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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

• 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.
    • hysan 9y ago
      Teach health? Sex Ed? Preparation and setup? My PE teachers in JHS and HS were more than just PE teachers. Was my school just an outlier?
      • Spooky23 9y ago
        It depends on the school and the state. I went to a small district where they shared roles. My wife went to a huge school where the PE teachers taught only PE and were paid coached as well. In some districts, you need certification in a subject... a gym teacher can’t teach math.
        • solarkraft 9y ago
          And they couldn't be certified for both? In NRW, Germany afaik (almost) all teachers have two or more roles.
          • Spooky23 9y ago
            Probably -- I think the specifics vary from place to place.
      • jeffcore 9y ago
        It probably depends on the size of the school or school district. I went to large schools for both MS and HS, and all of our PE teachers only taught PE throughout the day, as it was offered all seven class periods as there were simply too many students to only offer the class two to three periods. In HS, freshman tended to have the largest class sizes as they only had two class periods to choose from, and were split between male and female. They'd rotate through all sports during the school year. All other years got to choose their class period and were able to select the sport(s) they wanted, and would rotate through different teachers quarterly, within that same class period, based on those selections. Coaches that only taught electives usually rotated in teaching Health/Sex Ed and Driver's Ed.
        • squeaky-clean 9y ago
  • DanCarvajal 9y ago
    Anecdotally I definitely did better in High School when I had band first thing in the morning.
  • imjk 9y ago
    I remember nothing worse in High School than waking up showering and getting dressed for school, only to have PE class first period.
    • tmuir 9y ago
      What was so traumatizing about the showers available to you in high school? Because I certainly remember first period gym, and I just took a shower afterwards. Then I was right as rain.
      • war1025 9y ago
        Probably the effort of getting ready once and then having to get ready again. Not traumatizing, just a pain. Some people are particular about their routines.
        • tmuir 9y ago
          All people are particular about their routines. Some to greater degrees than others. Are you familiar with the phrase: "There are two types of jobs, those you shower before, and some you shower afterwards."
          • war1025 9y ago
            What's that have to do with routine? You shower after manual labor jobs. That's just a matter of practicality.
            • solarkraft 9y ago
              Yeah, but that's at the end of the work day. Difference here. Though I just wouldn't shower in the morning.
              • war1025 9y ago
                I really have no idea what this side tangent is about. I made a comment that getting ready twice in short order is a pain, which is why people wouldn't want to have PE first thing. I don't see what any of this has to do with the difference in showering schedules between white collar and blue collar labor. My dad worked in a factory and showered after he got home from work. That was the time of day that made sense because his work was hot and sweaty and dirty. I suppose the idea could have been that you could have just not showered at all and showered once you were done with PE, but still unsure where this detour is headed.
  • WhompingWindows 9y ago
    The problem with that is rotating schedules is more economically efficient than loading all the class-types onto one time of the day. This would mean you need more PE teachers in the morning, more math teachers in the mid-day. There's a reason schools have multiple periods of each course, and that those periods rotate day-to-day. One interesting follow-up study could be to compare night-owls/morning-larks in rotating schedule schools vs schools with fixed schedules. We could then see do night-owls do significantly worse in the classes they only take in the morning, vs night-owls who take classes rotating throughout diff periods of the day?
    • jamescostian 9y ago
      > There's a reason schools have multiple periods of each course, and that those periods rotate day-to-day Could you elaborate on this? What is the reason? Saying it's "more economically efficient" than grouping class types is something many of my teachers would disagree with, as they have lives they would love to get to outside of school (e.g. if a PE teacher gets out early in the morning, they can go to their second job or see their own kids) and complain about having to stay at school because there isn't enough time between similar classes that are spread across different times of day.
      • war1025 9y ago
        At least where I went to school, teachers generally had full schedules with maybe one period empty for prep. If they are teaching multiple sections of the same class, it isn't feasible to lump all classes of a certain kind into one part of the day. The same person can't teach multiple classes at once.
      • olympus 9y ago
        Because a single PE teacher can manage five rotating classes of twenty kids throughout the day. If kids didn't rotate periods, then all 100 kids would take PE at the same time. That would require extra PE teachers, because one teacher cannot manage 100 kids. Multiply this effect by every different area (music teachers, art teachers, etc.) and you have to hire a bunch of extra teachers which is a waste of money. Plus, those teachers would only be busy for part of the day, so their wasting a lot of their time.
  • kerng 9y ago
    Sorry, not from the US. What does PE mean?
    • cialowicz 9y ago
      Physical Education
    • psibi 9y ago
      Physical education. In India, in our schools it mostly meant playing Soccer.
      • tmuir 9y ago
        The irony of defining a regional term in the context of other regional terms.
  • heedlessly2 9y ago
    if kid's played dodgeball every morning, then they would be excited to come to school
  • kolbe 9y ago
    This brings back memories for me. My friends and I realized even at a young age that we shouldn't have hard classes in the morning, and we almost always chose PE/arts first.
  • JepZ 9y ago
    So and how about the people who would like to have the mentally intense stuff early in the morning? For example, I have the clearest mind about 5 minutes after I got out of bed.
• maxerickson 9y ago
  Imagine the horror if we gave other things equal priority with work when we made decisions about how to organize our society. Oh well.
  • taneq 9y ago
    I'd imagine that there were groups of humans who did this, but they got out-competed by humans who gave a higher priority to work.
    • vanderZwan 9y ago
      If you think every form of natural selection is automatically proof that whatever came out is the best option, then you do not understand evolution at all.
      • gliboc 9y ago
        He didn't say that at all. The only fact you can derive from evolution is that some things existed, and now they either do or don't exist. That's exactly what he is saying. You could argue that maybe some solutions were not even tried before, or that they were tried and abandonned for random reasons. But actually, since the evolution process took a long time, we can reasonably say that we are witnessing the mean outcome of these events. Aka, in this case, the overwhelming majority is a work-related school schedule. This doesn't invalidate 'free schools' such as Montessori, as these could be good local solutions. They just apparently don't scale to the ensemble of society since they didn't yet and had plenty of time to do so. Another remark : this doesn't apply to things that were recently invented or discovered.
        • erikpukinskis 9y ago
          You are assuming the fitness landscape never changes, which is not a good assumption.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
• InitialLastName 9y ago
  That emphasizes that the purpose of school isn't as much to educate children as it is to provide an economy of scale for babysitting so that more adults can participate in the workforce. I wonder how that dynamic will interact with the decreasing need for adults in the workforce.
  • taneq 9y ago
    It doesn't take 12 years to teach a kid calculus and literature and their prerequisites.
    • tudelo 9y ago
      A kid. Now put 30 in a classroom.
      • taneq 9y ago
        And now add 'no child left behind' (aka 'no child allowed to get ahead').
    • InitialLastName 9y ago
      Right, it's more that our society has decided that humans have no value until they're at least 18 (hell, with college degree requirements that age is approaching 22), so we have to store them somewhere until then.
      • tmuir 9y ago
        Does it make your nebulous conspiracy theory more believable or less believable when you consider that the age of 18 is generally when people's bodies have reached full maturity? Personally, if my 22 year old self travelled in time three years backwards to meet 17 year old me, and then travelled 20 years forward to present day to me current me, I have no doubt 18 year old me would the odd man out in this triplet.
        • 9y ago
• nicholasjarnold 9y ago
  I too struggled for years during adolescence with early school start times and being generally super tired for the first 1 or 2 classes of each day. As an adult I also realize the pragmatic nature of school start times supporting our fairly typical 9-to-5 work culture. However, I think it's important that we try to learn from this emerging data. If a body of empirical evidence starts strongly suggesting that starting school 1-2 hours later will improve information retention and learning, and if we collectively wish to maximize the success and potential of our youth then we must begin to change in order to support these goals. I hope that by the time my future child reaches school age we will have begun to embrace a more data-driven approach to learning along with the necessary support structures to support such a change. Perhaps labor laws could be constructed to allow for more morning flexibility for parents that can demonstrate they are the legal guardian of a child whose age is between some range. I'll hope for the best.
  • huehehue 9y ago
    There are different methods of schooling! Granted, they're more work for the parent, usually costly, might not work with a normal 9-5 schedule, and a bunch of other potential problems. But if you have the resources, you can look for what you believe would be the best path for your future kid.
• sudosteph 9y ago
  That makes sense to a degree, but it always killed me that in my school district had elementary school starting at 8:30, and high school at 7:15. They told us that it was to stagger the buses and give high schoolers time to work part-time jobs, but it was rough. Especially because the bus ride took another hour out of the morning. Also, most elementary schools around there offered before and after school programs that working parents can leverage to fit their schedules. That, and neighbors who took turns watching the bus stop to make sure everyone made it on time, gave us enough support to get to school when parents were on tight work schedules.
  • wizzard 9y ago
    > They told us that it was to stagger the buses and give high schoolers time to work part-time jobs One additional reason is so that the older kids get home before the younger kids so they can supervise. It's all perfectly rational. Unfortunately, ensuring students are rested and alert is far down on the list of priorities for education scheduling.
• DiffEq 9y ago
  I also had the same..but when I stopped watching TV and went to bed earlier I was able to get up be as productive as ever.
• devy 9y ago
  > It starts this early so parents can get their kids to school and start working afterwards, without getting fired. As a working parent, totally agree. Employers should be more accommodating for working parents just like they do for maternity/paternity programs, but they haven't yet. Big corporations with HR and dedicated benefit personnels are more tolerable than most startups, unfortunately.
  • notheguyouthink 9y ago
    comment as been deleted, as much as HN can let me...
    • Goronmon 9y ago
      I downvoted you because it didn't seem productive to try to start an argument about why people are specifically talking about parents in the context of discussions specific to students and their parents. And you felt it necessary to pretend that people are explicitly trying to give parent's special treatment over non-parents, which isn't something I've seen anyone in this thread argue for. And now I've gone and derailed the discussion further and given you the argument you were looking for.
      • notheguyouthink 9y ago
        > I downvoted you because it didn't seem productive to try to start an argument about why people are specifically talking about parents in the context of discussions specific to students and their parents. That's fair, my comment does sort of sway. I'd delete it if HN let, my apologies. To be fair, I did ask what it meant exactly, which was what I led with - but you're right, I did ask a second question. I'm Still unsure what it means, exactly. > And you felt it necessary to pretend that people are explicitly trying to give parent's special treatment over non-parents, which isn't something I've seen anyone in this thread argue for. No, I didn't. I'm not going to argue the root, because you're right, it detracts from the conversation at large. Yet, I was not pretending by any stretch. (ie, my intent was not fake, again, this is not an argument, no one comment lol)
  • 9y ago
• aeriklawson 9y ago
  A lot of it is due to athletics - my school had to end practices before certain times and could not offset the school day without blowing away athletic programs.
  • ovulator 9y ago
    Mine was the same way, but athletics should really be in the morning. My cross country team had no problem getting up at 7 in the morning for weekend and summer practice.
• matwood 9y ago
  What about those kids who wake up early? I've always been a morning person. Even as a kid I remember waking up with the sun because sleeping always felt like a waste a time with so much fun stuff to do.
  • TheTrotters 9y ago
    I remember staying up as long as I could because there was so much fun to do.
    • matwood 9y ago
      This is probably a generational thing. When I was kid almost all the fun things to do were outside. Surf, ski, swim in the river, fish, sports, etc... all were daytime and outside. We had a NES, and later a SNES but we only used those when it was raining :)
  • downer67 9y ago
    so much fun stuff to do Some of us... DID NOT. (and still do not) ...have "fun stuff" to do.
• kkylin 9y ago
  Yup! Every person is a little different. One of our kids is definitely very alert and ready to learn in the early morning. The other one, unfortunately, isn't. The one-size-fits-all schedule is much more for the convenience of adults than for the effectiveness of education, unfortunately. Some of the other commenters point out that important things should not be too early or late. That may well work better. But I'd be a little worried that there is no such thing as one good schedule that works for every child or even a significant fraction of children.
• cheez 9y ago
  > It starts this early so parents can get their kids to school and start working afterwards, without getting fired. Yep. School is subsidized babysitting.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• wizzard 9y ago
  My kids' elementary school doesn't start until 9:00, and both of us work. We've had to get morning childcare just for 30 minutes before school. It's expensive and stressful for all of us.
  • somethingsimple 9y ago
    Do you work in IT like most people on HN? I though most tech companies were flexible about work hours.
• EGreg 9y ago
  Exactly. School acts more like a daycare center for kids of busy working parents. They’re the customers. I have been writing about ways to reform the whole experience for years: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158
• btkramer9 9y ago
  Why do parents need to take their kids to school? I always walked to the school bus, no parents necessary
  • jimmy1 9y ago
    For some, a bus simply doesn't exist. For others, there is legitimate concerns over the safety of their children -- I would not feel comfortable leaving my kindergartener or first grader walk to a bus stop almost half a mile away at essentially the wee hours of the morning when it is still dark outside. If you are the kid who lives at the first stop, sometimes your bus time is as early as 5:55. I would never force my child to be up at 5 something to get ready for school. That is beyond ridiculous. Finally, there are legitimate concerns over bullying. Kids are ruthless on the bus and is a real problem. When I attended high school almost two decades ago now -- fights, bullying, name-calling and harassing were common -- sometimes by the bus driver themselves! I can only imagine how much worse it is now.
    • Symmetry 9y ago
      Young children are naturally early risers and it's entirely appropriate that their school hours start early and allow parents to drop them off. It's high school and college students that would benefit from later start times and can be trusted to get to class themselves.
    • bluntfang 9y ago
      What concerns make you feel uncomfortable? Do you feel uncomfortable leaving your children with close friends or family as well, since statistically most abuse occurs from someone in that group?
      • blattimwind 9y ago
        I believe the term for this phenomenon is "American angst".
        • jimmy1 9y ago
• chrischen 9y ago
  School ends at 3pm though, so even if early means getting the kids to school, what about getting them back from school? Of course there are school buses but then those apply to the morning as well.
• davesque 9y ago
  In related news, poor performance at work tied to work hours that don't match our biological clocks.
  • herbst 9y ago
    I am one of those long sleepers. One time my job hours were cut in half and I took only 4-5 hour afternoon work. My productivity was pretty much the same than with 8 hours before. I wish more employers would be more flexible with time.
• cup-of-tea 9y ago
  I did too, but I always assumed that if school started an hour later I'd go to bed an hour later and still struggle to get up. Why do you think it would be different?
  • herbst 9y ago
    Did you ever try? I can't tell you why but me and many other people seem to have a biological clock that is out of sync with our societies expections. For whatever reason I simply am more energetic and happy if I sleep until noon. Even if that means sleeping 12 hours, instead of 8 or so.
    • cup-of-tea 9y ago
      I did try living by my own biological clock and it was a complete disaster. Ruined my life for several years. My natural clock is non-24, but not by much, no more than 25 hours. So if left to my own devices I naturally drift "West" every single day. The only way I can cope is to take strict control of my wake up times and force myself into a 24 hour cycle. The phase is irrelevant to me. So if I'm going to take control I get up earlier because I find that is more productive for me. I hate every single morning of my life, but if I let my clock do what it wants I hate my entire life.
      • herbst 9y ago
        That sucks but could also be true for me. My best performance is when I sleep when I feel to and wake up when I want to. Which works pretty well once you break all the social norms.
• sngz 9y ago
  failed my first period computer science class cause i just could not wake up for it.
• dclowd9901 9y ago
  Capitalism is indoctrinated as early as possible, rest assured.
• mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
  There’s an excellent ted talk about delaying school starting times.
• TheKarateKid 9y ago
  > It starts this early so parents can get their kids to school and start working afterwards, without getting fired. Numerous teachers in my school told me the real reason school doesn't start later is because of... wait for it: Sports. Sports games/teams often finish practice/games as late as 6-8pm, especially after traveling for a game - and that's with a district whose high school started at 7:40am and middle school at 8am. Is it too much for schools to actually prioritize academics over sports? Colleges are the same way.
  • boomboomsubban 9y ago
    Sports could happen in the morning if school started later, they tend to be more free daycare than the root cause here. Sports have become a priority in schools, which will cause teachers to become resentful and blame them for everything.
    • TheKarateKid 9y ago
      I doubt it. You figure an hour to gather and travel to a game location, 2 hours for the game, an hour to return... schools would have to start at noon. And can you blame them? Why are sports being prioritized by institutions whose existential purpose has nothing to do with athletics?
      • boomboomsubban 9y ago
        >I doubt it. You figure an hour to gather and travel to a game location, 2 hours for the game, an hour to return... schools would have to start at noon. If you guess it would take five hours, they could gather at 5 AM and school starts at 10. >And can you blame them? No. Doesn't change that they would be unfairly blaming this particular issue on sports.
• closeparen 9y ago
  Why on earth would parents be personally taking their children to school? When I lived in a sprawling exurb, there was a school bus stop a couple blocks away supervised by another neighborhood parent. When I lived in a more compact suburb, everyone walked - again, in groups. Something is catastrophically broken about your urban planning, school system, or community if every family is personally driving the kids to school. Maybe this meta-problem needs to be solved before addressing start times.