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> Here's the elephant in the room. High schools start and end earlier with the idea that older kids can watch their siblings. That's an interesting postulation
by Jedd 8y ago
> Here's the elephant in the room. High schools start and end earlier with the idea that older kids can watch their siblings.
That's an interesting postulation, but is it born out by societies where most families have a single child?
What were the child care options like at the time that the current school hours were developed (I'm guessing this is close to a century ago).
Do all relatively-civilised societies have the same attitude towards school hours and public commitment to child care?
If not, then trying to identify some correlations would be informative.
My gut feel is it's entirely unrelated to older siblings looking after younger ones -- partly because if both are at school at the same time, that problem is already solved.
I suspect the root cause is probably something more simple -- at the time school hours were decided, schools / education departments looked to how it was done elsewhere, be it neighbouring schools / states, or failing that, simply aligning the hours with what was commonly regarded as a 'good honest day's work'.
Clearly this would all have been a long time before anyone knew about, let alone considered, age-specific circadian rhythm variations.
Jesus, we know more than enough about it now -- the damage lack of sleep does to adults, and its profound importance through development especially in the teenage years -- and yet it'll be at least a decade before even the more progressive western societies shift teenage school hours forward by a few hours.
- emodendroket 8y ago> What were the child care options like at the time that the current school hours were developed (I'm guessing this is close to a century ago). Unless you also consider how likely it is that Mom is working I'm not sure that's the way I'd do it, especially because school officials explicitly say they do what they are doing because of this issue, and also, why do you think the article mentioned childcare? > My gut feel is it's entirely unrelated to older siblings looking after younger ones -- partly because if both are at school at the same time, that problem is already solved. Think about this for a second. Mom and Dad work from 9:00-5:00 and then have an hour+ of commuting to do. All the schools get at or before 5:00. Is it more desirable for high schooler Joseph to get home before his 8-year-old sister, or the other way around?
- Jedd 8y ago> Unless you also consider how likely it is that Mom is working .. I did consider that, and factored it into the historical shift in attitudes about both parents working, compared to when school hours were determined. > ... especially because school officials explicitly say they do what they are doing because of this issue, and also, why do you think the article mentioned childcare? You're assuming your school officials are fully cognisant of post hoc ergo propter hoc It's possible childcare is the easy option and doesn't require much pondering or historical analysis. As I noted, correlating how things are done there to elsewhere in the world, and elsewhere in time, may be informative in determining actual causation, rather than just correlation. > Think about this for a second. Mom and Dad work from 9:00-5:00 and then have an hour+ of commuting to do. All the schools get at or before 5:00. Is it more desirable for high schooler Joseph to get home before his 8-year-old sister, or the other way around? Yeah, you're making quite a few assumptions. I'm not sure how old Joseph is meant to be in this anecdote, but presumably older than 8yo, and (also presumably) attends a different school. The idea that different aged children attend significantly different geographical / scheduled schools is relatively modern too (I'd suggest a much more recent change than determination of school hours). No, as I said before, I suspect this is all much more simply ascribed to doing what seemed appropriate at the time (aligning to a standard adult work schedules) and determined in the absence of any good understanding of circadian rhythms, variations during development, and importance of 8 hours sleep.