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If the majority of students are owls by nature, and everyone was being coerced into a lark schedule, how would you know if that had a detrimental effect or not?
by Zak 8y ago
If the majority of students are owls by nature, and everyone was being coerced into a lark schedule, how would you know if that had a detrimental effect or not? There's no control group.
- DenisM 8y agoBecause they functioned just fine on lark schedule.
- Zak 8y agoI'm sure that's true for certain values of "just fine". Would you notice, however, if to the extent such things could be quantified, on average, students were falling 10% short of their potential? 20%? Would you notice a 10% increase in mild to moderate mental health issues within the student population? We're not talking about differences so dramatic an untrained observer would notice a problem. Your observations are sufficient to say that severe, acute harm from putting teenagers on a lark schedule is unlikely, or at least rare. The article doesn't say that there's acute harm, just that a later schedule is better for the health and academic performance of students.
- DenisM 8y agoFair enough. I was thinking more about modern-day adult owls with their "look at me, I can't function without coffee, ha-ha" jokes. 10-20% degradation wouldn't be visible that way, especially given that people came in with huge academic variance already and there is no baseline to work with.