our own ridiculously early. We would wake up and eagerly watch _Pokemon_ at, IIRC, 6:30 AM. Waking up in the 5s wasn't unheard of. It wasn't until high school and getting up at 6 AM that an older kid would finally start getting up before the younger kids.
- joeyo 17y agoI hate to be that guy, but the headline should say fewer absences.
- mynameishere 17y agoThen don't. Def #6 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/less http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/less
- lincolnq 17y agoCool! But the OED disagrees: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/few http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/few The wikipedia article says that using fewer for counting nouns is fairly new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less So I guess you're probably right, and it's not worth correcting people on this matter. (But I'm probably still going to use fewer instead of less).
- spatulon 17y agoThe distinction can be important. For example, are you one of the less intelligent members of HN, or one of the fewer intelligent members of HN?
- petercooper 17y agoCute example but the fewer vs less argument is for when those words affect the same word. In "less intelligent members," less is an adverb affecting the verb of the sentence, whereas in "fewer intelligent members," fewer is affecting the number of "members." The word switch is changing the entire meaning of the sentence, but the fewer vs less argument is over using the right word for a single, specific meaning.
- Kliment 17y agoThere, corrected.
- dpcan 17y agoThe more we do this stuff to kids, the more the real world is going to kick their ass.
- cstross 17y agoYou didn't read the article, or the background research behind it, did you? It's based on research into the natural sleep cycle of adolescent humans, and their cognitive abilities. Turns out that there are changes associated with puberty (who knew?) that make them wake up several hours later and stay awake longer than children; their cognitive abilities also peak later in the day. From age 18 onwards they revert towards the adult baseline. Assuming you're an adult, do you think you'd work more efficiently if you were rousted out of bed at 5am to start work each morning, and forced to finish at 1pm?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- scott_s 17y agoThat you were able to do it is not evidence that it was better than the alternatives.
- dpcan 17y agoNo, I absolutely know that I would not work better that way, but my point is, everyone around me is forced to wake up at the crack of dawn and get their ass to work. I have kids in school, and every year the school changes things around to accommodate some consultant's suggestions regarding grades, start times, recesses, how they learn to read, how they learn math, etc. Every damn year!! Kids are getting screwed left and right because of studies like this. Last year, my oldest was using one method to learn to read, this year it's something new. And a new way of learning math too. They had an assembly for us parents explaining to us that they were preparing kids for "jobs that don't exist yet". And that they didn't know if these methods were perfect, but they were based on studies, so.... Kids just end up confused. This hits a nerve with me. I hate seeing this stuff happen because of studies. I hate when people like you justify stuff like this when you aren't living in it. Also, how do parents get their kids to school at 10am? How? School needs to start when work starts so we can drop them off on our way. This stuff screws up kids and will make adjusting to the real world much harder.
- pw0ncakes 17y agoIn a couple Wall Street companies I've experienced, the penalties were harsher for being a few minutes late than just calling in sick, so there were a lot of unnecessary sick days that happened because a person would rather "throw a sickie" than get reamed for showing up at 9:08. It's really stupid and counterproductive.
- afterburner 17y ago"It's really stupid and counterproductive" One might say the same about Wall Street in general... alright, maybe not completely, but a little?
- pw0ncakes 17y agoThe culture sucks, and the reasons for that are deep and sociological, but Wall Street firms are definitely not stupid. As for counterproductive, that's a very long discussion, because financial markets are probably a necessary evil. The short version is: most people suck at capturing the value they add. Wall Streeters are great at snaring this surplus value, so you have a lot of ridiculously overcompensated people at the top.
- jacobolus 17y agoIt’s pretty counterproductive to have 30 or 40 percent of the graduates of the top colleges in the country going to work on Wall Street, as was the case in the mid-2000s, “snaring surplus” rather than producing something of their own.
- pw0ncakes 17y agoNo disagreement there. I think Wall Street's only constructive purpose is to bid up the price of talent. This makes analyst programs (staffed with the untalented) a total waste, but that's another discussion.
- deleted 17y ago
- gfunk911 17y agoIn high school, I would fall asleep in class all the time. Teachers would yell, I'd get in trouble, it was awful. It wasn't intentional, I was just so tired that I could not keep myself awake. If I could have stopped it, I would have been much happier, but I couldn't. Even during my waking periods, I'm sure I wasn't operating at peak mental efficiency.
- TheSOB88 17y agoWhy couldn't you have stopped it? Wouldn't going to bed earlier have helped?
- gwern 17y agoIf the melatonin isn't being secreted earlier, no, it wouldn't. If the melatonin isn't there, it isn't there. The only way willpower or just going to bed earlier would help is if he had used the willpower to go buy some melatonin supplements* and then went to bed earlier. It only takes a few instances of going to bed early, moping around for an hour or two, and still not getting a good night's sleep, before one rationally decides to just stay up later. * or similar technological hack, like blue glasses
- yesimahuman 17y agoAnecdotal evidence: I can't ever remember being as exhausted as I was having to get up every day for high school. I think my body has adjusted better to less sleep now, but I just remember it being awful. I felt even worse for the kids who came on the bus. No wonder many of them couldn't stay awake! They probably had to get up at 5:30 every morning just to go to school!
- warfangle 17y agoAnecdotally, I had an hour and a half bus ride to school back in the day. We were picked up at 5:45 (school started at 7:30). For much of the school year, it was pitch dark out waiting for the bus. If I wanted to be presentable and eat breakfast, I had to wake up at 4:45.
- SandB0x 17y agoHow are parents supposed to get their children prepared or take them to school in office hours?
- jsnellink 17y agoHow are parents supposed to pick their children up during office hours? Combined with the option of riding a bus, I don't think it makes parent's lives any more difficult. Without a bus, I can see it being a big problem for many families, though.
- eru 17y agoWhat happened to bicycles?
- warfangle 17y agoWell, my High School was about 20 miles driving distance away from my home. Much of that along a limited access highway. I suppose I could have biked it, but avoiding the limited access highway adds 10 miles onto the trip and detours you through some fairly rough neighborhoods. Doubt a bicycle would have helped, there.
- josefresco 17y agoEven with a bus, not every parent can leave for work at 8:00-ish (even 9) and assume/hope their kids will get up, ready and off to school on time.
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agoThis is usually how I did it in high school. I would stay up late either working on actual school work, messing around with video production for tv station, or some web stuff. Instead of waking up tired as hell, I would just go in later. It's better to miss a few hours than take the entire day off OR have that tired feeling ruin an entire day with a domino effect impacting the rest of your productivity. I'm glad people are finally doing something about this.
- skennedy 17y agoAlright, so the research has been conducted, verified, and introduced changes in the lives of teenagers. Now let's move on to adults. Where's my 10am start time at work???
- jrockway 17y agoI usually come to work around noon. And I work at a company with 250,000+ employees.
- Kliment 17y agoI have it. Try academic work.
- pw0ncakes 17y agoMost of us don't want to deal with academia's abortion of a job market.
- jerf 17y agoI have it. It's great. It helps that I'm in EST and my company is primarily in PST so coming in later is one more hour of overlap with that office. The idea that 9am is holy and if you're not there you're not productive is just flatly contradicted by my personal experience.
- root 17y agoIn the early nineties I used to start extra early so I could get my work done before the Americans started hogging mainframes.
- eru 17y agoMost of my co-workers get in at 10am. I often come as late as 2pm. Did I mention that we are looking to expanding our team in Cambridge, UK? (Send me an email, if you'd like more information. You can also find some positions on http://www.citrix.com/English/aboutCitrix/employment/features.asp?contentID=1319006 http://www.citrix.com/English/aboutCitrix/employment/feature...)
- david_adams 17y agoThere's a thing called Delayed Sleep Phase Sndrome. It's a circadian rhythm disorder that affects maybe 1/2 of 1% of people (but seems to be more prevalent among engineers and software people, possibly because DSPS sufferers choose vocations that allow for flexible schedules). Essentially, DSPS people have a natural sleep-wake cycle that's shifted a few hours from the norm. My natural cycle is to sleep at about 2:30am and wake at 11:30. I can force myself into a "normal" schedule, but I can't change my natural circadian rhythm, so I suffer from various effects of sleep disruption that are similar to jetlag. For some reason, a high proportion of teenagers, particularly boys, experience temporary DSPS during their adolescence. It can be as many as 20%. I suspect that the natural creeping of the circadian rhythm that happens during adolescence (as mentioned in this article) kicks into overdrive for some kids, and gives them DSPS-like symptoms during that time. Most of these kids grow out of it and re-establish a normal rhythm into adulthood. People like me, however, keep their DSPS throughout their lives. (And it's hereditary. I got it from my mother) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome
- throw_away 17y agoThis would be an interesting poll.
- endtime 17y agoThanks for the link. I'm pretty sure I have this.
- warfangle 17y agoI'm a little different - I'm fairly certain I have a non-24-hour circadian clock. If I do not force myself, via scheduled melatonin supplements and caffeine/B-vitamin supplements, I naturally land on about a 26 hour circadian clock. It gets really annoying really quickly. Tangentially. I wonder at the reason for the increase of DSPS during adolescence among boys. It might very well be evolutionary - the young had to stay up later for watching over camps/habitat at night, perhaps?
- Qz 17y ago
- hkuo 17y agoI can personally vouch for this myself in practice. This is a classic case of quality vs quantity. Depending on my workload, I have sessions of varying time of hyper-activity. If something is highly urgent, then these sessions can endure for as long as I need. The only thing I require is that I'm not that tired. Luckily, I work in an environment that only requires results. Time is of course tracked, but the ultimate reflection of my value is in my creative thinking and the actual work that gets done.
- kevinelliott 17y agoSchool start time is changing to 30 minutes later than the current time at a school that my fiance teaches at next year. The decision has come with some mixed opinions, but there is certainly some evidence to support this theory. Although, a lot of the kids are pretty pissed, because it means they have to stay at school for 30 mins later into their valuable afternoons. My opinion though is that once people get use to the new hours (perhaps after 6 months, 1 year, or longer) that it will become the new "normal" and lose its benefits. But my opinion is garbage, because I wake up and go to sleep at terribly insane hours :)
- sdurkin 17y agoAdolescent common chimpanzees form bands of males that stay up later than the rest and patrol the group's perimeter. I'm guessing human teenagers are genetically programmed to be the night watch.
- adelevie 17y agoIn my high school we had "late" days once or twice a month, where the school day started about an hour later than usual. Also, seniors could schedule their classes so that they could either be done for the day an hour early or show up an hour late. Years later, I still remember the euphoria of waking up at 7 only to realize I had an extra hour to sleep.
- sketerpot 17y agoI've been wondering for a while now: why are so many people at HN and similar sites generally the late-riser type? It seems disproportionate.
- petercooper 17y agoA lot of us have the freedom to be. A disproportionate number of us are owners/founders or otherwise self employed. I go to bed about 8 am :-)
- robryan 17y agoI think there is a tenancy for the hacker type to be a night owl, maybe it has something to do with the ability to be able to do work at any hour and the relative peace you get at night.
- lambdom 17y ago1 word: duh.
- jsz0 17y agoThis would have definitely helped me out in school. One bathroom, 4 people, standing at a bus stop at 7am outside in freezing temperatures, lack of coffee (not allowed in my school even in HS), lack of transportation for after school activities before 5PM, staying up late to use the phone line on my computer after everyone else went to sleep, staying up until ungodly hours to watch MST3k on Comedy Central, etc. Gotta imagine kids today still face some of these reasons for needing a later start. These are the type of people who in the real world would gravitate towards jobs that allowed them the same respect & flexibility.