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Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks

910 points by dpflan 9y ago

ChuckMcM 9y ago
In my experience at Intel where people were reprimanded if they weren't in the office before 8 AM I also saw bad code tied to times that didn't match the developer's biological clock :-).
timerol 9y ago
Looking at the chart in the middle of the article brings up more questions than it answers. Maybe it's the weird 3D perspective, but it looks like all groups get better grades in evening classes. Furthermore, it looks like finches do better in all categories than larks, and owls always do the worst. This seems to argue against the points that the article puts forth.
- knightofmars 9y ago
  "Owls performed worst of all the groups due to chronic social jet lag"
- WhompingWindows 9y ago
  I wouldn't mistake the findings from the media relations writer from the actual authors' findings: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23044-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23044-8
PebblesHD 9y ago
I’ve found these recent studies interesting in that they seem to confirm what many young people have been saying for a long time. I’ve always struggled to wake myself up of a morning and found that most classes earlier than about 10am were pretty much forgotten come end of semester. Not sure how American schools organise timetables but the two weekly cycle of class times went some way to compensate for this by changing which class was first meaning you wouldn’t fall drastically behind in one specifically because it was earliest. Things have of course changed since leaving school and my sleep patterns have changed significantly, and I can see immediately how trying to make a school student conform to such a cycle would be a poor idea, but I wonder if some time soon I’ll forget being young and start seeing the world like so many leaders seem to with no regard at all for what it was like growing up.
VLM 9y ago
Do we like to tell ourselves the purpose of school is academics or athletics? If athletics, school must start as early as possible, so "away" outdoor games can be held outside in sunlight and "away" teams can get home at a reasonable hour. If academics, school should start as late as possible, so students (and instructors!) can do class prep immediately before class and/or sleep in. Its interesting that the only acceptable model of alternative education is essentially "pick your major in high school" such that there are art high schools or music high schools or aviation high schools, etc. And of course religious schools that have been around for centuries. However there are no business model schools based on priority, like a school with no athletics program that focuses on academics. The real purpose of school is lowering unemployment by increasing babysitting years, along with raising the bar as a filter to reduce the number of "successful" kids needing jobs. Certainly we have far too much academics for our economy and culture to hold them.
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  How could athletics be the purpose of school?
  - sambull 9y ago
    Social context? During a war, there might be more focus on producing fit troops. Or a even a primary focus on providing resources to the military.
    - adamnemecek 9y ago
      I really dont want to be a fodder for the military? Would it not make more sense to concentrate on problems that are now as opposed to possibles? The current place of athletics in the school system really fucks things up.
  - monocasa 9y ago
    From my school (an affluent top tier high school), the athletics department did have a larger say than academics. I think it had more to do with how loud and how much energy athletics had towards getting their way (and the parents reeeally cared about football. This was hardcore SEC territory), vs how much spare time the teachers had. I don't think it was explicitly pro athletics vs academics, but it certainly was systemically.
patorjk 9y ago
> night owls were especially vulnerable, many appearing so chronically jet-lagged that they were unable to perform optimally at any time of day. I experienced this with an 8am biology class I was required to take. It wrecked my whole day. About 1/3 of the way through I just started skipping the class and then later getting notes of the lecture from a friend of mine. It ended up working dramatically well. I got an A, while my friend who got up every MWF to take the notes, got a B. It was kind of a wild result since my studying was based almost entirely on her notes. I hadn't given it too much thought, but it would make sense if being sleep deprived is what hurt her in this case.
- lostctown 9y ago
  I'd say you owe that friend a round or two.
- existencebox 9y ago
  Anecdotally, (and as a story for anyone similar to me/with kids similar to how I was) I spent most of my life until college thinking that school/learning was the most miserable process in the world, and that I was terrible at it. It turns out, waking up at ~6 every morning, and usually not going to bed until 10/12 thanks to after school classes and homework, left me with less sleep than I even need to be functional now as an adult and turned highschool into a special sort of "kid jail". I got punished innumerable times for sleeping in class, and probably spent more time by % fighting to keep my eyes open than I did paying attention. (I had at least one teacher who threw chalk at students who slept, it was such a common occasion) This changed like a lightswitch when in college I was able to assert that I didn't take any classes before 10. By the end of my masters I had a 4.0 (highschool had been a struggle to maintain a 3.0 with much easier classes), although it took most of that time to re-learn how to learn and pay attention. The difference was so stark it puts a fire in my belly just to think about the amount of resistance I've seen to changing this status quo. I recognize this is "for adults/work" but as a working adult I refuse to concede that we can't come up with a solution that doesn't so entirely steamroll some kids for being wired to need more sleep.
- otoburb 9y ago
  This strategy worked well for me too until Circuit Theory. As an "early morning"[] class it was easy to bum the notes from somebody else, but the darn quizzes tanked my grades enough that I had to repeat the course the next available semester. Before Children
zaroth 9y ago
Our school district just spent the last year trying to convince parents we should shuffle around start times to make high school later and elementary school earlier. It was a complete clusterfuck. Both teacher and parents alike at both the elementary and the high schools all had a million reasons why it couldn’t possibly work. Since there are a limited number of buses which are shared, you can’t move one start time without moving the other. It came up at every school event, sports practice, kids party, to the point where I would just walk away when people starting bitching about it one way or another. The biggest issue was we had a new superintendent who wanted to “start a dialogue” about the start times rather than actually make a policy change. It took up hundreds of hours in PTO, Administrative, and Town Hall meetings and of course ended up in absolutely no change in the end. Everyone’s opinion of course had to be heard, whether it was a longer commute that a teacher would have, or then not having time to drop off their own child before getting to class, or impacting afternoon sports, or the something about the bus route, or... Of course none of the debate actually addressed if students would possible learn better from it. I was so glad when they finally sent out the email saying they were dropping it just so that I wouldn’t have to hear the constant bickering. It was like an engineering team with no lead and a non-technical manager arguing over what DBMS to use where no decision could be made until everyone agreed we had the “right” solution!
- candu 9y ago
  A cynical explanation here would be: those in charge wanted the appearance of having considered these changes without the headache / political risk of actually changing them.
  - zaroth 9y ago
    Absolutely correct. The superintendent didn’t have the clout necessary to pull it off. What I think she underestimated was the sheer volume of discussion which would ensure which basically made it impossible to get any other policy changes done last year.
- robterrell 9y ago
  It's happening where I live too. It's amazing how quickly the discussion moves past "what's best for students" and into the "it's annoying to me personally" and "when I was a kid, we suffered" conversations.
brightball 9y ago
I can definitely confirm this from my time in college at least. I had an 8am, 4 day a week calculus class my first semester that I was only taking to get an easy A since I already had the AP credit. Ended up dropping it and my grades in every other class improved. My best semester by far was one in which I somehow managed to schedule all of my classes after 2pm until about 9pm.
macmccann 9y ago
The problem in college is bad, but the problem is some high schools is even worse. At high schools without block scheduling, every day might be a 6 am alarm to get to school by 7:00.
- froindt 9y ago
  Block scheduling was absolutely amazing, and I'm so glad I had access to it. My school did "modified block" with skinny classes (40 minutes) and blocks (85 minute). The only skinny classes were math, music, and foreign language, all of which seem to have a big benefit from going the full year. The concept of trying to do a chemistry or physics lab in 40 minutes sounded awful. My high school ran from 8:45-3:10. Morning activities were typically 7-8 or 8:15, so you could still drop by teachers classrooms before school started.
- sudosteph 9y ago
  6am is when the bus picked me up in highschool (start time was 7:15). Wakeup alarm was 5:15. It was awful.
endymi0n 9y ago
I used to have lots of problems getting up early and always championed later times. Growing up through my twenties, it was great seeing finally seeing more and more evidence for a later school start and I was hopeful for future teens. But it wasn't until my first kid that I finally understood that school doesn't start this early because it's good for the learning experience. It starts this early so parents can get their kids to school and start working afterwards, without getting fired.
- brightball 9y ago
  Schools can still help with this by trying to schedule the core academic stuff later in the the day and the less mentally intense stuff like PE earlier in the morning. My kids' elementary school actually does this. They tell parents "if your child has a doctor's appointment or needs to be out for a portion of the day, schedule it at the beginning or end of the day to make sure they don't miss anything important."
  - madcaptenor 9y ago
    I wonder how they schedule that. Does that mean that all PE classes (assuming PE is part of the "unimportant" category) are either at the beginning or the end of the day? What does the PE teacher do in the middle of the day, then?
    - cmpb 9y ago
      Often PE teachers (and coaches) are also teachers. My civics, geography and geometry teachers were all football coaches. Incidentally, they were also not very learned in their respective courses.
      - importantbrian 9y ago
        This was the same for us. The exception was the teacher that made me fall in love with history as a subject. He was also an assistant basketball coach, but he was passionate about history.
mi100hael 9y ago
At the same time, the point of college for most kids is to prepare them for a white collar job. If there's a huge client meeting at 10am and there's still 3 hours of preparation to do before they arrive, no one's going to be very sympathetic to the excuse that you have "social jet lag." Expecting college adults to get out of bed before 10 is hardly a substantial burden.
- AndrewDucker 9y ago
  If you have a huge meeting at 10am and three hours of prep - then work late the previous day.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  This really depends on the firm. If important aspects of the business take place early, then sure you have to be there early. If not, you might have to be there early anyway because reasons, but then again you might not.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  There's a difference between the occasional early start to prepare for a meeting and a default schedule that is just stupid.
- otakucode 9y ago
  Adolescence is not permanent. Adolescents require significantly more sleep than any other age group, so the jet lag would be substantially reduced for adults.
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  If it's Monday afternoon, you know you have a big meeting at 10AM Tuesday, you know you have 3 hours more of prep to do, and you know you're ineffective in the early morning, why not work later to cover that prep? This sounds like a procrastination problem more than a night owl problem.
- projektir 9y ago
  Except there's no reason to prepare anything here because the problem is biological. It's simply easier to wake up early as an adult. Just like many others things are easier for physical reasons that society keeps trying to "teach".
sk1pper 9y ago
Isn’t your chronotype fairly mutable though? With some dedication and a couple weeks you can adjust to waking up whenever. Especially at college age. Obviously lifestyle could be limiting if you’re trying to start waking up at 6am, but if you’re optimizing for GPA, then you’re gonna have to make lifestyle sacrifices anyway
- Retric 9y ago
  If you are willing to use window blackout blinds and sunlamps on timers then it's not that hard. However, in collage with a roommate that's not necessarily possible.
- PeterStuer 9y ago
  I did that. It took me seven years, so 'a couple of weeks' is a bit of an understatement.
- darkkindness 9y ago
  In practice, it's just a little slightly harder than you say, when you have a roommate who shuts the blinds every morning and keeps a white desk light on at night.
- Symmetry 9y ago
  That's only somewhat true. If you're exposed to sunlight during the day, much brighter than a lit room, it will tend to have an influence on your circadian rhythm. You might be able to sleep at arbitrary offsets but the quality of your sleep will suffer. Though wearing sunglasses when outside during the morning will help you get to sleep later and wearing them outside during the afternoon will help you sleep earlier. And I'm not aware of research showing a problem with shifting your sleep to arbitrary offsets if you're never exposed to sunlight, though that might have other bad effects.
maaaats 9y ago
That's what I loved most about my college/university: no mandatory attendance. Could wake up when I wanted, and start studying at a more suitable time. I also have a hard time following multiple lectures during the same day. So a nice additional effect was that I, instead of attending, would study more efficiently in my own way.
tjr225 9y ago
I dropped out of high school partly because waking up was such a painful experience for me. Of course as an adult I wake up at 5:45-6AM.
- projektir 9y ago
  Waking up as an adult is so much easier. I recall my high school days were absolutely awful, I could never wake up properly in the morning and I zombie-made coffee and then zombie-walked to school. Right now, if I need to wake up at 6 AM, for one, it's much easier to just shift my schedule, and for another, even if I don't get as many hours of sleep it just doesn't hit me all that hard. And I think people judge teenagers off of the adult scale, which is completely off...
anotheryou 9y ago
I like how it shows that getting up early ruins the whole day. I have to come an hour early for a meeting every other week and it's always a challenging day... Getting up ~9am is the point at which it doesn't effect my performance anymore (I'd still prefer shifting my sleep phase even further). Sadly this only worked for a job once in my career.
- justherefortart 9y ago
  Go to bed earlier. I get up early and have since High School. All I do is make sure I go to bed at a reasonable hour. Going to work, lunch, home early is friggin awesome. Avoiding rush hour, saving me roughly 1 hour a day in traffic, is fantastic. Plus it gives me time to do any personal things in the early afternoon without affecting my work schedule.
  - anotheryou 9y ago
    Yea, that's the "compatibility mode" I'm running on: strictly going to bed at 11pm. I sadly really miss the nights and have to force myself to do this daily. Here in europe daylight saving time just ended, now I have go to bed an hour earlier from one day to another. It took me out for 4 days (really bad performance) and the first 2 days I stayed awake in bed so long I became more awake again before managing to fall asleep.
    - justherefortart 9y ago
      I go to bed between 8-9pm, rarely as late as 10pm. Going to bed means I'm reading a book (physical, not digital) and winding myself down from the day. I find exercising during the day helps immeasurably when trying to go to sleep at a reasonable hour (based on your own schedule). Also limiting caffeine after lunch. To people that say it's impossible, maybe it is. I did have a late schedule for a few years in college (waiting tables until close). I still scheduled my classes for 9/10am at the latest starting time though. Maybe my working out when I get up helps as well. Plus personal discipline (both going to bed and getting up regularly). I get 8-9 hours of sleep every night outside of rare exceptions. My mom said I've been this way since childhood. I would never give up sleep to stay up late, unless absolutely necessary. My high school buddies would give me hell during the week, but I got up at 5:30am for my early bird weightlifting every day. So 9pm was "late" for me.
sheana_ahlqvist 9y ago
It's frustrating that we let antiquated systems remain in the face of new data indicating that the system could be improved. I don't think it's ANYONE's goal to let some people get worse grades just because. Generally, the goal of schooling is to get everyone to a better, more knowledgeable version of themselves in preparation for the world.
- projektir 9y ago
  > Generally, the goal of schooling is to get everyone to a better, more knowledgeable version of themselves in preparation for the world. Call me cynical, but I seriously doubt that this is the actual goal of schooling for pretty much anyone. The real purpose of school seems to be a) to get rid of kids so they're not muddling about in early hours; b) to generate a hierarchy of kids so we can figure out who to put in the lower castes.
wpasc 9y ago
I disagree with ideas that school schedules should shift later. I am a night owl myself, but our "natural" sleep cycle certainly more or less falls in line with school times. We have fully disrupted our circadian rhythms with our lifestyles and especially screens/lights at night. Before artificial light, our sleep/wake schedule was set by the sun. I know we live in a different world today, but I feel like shifting our schedule because of poor sleep hygiene and bad light habits is kind of reinforcing a bad habit. Whose to say that the shift wouldn't just perpetuate itself even after a shift of 1 hour later.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Like many I was certainly a night owl in college. But this idea that it’s impossible for students to change their sleep schedules seems... odd. By that logic no one could ever move across time zones. College students in particular tend to like to stay up late for social and other reasons. But that’s different from being unable to get up earlier. It also isn’t only classes that are early but some athletics as well.
- cgriswald 9y ago
  It is a mischaracterization to say this is all the result of bad habits. Asking teens and young adults to perform between 6 and 9 is like asking a fully mature adult to perform between 3 and 6. > I am a night owl myself, but our "natural" sleep cycle certainly more or less falls in line with school times. This is absolutely not true for adolescents continuing through young adulthood. Adolescents naturally have a delay in morning alertness levels compared to fully mature adults and other children and also have sleepiness set in more slowly/later in the evening than either other group. It is not (necessarily) poor sleep hygiene which causes teens to stay up later, but their own biological processes. > Before artificial light, our sleep/wake schedule was set by the sun. This seems to be an argument in favor of changing times. My highschool started at 7:10. Assuming I woke up an hour before to shower, dress, and catch the bus, that means I had to wake before the sun every day of my highschool career. The only time the sun rose earlier than 6:10 was during the summer when I didn't have school.
  - dcosson 9y ago
pithymaxim 9y ago
Similar argument in this paper but with better methods and data--2 million LA middle schoolers! http://home.uchicago.edu/~npope/morning_afternoon.pdf http://home.uchicago.edu/~npope/morning_afternoon.pdf
ribs 9y ago
YA DON’T SAY
projektir 9y ago
Unfortunately, the summary on this issue appears to be "nobody cares". Including the parents themselves. Teenagers do not really have rights so it's going to be very hard to change this.
Balgair 9y ago
This study was done on college students, not elementary and HS students, college students at Cal. There are a lot of caveats here and trying to apply them to elementary education is good, but outside the scope. Aside: If you really want test scores to improve, give the kids food. My SO is an educator and she's had kids come in that only get food at school. All weekend they may only eat a bag of Cheetos, sometimes up to 2/3 kids on Monday mronings. School breakfast and lunch are sometime the only food they get. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/05/03/how-the-quality-of-school-lunch-affects-students-academic-performance/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/...
- WhompingWindows 9y ago
  Yes, feeding low-income students is critical. However, we have to ask if the school-lunches provided are indeed better than a bag of Cheetos? I worked in the top 3 worst middle school in my state in the poorest city in my state, and I found their school lunches to largely be processed carbs like pizza, burger+fries with no veggies. The veggies that were on offer were in tiny sauce-containers that hardly any of the kids grabbed. Furthermore, those veggies were usually carrots or cucumbers, the former of which is high in glycemic index, and the latter of which contains hardly any micronutrients. So, from a nutritional perspective, yes the calories are good for the low income students, but the food was still terrible for them overall.
  - Afton 9y ago
    > However, we have to ask if the school-lunches provided are indeed better than a bag of Cheetos? I think that we can answer that question with a fairly emphatic 'yes'.
  - sjg007 9y ago
    Well the protein is good for them. Also they probably got milk as well.
  - fwip 9y ago
    "Is a burger actually less nutritious that a Cheeto? The answer may surprise you."
misterbowfinger 9y ago
original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23044-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23044-8 abstract: Misalignments between endogenous circadian rhythms and the built environment (i.e., social jet lag, SJL) result in learning and attention deficits. Currently, there is no way to assess the impact of SJL on learning outcomes of large populations as a response to schedule choices, let alone to assess which individuals are most negatively impacted by these choices. We analyzed two years of learning management system login events for 14,894 Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) students to investigate the capacity of such systems as tools for mapping the impact of SJL over large populations while maintaining the ability to generate insights about individuals. Personal daily activity profiles were validated against known biological timing effects, and revealed a majority of students experience more than 30 minutes of SJL on average, with greater amplitude correlating strongly with a significant decrease in academic performance, especially in people with later apparent chronotypes. Our findings demonstrate that online records can be used to map individual- and population-level SJL, allow deep mining for patterns across demographics, and could guide schedule choices in an effort to minimize SJL’s negative impact on learning outcomes.
importantbrian 9y ago
I am a night owl, and I have found that this has carried over into my adult life as well. Jobs, where butts in seats at an early hour are required or even just strongly encouraged, have presented problems for me.
monster_group 9y ago
I am more than half way through the book "Why we sleep?" by Matthew Walker and it is not a surprise to me that misalignment of circadian rhythm with class schedules results in poor grades. The book goes into great detail on the importance of getting eight hours of sleep on a regular schedule. Getting less than eight hours of sleep is tied to every imaginable disease and poor memory. I highly recommend reading the book. https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316 https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501...
- merinowool 9y ago
  Does it offer any solution?
WhompingWindows 9y ago
Great study, really interesting. I'd like to see a follow-up study with the following design: Find high schools with rotating class schedules (i.e. math is at a different time of day each day for 6 days, then loop that), then find high schools with fixed schedules (i.e. math is always first period for some students). Then, compare performance of night owls in the two different schools. Theoretically, if the authors' study is generalizable from college to HS, then the night-owls should do significantly worse in the early AM classes in the non-rotating school, and significantly better in the early PM classes in the non-rotating school.
mcbreezy 9y ago
I always struggled in school, waking up, even as an adult, HAVING to wake up at a particular time, five times a week just made me feel terrible.
WhompingWindows 9y ago
Here's the link to the actual source article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23044-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23044-8
macawfish 9y ago
To bad there are authority figures out here who are downright sadistic about this.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  Anything happened to downvote button?
iMuzz 9y ago
I firmly believe that one of the reasons I personally did poorly in high school was because I had to be in my first class by 7:30 A.M.
nategri 9y ago
Might go a little ways toward explaining how I got a D the grading period integrals were introduced in my 7:30am AP Calc class, yet still ended up as a physics PhD.
- sjg007 9y ago
  I was saved by the AP exams. Basically the teachers would retroactively give an A if you got a 4 or bette (might of been a 5).
ada1981 9y ago
Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Favor After School Football Practice. Seriously, much of America is so entranced by high school football that entire district schedules are oriented around ensuring ample practice time after school. It determines bus schedules and school start times for the entire district and all students.
- nemothekid 9y ago
  The article doesn't support that, it doesn't make sense for a vast majority of school districts - especially inner city ones. Another commenter made more sense - early class times give parents time before work to prepare their kids for school. This football angle is ridiculous. If it were true, wouldn't colleges and universities suffer from the same standard?
  - jedberg 9y ago
    College kids don't all start and end at the same time. At big football schools, they do in fact offer the courses that the majority of football players take early in the morning. But at least the rest of us could choose classes that started at 10am instead.
  - ada1981 9y ago
    Oh, it's ridiculous, and a pretty well known reason for anyone who has studied US public education. Here is one such article: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/04/how-school-start-times-affect-high-school-athletics/522537/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/04/how-sc... You'll find case after case of local newspapers reporting on school board meetings where requests to move the start time were met with fierce opposition by athletic directors, etc. Both my parents were educators (my mom ran special education for a school district, my father ended his career as Dean of the School of Ed @ Edinboro) and for a time I ran the countries top education blog. All three of us encountered this obstacle to sensible school scheduling across a variety of different schools and districts. I'd say it's the leading obstacle that I've seen when you look at local district opposition.
    - 9y ago
applecrazy 9y ago
I’m a Bay Area high school student and schools in this area have tried adopting these late start times. However, they were faced with intense community resistance, with parents pushing against that idea as it interferes with extracurriculars and childcare. I recently watched a PBS Frontline documentary back from 2002 that discussed this issue, and even then parents were extremely resistant to change.
polskibus 9y ago
I wonder if the study corrects for students that just stay up late for parties, etc., and just strip themselves of sleep when it could be avoided. It's quite easy to move your bioclock forward bit by bit, esp.for social reasons. It is very hard to roll it back (some studies suggest it's better to just roll it forward more and more instead)
PeterStuer 9y ago
I used to be a typical 'owl' as a student and when I worked in research. My peak performance hour were from 10pm to 4am. When you get kids and an 'industry' job, that isn't an option. It took me about 7 years to switch. Now I'm a true morning person. Best hours are now from 6am to 2pm. Afternoons are horror though. I can barely stay awake 2pm - 5pm.
- jzymbaluk 9y ago
  How did you make that switch? I'm having a lot of trouble in the transition from night owl to early bird and I could use any advice I can get
  - sjg007 9y ago
    Go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. Force yourself up. Also exercise can help in the morning.
  - barry-cotter 9y ago
    It happens naturally as you get older. There’s nothing you can do to hasten the transition. Regular exercise helps with sleep but if you stop the effects on sleep end.
  - PeterStuer 9y ago
    Getting up 7/7 at the exact same time. Exercise, mostly cardio. But I don't know if there is any causal relation.
matte_black 9y ago
This just sounds like more excuses. I know plenty of people who got to class at 7:30 AM on the dot and excelled with straight A's. I never had a problem. So what's different?
- sjg007 9y ago
  Some kids can do it. Some go to sleep earlier and wake up refreshed. Some don't, it's biological that's all. I wish I'd gone to bed earlier in high school but I was wired to stay up late. Same in college. It wasn't until I started working that I got to bed earlier. And after having kids man I can go to bed at 8pm easy.
  - lolsal 9y ago
    > Some don't, it's biological that's all. That really sounds like we're hand-waving away what is happening. The biology might be an effect, not a cause.
    - sjg007 9y ago
      Did you even read the article? It’s about biological circadian rhythms.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    Then it’s better to “rewire” these kids before they get to the real world and have to wake up early, or else they will be poor performers.
    - merinowool 9y ago
      It is not possible.
      - matte_black 9y ago
        Then their fate is sealed.
Grieverheart 9y ago
During college, I used to play WoW. I think my biological clock was messed up because of it, not because that was my natural biological rhythm. Also, because of the amount of hours I put into WoW, I did not have many hours left to study, affecting my academic performance. Thus, I wonder if the performance is really linked to the biological rhythm, or rather that the biological rhythm is a sign of activities impacting academic performance.
- caust1c 9y ago
  I'm with you there. I think the article is bullshit. We are in control of when we go to sleep, and ultimately that determines our circadian rhythm. Not some mysterious unknown force. The correlation with alcohol and drug abuse is a cause not a result. I was very much in the camp of playing video games all night long but I didn't kid myself about early class times being the cause for my struggle. * Disclaimer: IANA doctor/biologist. Point me to a study that says we can't control when we go to sleep (aside from other health factors including insomnia).
  - cma 9y ago
    There are plenty of studies on what night shift does to people who have a normal circadian rythym. It isn't pretty.
    - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      Yes, but is that the jet lag effect from repeatedly switching times or just being awake at night?
      - e12e 9y ago
        Both. And the social strain of not being able to meet people that work on regular schedules. I seem to recall that working just regular night shifts (eg 2300-0700) will cut an average 5 years off your life. Rotating shifts with half+ during night is even worse.
- 9y ago
rhemgla_corp 9y ago
This bio-electric alarm clock would probably be the best option for those of you that can’t get up in the morning: https://2no.co/1QyvB6 https://2no.co/1QyvB6
Rotdhizon 9y ago
It was shown long ago that your brain doesn't fully wake up anyways until something like 10 AM I believe, if not more like 11 AM or noon. Having students get to school at 6-8 AM is just wasting resources. As some have pointed out though, this runs much deeper than people give credit for. The 8-4 schedule of schools isn't due to random choice, it's built around the entire country from the ground up operating on that type of schedule. People need a system where kids can get sent off to school in a way that doesn't impact adults getting to and from work. If schools started even an hour later, I'd bet at least a few million parents would face hardships in adjusting to get their kids to school and maintain their current job. Of course there are more efficient times that we could use for school, but they would break the fragile system the US already has in place. Block scheduling has alleviated the knowledge loss to an extent(imo). By changing from the full 7-8 classes per day schedule to 3-4 classes every day, students can retain more information because they are in each class longer. That also means your homework schedule is drastically less stressful. I don't see any major changes coming to school times. The issue needs to be discussed, but what really can be done about it?
- jmulho 9y ago
  School could be 8AM to 5PM to coincide with parents work schedule, but don't start any serious classes until 10AM.
adam-fn 9y ago
Lewis Black [1] made this observation (with less diplomatic language) back in 2004: ... I flunked that course. It's not my fault. They taught it at 8 o'clock in the morning. And there is absolutely nothing that you can learn out of one bloodshot eye. After I flunked the first two tests, I grabbed the professor by the throat and I said, "Why are you teaching this **** at this ungodly hour? Are you *trying* to keep this stuff a secret?" [1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414224/quotes/qt0252382 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414224/quotes/qt0252382
mcrocop 9y ago
You're not doing students any favors with this sort of coddling. If someone NEEDS a tailor-made schedule to fit in order for them to be academically competitive what can we expect of them when they get into the real world and are forced to deal head on with aggressive competition? You're breeding cattle for slaughter with this sort of nonsense.
cbhl 9y ago
> Overall, men stay up later than women I would be careful about concluding that women and men have different biological clocks from this observation. I feel like society strongly discourages women from staying up late (constantly telling them it is unsafe / will make them ugly / suggests they are sexually active).
Symmetry 9y ago
Unlike those of us in STEM most high schoolers or college students don't end up using anything they fail to remember because they're only getting 6 hour of sleep a night. I'm a lot more concerned with the link between poor sleep and poor mental health.
enknamel 9y ago
Can't biological clocks change? Or are there really populations of people who have a truly different clock? Or is it a result of their environment? Personally I've been a night owl and a morning person alternating between the two throughout my life by choice.
- Eric_WVGG 9y ago
  Sure. Mine, and I think many others, changed precisely when I went through puberty. Early riser before, late riser after and ever since. My grades (predictably) crashed early in high school, didn't start to recover until I discovered coffee. But that couldn't be found in my Utah high school, of course, so I either had to sneak a cup in or find someplace to "joe up" during lunch. Additionally, six years ago I moved into an apartment with a huge east-facing window. Now I'm a natural morning person again — during the summer months.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- digitaltrees 9y ago
  There is an actual hormone release cycle and people have different timing. You can affect it somewhat with light therapy but only by an hour or two.
Taylor_OD 9y ago
It's weird how much we pretend like sleep doesnt rule our lives.
- phil248 9y ago
  I've often thought the same thing about using the bathroom.
superobserver 9y ago
Night owl here. Didn't need this study to tell me what I already know. That is all.
noobly 9y ago
>there isn’t a one-time-fits-all solution for education. Recorded online lectures beg to differ!
musgrove 9y ago
Seems like work schedules would parallel this finding.
ErikAugust 9y ago
I was a miserable high school student. Both miserable in feeling, and my grades were atrocious. School started just after seven AM, and I never slept more than 4 hours. The only time the phone line was available for me to use my modem was at night so I preferred using my computer over getting good grades. It took me a while to get to university but when I did I ended up an excellent GPA. Classes never started before 9, go figure.
daddosi 9y ago
Interesting stuff but night owls could also go to bed early, drink a bit less etc I mean, bioritm it isnt the only datapoint.
- hodl 9y ago
  If they could simply sleep earlier they wouldn't be night owls. Not sure how drink is coreleated with night owlism.
  - daddosi 9y ago
    My hypothesis is that partying hard might also negatively influence school results.
- digitaltrees 9y ago
  what about shift workers that work at night. Lots of evidence that their health is damaged because they are forced to live off cycle with their normal sleep patterns.
2sk21 9y ago
I've been getting up at 4am since I started high school and am at my peak alertness 5am - 7am. Based on the comments I'm seeing here, would that suggest that I am in a small minority among tech workers?
Spooky23 9y ago
Is it biological clock or bedtime? My son goes to bed at 8:30. He wakes up at 6. That wasn’t a biological imperative — we made him go to sleep early.
AStellersSeaCow 9y ago
I don't doubt that the findings are the case, I've experienced it myself and seen it in plenty others. What I would've liked to see in the paper, though, is more proof of the cause-and-effect relationship's weight here: do people who naturally stay up late get worse grades, or do people who get worse grades end up with worse sleep habits? I'd guess there's some degree of both, but without the study being more longitudinal (eg, tracking the same population across their entire time in college to see how their grades and sleep habits relate) it's hard to say. Purely anecdotally, I've seen people who start struggling (for reasons that have nothing to do with sleep) drift into a depressive/withdrawn existence that includes insomnia and sleeping late.
- Symmetry 9y ago
  There are tons of lab experiments showing people's ability to learn goes down when they're sleep deprived. Memory consolidation seems to be one of the principle reasons sleep and given all the in-lab double blind studies it would be amazing if people getting less sleep didn't do worse in school. Which isn't to say that this particular paper or article proves that.
  - matwood 9y ago
    > There are tons of lab experiments showing people's ability to learn goes down when they're sleep deprived. I get that, but instead of immediately jumping to sleeping later maybe we should look at why kids appear to be going to bed later. All of the devices and distractions have likely pushed people to stay up later and later. Maybe the fix is not to move school times, but have parents take devices away at a reasonable time.
    - Symmetry 9y ago
      Generally speaking young children will tend to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier than their parents and adolescents will go to bed later and wake up later. It's true that electric lights and computer screens have exacerbated the problem of teenagers wanting to sleep in but they didn't cause them in the first place.
ThomPete 9y ago
For what it's worth my son is at one of the best performing schools in NY State (Top 3%). They meet at 7.45AM every morning and get most of the learning done while they are the freshest. I am not convinced this study actually proves that but need to dig deeper in.
- digitaltrees 9y ago
  I am at my freshest from 11pm to 2am. If I try to be productive at 8am it is a waste.
  - ThomPete 9y ago
    I am fresh early. The point is that this is on a school level not individual so I think the performance of my sons school is pretty important example of the the report probably not being very conclusive.
esfandia 9y ago
This is a problem for profs too!
JepZ 9y ago
> It may be time to tailor students’ class schedules to their natural biological rhythms... Why does everybody want to change the world around them and not just adapt themselves to the world, e.g.: 'To earn better grades, students should sync their biological rhythm to their class schedules.' While some might argue that it is not easy to do that, I would respond that such skill is invaluable for your life ahead. Granted, not every job requires such a skill, but many do. From my own experience, I can tell that exercising discipline to go to bed early paid off for my work experience and there are few things I hate more than being tired at work: While work hours wear on, you are not getting done anything either.
- matwood 9y ago
  But then when how will kids who play on their phones until 2am not be tired in class? /s
- nulagrithom 9y ago
  Conversely, I've suffered through being a night owl with 6am and 7am shifts for years by trying to force myself to bed early. I've tried it all: meditation, exercise, melatonin, sleeping pills, etc etc. I'm just not wired to be a morning person. So I gave up and asked if I could start coming in at 9am instead. Never felt better. The world can be surprisingly adaptive sometimes.
- digitaltrees 9y ago
  Because the body has a cycle of hormone release that makes people alert or tired at different times and trying to change it is almost impossible. There is a theory that we evolved different sleep schedules so that one member of a tribe would be awake at any point in time to be alert to danger. This is not a question of mere will or discipline. You try staying awake until 7am every night and see how it feels.
  - JepZ 9y ago
    Then humans must be different in that respect. In fact, I changed my sleep schedules multiple times in the last two years alone (from getting up at 6am to going to bed at 6am). The only constant seems to be that I require 8 hours of sleep. For a few days I can get by with 6 hours, but after a week or so with less than 8 hours I get kinda sick for as long as I don't catch up. However, while I feel that my body has some kind of cycle too, for me it is possible to adjust it over the course of a few weeks.
robertwiblin 9y ago
Am I reading this figure correctly, or does every group do better with evening classes? http://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/SJL-2-400.jpg http://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/SJL-2-40...
Dowwie 9y ago
My biological clock ate my homework
- digitaltrees 9y ago
  More like our stupid adherence to a common set schedule is harming a large portion of people but we still insist in all having only one set schedule.
lowbloodsugar 9y ago
The only reason I have a first is because I didn't go to class.
aj7 9y ago
Perhaps in classes where the grade is determined by parroting back what the professor says in class. It’s when (and how much) you study, not when class is that counts. Class just tells you what’s important to study.
- merinowool 9y ago
  If your day is ruined because you had to wake up at incompatible hour, you won't be able to learn much during that day, regardless if it is in class or in the evening at home as you'll be feeling fatigued.
  - aj7 9y ago
    Good point.
Zorlag 9y ago
This discussion is so old. Everybody knows that class schedules begin too early for kids. It's the teachers that keep later schedules from happening because they want their free time afterwards.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dna_nerd 9y ago
Wow, our society loves to blame our problems on other people and "the system". "Social jetlag correlates to GPA". Hmm, maybe the students who prioritized school and didn't go out drinking every night ended up doing better. You don't "deserve" good grades just because you're smart. Work hard for it. Get up early. Go to bed. Prioritize. Give something up. That's how life works.
- merinowool 9y ago
  As a "night owl" having trouble to adjust to schedules imposed by "early birds" I find your comment offensive. I don't drink alcohol nor take drugs and didn't go to parties because I found it mostly a waste of time. I worked hard, but it is impossible to be good, when you are constantly sleep deprived.
  - dna_nerd 9y ago
    I'm a night owl too. I dealt with it. It wasn't easy - you have to be disciplined with sleeping schedules. I have to work out every morning to push my body awake. I have to eat right. I have to get regulation lights and blockout curtains and earplugs and meditate before sleep. Good things have never been easy.
    - merinowool 9y ago
      You see this is a struggle - you either keep up working against your body or you are out. People who are not night owls don't have to do all that. I don't think you should dedicate your life to keep sleep schedule that is not compatible with your body - this is a dead end and recipe for depression to say the least. Instead of making living a chore I decided to accept my situation and adapt - that means I now do freelancing and I am able to set my work hours as I see fit. I have never been happier, but that means I am unable to undertake "normal" work anymore.
- digitaltrees 9y ago
  Maybe if we recognize biological differences and structure society to align with that diversity we will get better performance out of everyone. I think it’s kind of insane that we all cram onto roads at the exact time so we can get to the office at the exact time. Why not have staggered schedules; especially if that means better performance from more people.
Improvotter 9y ago
As a college student that doesn't get to pick what times he can take classes, let alone pick any of them myself. I am dumbfounded by the amount of people who think that an 8AM class is out of the ordinary. I've got 4 out of 5 days where I have classes at 8:15AM.
bootcat 9y ago
Yoga and Ancient Indian technology has already talked about BrahmaMuhurtha, which is the apt time for meditation and thus time to practice any skill required. BrahmaMuhurtha (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmamuhurtha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmamuhurtha).
merinowool 9y ago
I was never able to hold a 9-5 job. I could manage a year, but during that year I was just physically and mentally exhausted. I just cannot wake up earlier than 8 and at the same time I am unable to get to sleep earlier than 10. In the morning I was asleep and feeling productive in the evening when I was commuting back home. My performance was really bad and employer didn't think I am a good worker. My only choice was to go freelancing where I can adapt work to my waking hours. I think it should be illegal for employers to force 9-5.
noobermin 9y ago
As cute as this is why is this published in sci rep!? is this that revolutionary? If there were more reasons for me to lose even more faith in academia.
troupe 9y ago
I suspect that many of these issues would go away if artificial lighting wasn't involved.
dzonga 9y ago
It's all about the industrial complex design, during the industrial revolution. Kids are supposed to sit in rows, show up to school on time, so they can fit in easily in the factories when they come of age. Also since child labor, was abolished, that means parents who work at factories have to drop their kids of at 0745 School time, so they can catch the buggy / walk to the factory. Once you take the work element, out you'll notice no kids needs to spend 8-10 hours at school. But now since our 'work' is no longer mechanical but more 'conceptual' we've to make school only places to socialize.
ada1981 9y ago
"High-school sports represent one of the most consistent roadblocks barring change (of school start times)." https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/04/how-school-start-times-affect-high-school-athletics/522537/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/04/how-sc...
mschuster91 9y ago
This is nothing new. The problem is that it won't change - many people, when asked about education, seem to be of the opinion that if they could endure the hardships in their youth (getting up way too early, walking sometimes one to two hours to school, cruel teachers, corporal punishment - yes this is a thing, even in the USA it's still legal in many places -, "physical education" aka "survival of the fittest") then their children should suffer the same fate. In addition (though this is Germany-specific) the "elite" of society (which were in the Gymnasium and send their kids there too) will resist fiercely any movement to a more equal system which does not separate children onto fixed tracks so that their privileges are not being cut (or watered down, when it comes to laxer admission criteria for Gymnasien). Parents, especially concerned and wealthy ones, are a powerful group of voters. Ideally education should be taken away from political influence entirely and given into the hands of actual experts...
ninjakeyboard 9y ago
Is there some other correlation between owls and being owls that's excluded from this study? Do they tend to use drugs or alcohol more? Do they tend to date more? Do they tend to watch more television? Play video games more late at night? This is an interesting study that doesn't necessarily suggest later class times will fix the issue but this could be a bit of a "wicked problem" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem
campuscodi 9y ago
That's funny. I remember doing just fine in school at 8 am.
tariqp 9y ago
Question here is, is it really that hard to go from night owl to morning lark or daytime finch...? I have done this myself just by adjusting my sleep schedule.

910 points by dpflan 9y ago

In my experience at Intel where people were reprimanded if they weren't in the office before 8 AM I also saw bad code tied to times that didn't match the developer's biological clock :-).

timerol 9y ago

Looking at the chart in the middle of the article brings up more questions than it answers. Maybe it's the weird 3D perspective, but it looks like all groups get better grades in evening classes. Furthermore, it looks like finches do better in all categories than larks, and owls always do the worst. This seems to argue against the points that the article puts forth.

knightofmars 9y ago
"Owls performed worst of all the groups due to chronic social jet lag"
WhompingWindows 9y ago
I wouldn't mistake the findings from the media relations writer from the actual authors' findings: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23044-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23044-8

PebblesHD 9y ago

I’ve found these recent studies interesting in that they seem to confirm what many young people have been saying for a long time. I’ve always struggled to wake myself up of a morning and found that most classes earlier than about 10am were pretty much forgotten come end of semester. Not sure how American schools organise timetables but the two weekly cycle of class times went some way to compensate for this by changing which class was first meaning you wouldn’t fall drastically behind in one specifically because it was earliest. Things have of course changed since leaving school and my sleep patterns have changed significantly, and I can see immediately how trying to make a school student conform to such a cycle would be a poor idea, but I wonder if some time soon I’ll forget being young and start seeing the world like so many leaders seem to with no regard at all for what it was like growing up.

VLM 9y ago

Do we like to tell ourselves the purpose of school is academics or athletics? If athletics, school must start as early as possible, so "away" outdoor games can be held outside in sunlight and "away" teams can get home at a reasonable hour. If academics, school should start as late as possible, so students (and instructors!) can do class prep immediately before class and/or sleep in. Its interesting that the only acceptable model of alternative education is essentially "pick your major in high school" such that there are art high schools or music high schools or aviation high schools, etc. And of course religious schools that have been around for centuries. However there are no business model schools based on priority, like a school with no athletics program that focuses on academics. The real purpose of school is lowering unemployment by increasing babysitting years, along with raising the bar as a filter to reduce the number of "successful" kids needing jobs. Certainly we have far too much academics for our economy and culture to hold them.

adamnemecek 9y ago
How could athletics be the purpose of school?
- sambull 9y ago
  Social context? During a war, there might be more focus on producing fit troops. Or a even a primary focus on providing resources to the military.
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    I really dont want to be a fodder for the military? Would it not make more sense to concentrate on problems that are now as opposed to possibles? The current place of athletics in the school system really fucks things up.
- monocasa 9y ago
  From my school (an affluent top tier high school), the athletics department did have a larger say than academics. I think it had more to do with how loud and how much energy athletics had towards getting their way (and the parents reeeally cared about football. This was hardcore SEC territory), vs how much spare time the teachers had. I don't think it was explicitly pro athletics vs academics, but it certainly was systemically.

patorjk 9y ago

> night owls were especially vulnerable, many appearing so chronically jet-lagged that they were unable to perform optimally at any time of day. I experienced this with an 8am biology class I was required to take. It wrecked my whole day. About 1/3 of the way through I just started skipping the class and then later getting notes of the lecture from a friend of mine. It ended up working dramatically well. I got an A, while my friend who got up every MWF to take the notes, got a B. It was kind of a wild result since my studying was based almost entirely on her notes. I hadn't given it too much thought, but it would make sense if being sleep deprived is what hurt her in this case.

lostctown 9y ago
I'd say you owe that friend a round or two.
existencebox 9y ago
Anecdotally, (and as a story for anyone similar to me/with kids similar to how I was) I spent most of my life until college thinking that school/learning was the most miserable process in the world, and that I was terrible at it. It turns out, waking up at ~6 every morning, and usually not going to bed until 10/12 thanks to after school classes and homework, left me with less sleep than I even need to be functional now as an adult and turned highschool into a special sort of "kid jail". I got punished innumerable times for sleeping in class, and probably spent more time by % fighting to keep my eyes open than I did paying attention. (I had at least one teacher who threw chalk at students who slept, it was such a common occasion) This changed like a lightswitch when in college I was able to assert that I didn't take any classes before 10. By the end of my masters I had a 4.0 (highschool had been a struggle to maintain a 3.0 with much easier classes), although it took most of that time to re-learn how to learn and pay attention. The difference was so stark it puts a fire in my belly just to think about the amount of resistance I've seen to changing this status quo. I recognize this is "for adults/work" but as a working adult I refuse to concede that we can't come up with a solution that doesn't so entirely steamroll some kids for being wired to need more sleep.
otoburb 9y ago
This strategy worked well for me too until Circuit Theory. As an "early morning"[] class it was easy to bum the notes from somebody else, but the darn quizzes tanked my grades enough that I had to repeat the course the next available semester. Before Children

zaroth 9y ago

Our school district just spent the last year trying to convince parents we should shuffle around start times to make high school later and elementary school earlier. It was a complete clusterfuck. Both teacher and parents alike at both the elementary and the high schools all had a million reasons why it couldn’t possibly work. Since there are a limited number of buses which are shared, you can’t move one start time without moving the other. It came up at every school event, sports practice, kids party, to the point where I would just walk away when people starting bitching about it one way or another. The biggest issue was we had a new superintendent who wanted to “start a dialogue” about the start times rather than actually make a policy change. It took up hundreds of hours in PTO, Administrative, and Town Hall meetings and of course ended up in absolutely no change in the end. Everyone’s opinion of course had to be heard, whether it was a longer commute that a teacher would have, or then not having time to drop off their own child before getting to class, or impacting afternoon sports, or the something about the bus route, or... Of course none of the debate actually addressed if students would possible learn better from it. I was so glad when they finally sent out the email saying they were dropping it just so that I wouldn’t have to hear the constant bickering. It was like an engineering team with no lead and a non-technical manager arguing over what DBMS to use where no decision could be made until everyone agreed we had the “right” solution!

candu 9y ago
A cynical explanation here would be: those in charge wanted the appearance of having considered these changes without the headache / political risk of actually changing them.
- zaroth 9y ago
  Absolutely correct. The superintendent didn’t have the clout necessary to pull it off. What I think she underestimated was the sheer volume of discussion which would ensure which basically made it impossible to get any other policy changes done last year.
robterrell 9y ago
It's happening where I live too. It's amazing how quickly the discussion moves past "what's best for students" and into the "it's annoying to me personally" and "when I was a kid, we suffered" conversations.

brightball 9y ago

I can definitely confirm this from my time in college at least. I had an 8am, 4 day a week calculus class my first semester that I was only taking to get an easy A since I already had the AP credit. Ended up dropping it and my grades in every other class improved. My best semester by far was one in which I somehow managed to schedule all of my classes after 2pm until about 9pm.

macmccann 9y ago

The problem in college is bad, but the problem is some high schools is even worse. At high schools without block scheduling, every day might be a 6 am alarm to get to school by 7:00.

froindt 9y ago
Block scheduling was absolutely amazing, and I'm so glad I had access to it. My school did "modified block" with skinny classes (40 minutes) and blocks (85 minute). The only skinny classes were math, music, and foreign language, all of which seem to have a big benefit from going the full year. The concept of trying to do a chemistry or physics lab in 40 minutes sounded awful. My high school ran from 8:45-3:10. Morning activities were typically 7-8 or 8:15, so you could still drop by teachers classrooms before school started.
sudosteph 9y ago
6am is when the bus picked me up in highschool (start time was 7:15). Wakeup alarm was 5:15. It was awful.

endymi0n 9y ago

I used to have lots of problems getting up early and always championed later times. Growing up through my twenties, it was great seeing finally seeing more and more evidence for a later school start and I was hopeful for future teens. But it wasn't until my first kid that I finally understood that school doesn't start this early because it's good for the learning experience. It starts this early so parents can get their kids to school and start working afterwards, without getting fired.

brightball 9y ago
Schools can still help with this by trying to schedule the core academic stuff later in the the day and the less mentally intense stuff like PE earlier in the morning. My kids' elementary school actually does this. They tell parents "if your child has a doctor's appointment or needs to be out for a portion of the day, schedule it at the beginning or end of the day to make sure they don't miss anything important."
- madcaptenor 9y ago
  I wonder how they schedule that. Does that mean that all PE classes (assuming PE is part of the "unimportant" category) are either at the beginning or the end of the day? What does the PE teacher do in the middle of the day, then?
  - cmpb 9y ago
    Often PE teachers (and coaches) are also teachers. My civics, geography and geometry teachers were all football coaches. Incidentally, they were also not very learned in their respective courses.
    - importantbrian 9y ago
      This was the same for us. The exception was the teacher that made me fall in love with history as a subject. He was also an assistant basketball coach, but he was passionate about history.

mi100hael 9y ago

At the same time, the point of college for most kids is to prepare them for a white collar job. If there's a huge client meeting at 10am and there's still 3 hours of preparation to do before they arrive, no one's going to be very sympathetic to the excuse that you have "social jet lag." Expecting college adults to get out of bed before 10 is hardly a substantial burden.

AndrewDucker 9y ago
If you have a huge meeting at 10am and three hours of prep - then work late the previous day.
jessaustin 9y ago
This really depends on the firm. If important aspects of the business take place early, then sure you have to be there early. If not, you might have to be there early anyway because reasons, but then again you might not.
maxerickson 9y ago
There's a difference between the occasional early start to prepare for a meeting and a default schedule that is just stupid.
otakucode 9y ago
Adolescence is not permanent. Adolescents require significantly more sleep than any other age group, so the jet lag would be substantially reduced for adults.
InitialLastName 9y ago
If it's Monday afternoon, you know you have a big meeting at 10AM Tuesday, you know you have 3 hours more of prep to do, and you know you're ineffective in the early morning, why not work later to cover that prep? This sounds like a procrastination problem more than a night owl problem.
projektir 9y ago
Except there's no reason to prepare anything here because the problem is biological. It's simply easier to wake up early as an adult. Just like many others things are easier for physical reasons that society keeps trying to "teach".

sk1pper 9y ago

Isn’t your chronotype fairly mutable though? With some dedication and a couple weeks you can adjust to waking up whenever. Especially at college age. Obviously lifestyle could be limiting if you’re trying to start waking up at 6am, but if you’re optimizing for GPA, then you’re gonna have to make lifestyle sacrifices anyway

Retric 9y ago
If you are willing to use window blackout blinds and sunlamps on timers then it's not that hard. However, in collage with a roommate that's not necessarily possible.
PeterStuer 9y ago
I did that. It took me seven years, so 'a couple of weeks' is a bit of an understatement.
darkkindness 9y ago
In practice, it's just a little slightly harder than you say, when you have a roommate who shuts the blinds every morning and keeps a white desk light on at night.
Symmetry 9y ago
That's only somewhat true. If you're exposed to sunlight during the day, much brighter than a lit room, it will tend to have an influence on your circadian rhythm. You might be able to sleep at arbitrary offsets but the quality of your sleep will suffer. Though wearing sunglasses when outside during the morning will help you get to sleep later and wearing them outside during the afternoon will help you sleep earlier. And I'm not aware of research showing a problem with shifting your sleep to arbitrary offsets if you're never exposed to sunlight, though that might have other bad effects.

maaaats 9y ago

That's what I loved most about my college/university: no mandatory attendance. Could wake up when I wanted, and start studying at a more suitable time. I also have a hard time following multiple lectures during the same day. So a nice additional effect was that I, instead of attending, would study more efficiently in my own way.

tjr225 9y ago

I dropped out of high school partly because waking up was such a painful experience for me. Of course as an adult I wake up at 5:45-6AM.

projektir 9y ago
Waking up as an adult is so much easier. I recall my high school days were absolutely awful, I could never wake up properly in the morning and I zombie-made coffee and then zombie-walked to school. Right now, if I need to wake up at 6 AM, for one, it's much easier to just shift my schedule, and for another, even if I don't get as many hours of sleep it just doesn't hit me all that hard. And I think people judge teenagers off of the adult scale, which is completely off...

anotheryou 9y ago

I like how it shows that getting up early ruins the whole day. I have to come an hour early for a meeting every other week and it's always a challenging day... Getting up ~9am is the point at which it doesn't effect my performance anymore (I'd still prefer shifting my sleep phase even further). Sadly this only worked for a job once in my career.

justherefortart 9y ago
Go to bed earlier. I get up early and have since High School. All I do is make sure I go to bed at a reasonable hour. Going to work, lunch, home early is friggin awesome. Avoiding rush hour, saving me roughly 1 hour a day in traffic, is fantastic. Plus it gives me time to do any personal things in the early afternoon without affecting my work schedule.
- anotheryou 9y ago
  Yea, that's the "compatibility mode" I'm running on: strictly going to bed at 11pm. I sadly really miss the nights and have to force myself to do this daily. Here in europe daylight saving time just ended, now I have go to bed an hour earlier from one day to another. It took me out for 4 days (really bad performance) and the first 2 days I stayed awake in bed so long I became more awake again before managing to fall asleep.
  - justherefortart 9y ago
    I go to bed between 8-9pm, rarely as late as 10pm. Going to bed means I'm reading a book (physical, not digital) and winding myself down from the day. I find exercising during the day helps immeasurably when trying to go to sleep at a reasonable hour (based on your own schedule). Also limiting caffeine after lunch. To people that say it's impossible, maybe it is. I did have a late schedule for a few years in college (waiting tables until close). I still scheduled my classes for 9/10am at the latest starting time though. Maybe my working out when I get up helps as well. Plus personal discipline (both going to bed and getting up regularly). I get 8-9 hours of sleep every night outside of rare exceptions. My mom said I've been this way since childhood. I would never give up sleep to stay up late, unless absolutely necessary. My high school buddies would give me hell during the week, but I got up at 5:30am for my early bird weightlifting every day. So 9pm was "late" for me.

sheana_ahlqvist 9y ago

It's frustrating that we let antiquated systems remain in the face of new data indicating that the system could be improved. I don't think it's ANYONE's goal to let some people get worse grades just because. Generally, the goal of schooling is to get everyone to a better, more knowledgeable version of themselves in preparation for the world.

projektir 9y ago
> Generally, the goal of schooling is to get everyone to a better, more knowledgeable version of themselves in preparation for the world. Call me cynical, but I seriously doubt that this is the actual goal of schooling for pretty much anyone. The real purpose of school seems to be a) to get rid of kids so they're not muddling about in early hours; b) to generate a hierarchy of kids so we can figure out who to put in the lower castes.

wpasc 9y ago

I disagree with ideas that school schedules should shift later. I am a night owl myself, but our "natural" sleep cycle certainly more or less falls in line with school times. We have fully disrupted our circadian rhythms with our lifestyles and especially screens/lights at night. Before artificial light, our sleep/wake schedule was set by the sun. I know we live in a different world today, but I feel like shifting our schedule because of poor sleep hygiene and bad light habits is kind of reinforcing a bad habit. Whose to say that the shift wouldn't just perpetuate itself even after a shift of 1 hour later.

ghaff 9y ago
Like many I was certainly a night owl in college. But this idea that it’s impossible for students to change their sleep schedules seems... odd. By that logic no one could ever move across time zones. College students in particular tend to like to stay up late for social and other reasons. But that’s different from being unable to get up earlier. It also isn’t only classes that are early but some athletics as well.
cgriswald 9y ago
It is a mischaracterization to say this is all the result of bad habits. Asking teens and young adults to perform between 6 and 9 is like asking a fully mature adult to perform between 3 and 6. > I am a night owl myself, but our "natural" sleep cycle certainly more or less falls in line with school times. This is absolutely not true for adolescents continuing through young adulthood. Adolescents naturally have a delay in morning alertness levels compared to fully mature adults and other children and also have sleepiness set in more slowly/later in the evening than either other group. It is not (necessarily) poor sleep hygiene which causes teens to stay up later, but their own biological processes. > Before artificial light, our sleep/wake schedule was set by the sun. This seems to be an argument in favor of changing times. My highschool started at 7:10. Assuming I woke up an hour before to shower, dress, and catch the bus, that means I had to wake before the sun every day of my highschool career. The only time the sun rose earlier than 6:10 was during the summer when I didn't have school.
- dcosson 9y ago

pithymaxim 9y ago

Similar argument in this paper but with better methods and data--2 million LA middle schoolers! http://home.uchicago.edu/~npope/morning_afternoon.pdf http://home.uchicago.edu/~npope/morning_afternoon.pdf

ribs 9y ago

YA DON’T SAY

projektir 9y ago

Unfortunately, the summary on this issue appears to be "nobody cares". Including the parents themselves. Teenagers do not really have rights so it's going to be very hard to change this.

Balgair 9y ago

This study was done on college students, not elementary and HS students, college students at Cal. There are a lot of caveats here and trying to apply them to elementary education is good, but outside the scope. Aside: If you really want test scores to improve, give the kids food. My SO is an educator and she's had kids come in that only get food at school. All weekend they may only eat a bag of Cheetos, sometimes up to 2/3 kids on Monday mronings. School breakfast and lunch are sometime the only food they get. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/05/03/how-the-quality-of-school-lunch-affects-students-academic-performance/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/...

WhompingWindows 9y ago
Yes, feeding low-income students is critical. However, we have to ask if the school-lunches provided are indeed better than a bag of Cheetos? I worked in the top 3 worst middle school in my state in the poorest city in my state, and I found their school lunches to largely be processed carbs like pizza, burger+fries with no veggies. The veggies that were on offer were in tiny sauce-containers that hardly any of the kids grabbed. Furthermore, those veggies were usually carrots or cucumbers, the former of which is high in glycemic index, and the latter of which contains hardly any micronutrients. So, from a nutritional perspective, yes the calories are good for the low income students, but the food was still terrible for them overall.
- Afton 9y ago
  > However, we have to ask if the school-lunches provided are indeed better than a bag of Cheetos? I think that we can answer that question with a fairly emphatic 'yes'.
- sjg007 9y ago
  Well the protein is good for them. Also they probably got milk as well.
- fwip 9y ago
  "Is a burger actually less nutritious that a Cheeto? The answer may surprise you."

misterbowfinger 9y ago

original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23044-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23044-8 abstract: Misalignments between endogenous circadian rhythms and the built environment (i.e., social jet lag, SJL) result in learning and attention deficits. Currently, there is no way to assess the impact of SJL on learning outcomes of large populations as a response to schedule choices, let alone to assess which individuals are most negatively impacted by these choices. We analyzed two years of learning management system login events for 14,894 Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) students to investigate the capacity of such systems as tools for mapping the impact of SJL over large populations while maintaining the ability to generate insights about individuals. Personal daily activity profiles were validated against known biological timing effects, and revealed a majority of students experience more than 30 minutes of SJL on average, with greater amplitude correlating strongly with a significant decrease in academic performance, especially in people with later apparent chronotypes. Our findings demonstrate that online records can be used to map individual- and population-level SJL, allow deep mining for patterns across demographics, and could guide schedule choices in an effort to minimize SJL’s negative impact on learning outcomes.

importantbrian 9y ago

I am a night owl, and I have found that this has carried over into my adult life as well. Jobs, where butts in seats at an early hour are required or even just strongly encouraged, have presented problems for me.

monster_group 9y ago

I am more than half way through the book "Why we sleep?" by Matthew Walker and it is not a surprise to me that misalignment of circadian rhythm with class schedules results in poor grades. The book goes into great detail on the importance of getting eight hours of sleep on a regular schedule. Getting less than eight hours of sleep is tied to every imaginable disease and poor memory. I highly recommend reading the book. https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316 https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501...

merinowool 9y ago
Does it offer any solution?

WhompingWindows 9y ago

Great study, really interesting. I'd like to see a follow-up study with the following design: Find high schools with rotating class schedules (i.e. math is at a different time of day each day for 6 days, then loop that), then find high schools with fixed schedules (i.e. math is always first period for some students). Then, compare performance of night owls in the two different schools. Theoretically, if the authors' study is generalizable from college to HS, then the night-owls should do significantly worse in the early AM classes in the non-rotating school, and significantly better in the early PM classes in the non-rotating school.

mcbreezy 9y ago

I always struggled in school, waking up, even as an adult, HAVING to wake up at a particular time, five times a week just made me feel terrible.

WhompingWindows 9y ago

Here's the link to the actual source article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23044-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-23044-8

macawfish 9y ago

To bad there are authority figures out here who are downright sadistic about this.

thriftwy 9y ago
Anything happened to downvote button?

iMuzz 9y ago

I firmly believe that one of the reasons I personally did poorly in high school was because I had to be in my first class by 7:30 A.M.

nategri 9y ago

Might go a little ways toward explaining how I got a D the grading period integrals were introduced in my 7:30am AP Calc class, yet still ended up as a physics PhD.

sjg007 9y ago
I was saved by the AP exams. Basically the teachers would retroactively give an A if you got a 4 or bette (might of been a 5).

ada1981 9y ago

Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Favor After School Football Practice. Seriously, much of America is so entranced by high school football that entire district schedules are oriented around ensuring ample practice time after school. It determines bus schedules and school start times for the entire district and all students.

nemothekid 9y ago
The article doesn't support that, it doesn't make sense for a vast majority of school districts - especially inner city ones. Another commenter made more sense - early class times give parents time before work to prepare their kids for school. This football angle is ridiculous. If it were true, wouldn't colleges and universities suffer from the same standard?
- jedberg 9y ago
  College kids don't all start and end at the same time. At big football schools, they do in fact offer the courses that the majority of football players take early in the morning. But at least the rest of us could choose classes that started at 10am instead.
- ada1981 9y ago
  Oh, it's ridiculous, and a pretty well known reason for anyone who has studied US public education. Here is one such article: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/04/how-school-start-times-affect-high-school-athletics/522537/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/04/how-sc... You'll find case after case of local newspapers reporting on school board meetings where requests to move the start time were met with fierce opposition by athletic directors, etc. Both my parents were educators (my mom ran special education for a school district, my father ended his career as Dean of the School of Ed @ Edinboro) and for a time I ran the countries top education blog. All three of us encountered this obstacle to sensible school scheduling across a variety of different schools and districts. I'd say it's the leading obstacle that I've seen when you look at local district opposition.
  - 9y ago

applecrazy 9y ago

I’m a Bay Area high school student and schools in this area have tried adopting these late start times. However, they were faced with intense community resistance, with parents pushing against that idea as it interferes with extracurriculars and childcare. I recently watched a PBS Frontline documentary back from 2002 that discussed this issue, and even then parents were extremely resistant to change.

polskibus 9y ago

I wonder if the study corrects for students that just stay up late for parties, etc., and just strip themselves of sleep when it could be avoided. It's quite easy to move your bioclock forward bit by bit, esp.for social reasons. It is very hard to roll it back (some studies suggest it's better to just roll it forward more and more instead)

PeterStuer 9y ago

I used to be a typical 'owl' as a student and when I worked in research. My peak performance hour were from 10pm to 4am. When you get kids and an 'industry' job, that isn't an option. It took me about 7 years to switch. Now I'm a true morning person. Best hours are now from 6am to 2pm. Afternoons are horror though. I can barely stay awake 2pm - 5pm.

jzymbaluk 9y ago
How did you make that switch? I'm having a lot of trouble in the transition from night owl to early bird and I could use any advice I can get
- sjg007 9y ago
  Go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. Force yourself up. Also exercise can help in the morning.
- barry-cotter 9y ago
  It happens naturally as you get older. There’s nothing you can do to hasten the transition. Regular exercise helps with sleep but if you stop the effects on sleep end.
- PeterStuer 9y ago
  Getting up 7/7 at the exact same time. Exercise, mostly cardio. But I don't know if there is any causal relation.

matte_black 9y ago

This just sounds like more excuses. I know plenty of people who got to class at 7:30 AM on the dot and excelled with straight A's. I never had a problem. So what's different?

sjg007 9y ago
Some kids can do it. Some go to sleep earlier and wake up refreshed. Some don't, it's biological that's all. I wish I'd gone to bed earlier in high school but I was wired to stay up late. Same in college. It wasn't until I started working that I got to bed earlier. And after having kids man I can go to bed at 8pm easy.
- lolsal 9y ago
  > Some don't, it's biological that's all. That really sounds like we're hand-waving away what is happening. The biology might be an effect, not a cause.
  - sjg007 9y ago
    Did you even read the article? It’s about biological circadian rhythms.
- matte_black 9y ago
  Then it’s better to “rewire” these kids before they get to the real world and have to wake up early, or else they will be poor performers.
  - merinowool 9y ago
    It is not possible.
    - matte_black 9y ago
      Then their fate is sealed.

Grieverheart 9y ago

During college, I used to play WoW. I think my biological clock was messed up because of it, not because that was my natural biological rhythm. Also, because of the amount of hours I put into WoW, I did not have many hours left to study, affecting my academic performance. Thus, I wonder if the performance is really linked to the biological rhythm, or rather that the biological rhythm is a sign of activities impacting academic performance.

caust1c 9y ago
I'm with you there. I think the article is bullshit. We are in control of when we go to sleep, and ultimately that determines our circadian rhythm. Not some mysterious unknown force. The correlation with alcohol and drug abuse is a cause not a result. I was very much in the camp of playing video games all night long but I didn't kid myself about early class times being the cause for my struggle. * Disclaimer: IANA doctor/biologist. Point me to a study that says we can't control when we go to sleep (aside from other health factors including insomnia).
- cma 9y ago
  There are plenty of studies on what night shift does to people who have a normal circadian rythym. It isn't pretty.
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    Yes, but is that the jet lag effect from repeatedly switching times or just being awake at night?
    - e12e 9y ago
      Both. And the social strain of not being able to meet people that work on regular schedules. I seem to recall that working just regular night shifts (eg 2300-0700) will cut an average 5 years off your life. Rotating shifts with half+ during night is even worse.
9y ago

rhemgla_corp 9y ago

This bio-electric alarm clock would probably be the best option for those of you that can’t get up in the morning: https://2no.co/1QyvB6 https://2no.co/1QyvB6

Rotdhizon 9y ago

It was shown long ago that your brain doesn't fully wake up anyways until something like 10 AM I believe, if not more like 11 AM or noon. Having students get to school at 6-8 AM is just wasting resources. As some have pointed out though, this runs much deeper than people give credit for. The 8-4 schedule of schools isn't due to random choice, it's built around the entire country from the ground up operating on that type of schedule. People need a system where kids can get sent off to school in a way that doesn't impact adults getting to and from work. If schools started even an hour later, I'd bet at least a few million parents would face hardships in adjusting to get their kids to school and maintain their current job. Of course there are more efficient times that we could use for school, but they would break the fragile system the US already has in place. Block scheduling has alleviated the knowledge loss to an extent(imo). By changing from the full 7-8 classes per day schedule to 3-4 classes every day, students can retain more information because they are in each class longer. That also means your homework schedule is drastically less stressful. I don't see any major changes coming to school times. The issue needs to be discussed, but what really can be done about it?

jmulho 9y ago
School could be 8AM to 5PM to coincide with parents work schedule, but don't start any serious classes until 10AM.

adam-fn 9y ago

Lewis Black [1] made this observation (with less diplomatic language) back in 2004: ... I flunked that course. It's not my fault. They taught it at 8 o'clock in the morning. And there is absolutely nothing that you can learn out of one bloodshot eye. After I flunked the first two tests, I grabbed the professor by the throat and I said, "Why are you teaching this **** at this ungodly hour? Are you *trying* to keep this stuff a secret?" [1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414224/quotes/qt0252382 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414224/quotes/qt0252382

mcrocop 9y ago

You're not doing students any favors with this sort of coddling. If someone NEEDS a tailor-made schedule to fit in order for them to be academically competitive what can we expect of them when they get into the real world and are forced to deal head on with aggressive competition? You're breeding cattle for slaughter with this sort of nonsense.

cbhl 9y ago

> Overall, men stay up later than women I would be careful about concluding that women and men have different biological clocks from this observation. I feel like society strongly discourages women from staying up late (constantly telling them it is unsafe / will make them ugly / suggests they are sexually active).

Symmetry 9y ago

Unlike those of us in STEM most high schoolers or college students don't end up using anything they fail to remember because they're only getting 6 hour of sleep a night. I'm a lot more concerned with the link between poor sleep and poor mental health.

enknamel 9y ago

Can't biological clocks change? Or are there really populations of people who have a truly different clock? Or is it a result of their environment? Personally I've been a night owl and a morning person alternating between the two throughout my life by choice.

Eric_WVGG 9y ago
Sure. Mine, and I think many others, changed precisely when I went through puberty. Early riser before, late riser after and ever since. My grades (predictably) crashed early in high school, didn't start to recover until I discovered coffee. But that couldn't be found in my Utah high school, of course, so I either had to sneak a cup in or find someplace to "joe up" during lunch. Additionally, six years ago I moved into an apartment with a huge east-facing window. Now I'm a natural morning person again — during the summer months.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
digitaltrees 9y ago
There is an actual hormone release cycle and people have different timing. You can affect it somewhat with light therapy but only by an hour or two.

Taylor_OD 9y ago

It's weird how much we pretend like sleep doesnt rule our lives.

phil248 9y ago
I've often thought the same thing about using the bathroom.

superobserver 9y ago

Night owl here. Didn't need this study to tell me what I already know. That is all.

noobly 9y ago

>there isn’t a one-time-fits-all solution for education. Recorded online lectures beg to differ!

musgrove 9y ago

Seems like work schedules would parallel this finding.

ErikAugust 9y ago

I was a miserable high school student. Both miserable in feeling, and my grades were atrocious. School started just after seven AM, and I never slept more than 4 hours. The only time the phone line was available for me to use my modem was at night so I preferred using my computer over getting good grades. It took me a while to get to university but when I did I ended up an excellent GPA. Classes never started before 9, go figure.

daddosi 9y ago

Interesting stuff but night owls could also go to bed early, drink a bit less etc I mean, bioritm it isnt the only datapoint.

hodl 9y ago
If they could simply sleep earlier they wouldn't be night owls. Not sure how drink is coreleated with night owlism.
- daddosi 9y ago
  My hypothesis is that partying hard might also negatively influence school results.
digitaltrees 9y ago
what about shift workers that work at night. Lots of evidence that their health is damaged because they are forced to live off cycle with their normal sleep patterns.

2sk21 9y ago

I've been getting up at 4am since I started high school and am at my peak alertness 5am - 7am. Based on the comments I'm seeing here, would that suggest that I am in a small minority among tech workers?

Spooky23 9y ago

Is it biological clock or bedtime? My son goes to bed at 8:30. He wakes up at 6. That wasn’t a biological imperative — we made him go to sleep early.

AStellersSeaCow 9y ago

I don't doubt that the findings are the case, I've experienced it myself and seen it in plenty others. What I would've liked to see in the paper, though, is more proof of the cause-and-effect relationship's weight here: do people who naturally stay up late get worse grades, or do people who get worse grades end up with worse sleep habits? I'd guess there's some degree of both, but without the study being more longitudinal (eg, tracking the same population across their entire time in college to see how their grades and sleep habits relate) it's hard to say. Purely anecdotally, I've seen people who start struggling (for reasons that have nothing to do with sleep) drift into a depressive/withdrawn existence that includes insomnia and sleeping late.

Symmetry 9y ago
There are tons of lab experiments showing people's ability to learn goes down when they're sleep deprived. Memory consolidation seems to be one of the principle reasons sleep and given all the in-lab double blind studies it would be amazing if people getting less sleep didn't do worse in school. Which isn't to say that this particular paper or article proves that.
- matwood 9y ago
  > There are tons of lab experiments showing people's ability to learn goes down when they're sleep deprived. I get that, but instead of immediately jumping to sleeping later maybe we should look at why kids appear to be going to bed later. All of the devices and distractions have likely pushed people to stay up later and later. Maybe the fix is not to move school times, but have parents take devices away at a reasonable time.
  - Symmetry 9y ago
    Generally speaking young children will tend to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier than their parents and adolescents will go to bed later and wake up later. It's true that electric lights and computer screens have exacerbated the problem of teenagers wanting to sleep in but they didn't cause them in the first place.

ThomPete 9y ago

For what it's worth my son is at one of the best performing schools in NY State (Top 3%). They meet at 7.45AM every morning and get most of the learning done while they are the freshest. I am not convinced this study actually proves that but need to dig deeper in.

digitaltrees 9y ago
I am at my freshest from 11pm to 2am. If I try to be productive at 8am it is a waste.
- ThomPete 9y ago
  I am fresh early. The point is that this is on a school level not individual so I think the performance of my sons school is pretty important example of the the report probably not being very conclusive.

esfandia 9y ago

This is a problem for profs too!

JepZ 9y ago

> It may be time to tailor students’ class schedules to their natural biological rhythms... Why does everybody want to change the world around them and not just adapt themselves to the world, e.g.: 'To earn better grades, students should sync their biological rhythm to their class schedules.' While some might argue that it is not easy to do that, I would respond that such skill is invaluable for your life ahead. Granted, not every job requires such a skill, but many do. From my own experience, I can tell that exercising discipline to go to bed early paid off for my work experience and there are few things I hate more than being tired at work: While work hours wear on, you are not getting done anything either.

matwood 9y ago
But then when how will kids who play on their phones until 2am not be tired in class? /s
nulagrithom 9y ago
Conversely, I've suffered through being a night owl with 6am and 7am shifts for years by trying to force myself to bed early. I've tried it all: meditation, exercise, melatonin, sleeping pills, etc etc. I'm just not wired to be a morning person. So I gave up and asked if I could start coming in at 9am instead. Never felt better. The world can be surprisingly adaptive sometimes.
digitaltrees 9y ago
Because the body has a cycle of hormone release that makes people alert or tired at different times and trying to change it is almost impossible. There is a theory that we evolved different sleep schedules so that one member of a tribe would be awake at any point in time to be alert to danger. This is not a question of mere will or discipline. You try staying awake until 7am every night and see how it feels.
- JepZ 9y ago
  Then humans must be different in that respect. In fact, I changed my sleep schedules multiple times in the last two years alone (from getting up at 6am to going to bed at 6am). The only constant seems to be that I require 8 hours of sleep. For a few days I can get by with 6 hours, but after a week or so with less than 8 hours I get kinda sick for as long as I don't catch up. However, while I feel that my body has some kind of cycle too, for me it is possible to adjust it over the course of a few weeks.

robertwiblin 9y ago

Am I reading this figure correctly, or does every group do better with evening classes? http://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/SJL-2-400.jpg http://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/SJL-2-40...

Dowwie 9y ago

My biological clock ate my homework

digitaltrees 9y ago
More like our stupid adherence to a common set schedule is harming a large portion of people but we still insist in all having only one set schedule.

lowbloodsugar 9y ago

The only reason I have a first is because I didn't go to class.

aj7 9y ago

Perhaps in classes where the grade is determined by parroting back what the professor says in class. It’s when (and how much) you study, not when class is that counts. Class just tells you what’s important to study.

merinowool 9y ago
If your day is ruined because you had to wake up at incompatible hour, you won't be able to learn much during that day, regardless if it is in class or in the evening at home as you'll be feeling fatigued.
- aj7 9y ago
  Good point.

Zorlag 9y ago

This discussion is so old. Everybody knows that class schedules begin too early for kids. It's the teachers that keep later schedules from happening because they want their free time afterwards.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dna_nerd 9y ago

Wow, our society loves to blame our problems on other people and "the system". "Social jetlag correlates to GPA". Hmm, maybe the students who prioritized school and didn't go out drinking every night ended up doing better. You don't "deserve" good grades just because you're smart. Work hard for it. Get up early. Go to bed. Prioritize. Give something up. That's how life works.

merinowool 9y ago
As a "night owl" having trouble to adjust to schedules imposed by "early birds" I find your comment offensive. I don't drink alcohol nor take drugs and didn't go to parties because I found it mostly a waste of time. I worked hard, but it is impossible to be good, when you are constantly sleep deprived.
- dna_nerd 9y ago
  I'm a night owl too. I dealt with it. It wasn't easy - you have to be disciplined with sleeping schedules. I have to work out every morning to push my body awake. I have to eat right. I have to get regulation lights and blockout curtains and earplugs and meditate before sleep. Good things have never been easy.
  - merinowool 9y ago
    You see this is a struggle - you either keep up working against your body or you are out. People who are not night owls don't have to do all that. I don't think you should dedicate your life to keep sleep schedule that is not compatible with your body - this is a dead end and recipe for depression to say the least. Instead of making living a chore I decided to accept my situation and adapt - that means I now do freelancing and I am able to set my work hours as I see fit. I have never been happier, but that means I am unable to undertake "normal" work anymore.
digitaltrees 9y ago
Maybe if we recognize biological differences and structure society to align with that diversity we will get better performance out of everyone. I think it’s kind of insane that we all cram onto roads at the exact time so we can get to the office at the exact time. Why not have staggered schedules; especially if that means better performance from more people.

Improvotter 9y ago

As a college student that doesn't get to pick what times he can take classes, let alone pick any of them myself. I am dumbfounded by the amount of people who think that an 8AM class is out of the ordinary. I've got 4 out of 5 days where I have classes at 8:15AM.

bootcat 9y ago

Yoga and Ancient Indian technology has already talked about BrahmaMuhurtha, which is the apt time for meditation and thus time to practice any skill required. BrahmaMuhurtha (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmamuhurtha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmamuhurtha).

merinowool 9y ago

I was never able to hold a 9-5 job. I could manage a year, but during that year I was just physically and mentally exhausted. I just cannot wake up earlier than 8 and at the same time I am unable to get to sleep earlier than 10. In the morning I was asleep and feeling productive in the evening when I was commuting back home. My performance was really bad and employer didn't think I am a good worker. My only choice was to go freelancing where I can adapt work to my waking hours. I think it should be illegal for employers to force 9-5.

noobermin 9y ago

As cute as this is why is this published in sci rep!? is this that revolutionary? If there were more reasons for me to lose even more faith in academia.

troupe 9y ago

I suspect that many of these issues would go away if artificial lighting wasn't involved.

dzonga 9y ago

It's all about the industrial complex design, during the industrial revolution. Kids are supposed to sit in rows, show up to school on time, so they can fit in easily in the factories when they come of age. Also since child labor, was abolished, that means parents who work at factories have to drop their kids of at 0745 School time, so they can catch the buggy / walk to the factory. Once you take the work element, out you'll notice no kids needs to spend 8-10 hours at school. But now since our 'work' is no longer mechanical but more 'conceptual' we've to make school only places to socialize.

ada1981 9y ago

"High-school sports represent one of the most consistent roadblocks barring change (of school start times)." https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/04/how-school-start-times-affect-high-school-athletics/522537/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/04/how-sc...

mschuster91 9y ago

This is nothing new. The problem is that it won't change - many people, when asked about education, seem to be of the opinion that if they could endure the hardships in their youth (getting up way too early, walking sometimes one to two hours to school, cruel teachers, corporal punishment - yes this is a thing, even in the USA it's still legal in many places -, "physical education" aka "survival of the fittest") then their children should suffer the same fate. In addition (though this is Germany-specific) the "elite" of society (which were in the Gymnasium and send their kids there too) will resist fiercely any movement to a more equal system which does not separate children onto fixed tracks so that their privileges are not being cut (or watered down, when it comes to laxer admission criteria for Gymnasien). Parents, especially concerned and wealthy ones, are a powerful group of voters. Ideally education should be taken away from political influence entirely and given into the hands of actual experts...

ninjakeyboard 9y ago

Is there some other correlation between owls and being owls that's excluded from this study? Do they tend to use drugs or alcohol more? Do they tend to date more? Do they tend to watch more television? Play video games more late at night? This is an interesting study that doesn't necessarily suggest later class times will fix the issue but this could be a bit of a "wicked problem" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

campuscodi 9y ago

That's funny. I remember doing just fine in school at 8 am.

tariqp 9y ago

Question here is, is it really that hard to go from night owl to morning lark or daytime finch...? I have done this myself just by adjusting my sleep schedule.