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School closures led to more sleep and better quality of life for adolescents
- silisili 5y agoAnd led to a huge retardation (in the literal sense) of learning. My kid was way more active and alert, but the schools weren't prepared for this and they basically just read books together; she's way behind in math still. That all said, school hours were set mostly because public schools double as a daycare. I don't know many people who drive in at 7am anymore, it's definitely time to reset expectations here.
- throwawayboise 5y agoHigh schoolers do not need daycare; they also do not need parents to dress them and get them to school. They should be able to manage those things on their own, and take care of themselves for a few unsupervised hours a day.
- etchalon 5y agoThere are a lot of high schoolers who do not live within walking distance of their school, or who aren't safe walking to their school. Buses are unreliable, easy to miss, and public transportation can be expensive. It's a whole thing.
- chrisandchris 5y agoI think discussing this topic without mentioning the country you live in is not meaningful. I assume you are not Swiss (as the article is from a swiss university)? Because I am and I went to school by bus beginning with 12 years, and busses here are reliable (like "by minute reliable").
- watwut 5y agoSounds like quality of public transport problem. Also, high schoolers are fully competent not to miss busses.
- vanviegen 5y agoActually, most of them are not, but that's a learning opportunity! :-)
- watwut 5y agoHere, public transport is super normal way to go to school, work, whatever. High schoolers generally do manage to catch those busses. Middle schooler do manage to catch those busses. Once in a while someone comes in late. But, it is not that regular thing. Most of them in fact catch busses just fine.
- inglor_cz 5y agoIf you can solve a quadratic equation, you can take a bus at 14:34 without any hassle. Missed connections are usually missed deliberately, regardless of what is said to the parents later.
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoThis is simply untrue. Loads of students in the "high school" age range manage to get to school on time most days. Depending on the country, your 16-18 year old student might not even live at home.
- shafyy 5y agoIn the US, maybe. In Europe, it's very unusual for a kid older than ~9 years to be driven to school.
- math_denial 5y agoit depends where in Europe. Where I live at least 70% of high-schooler were driven to school.
- sdoering 5y agoI have to anecdotally disagree. I am living near to a big high school. Every morning parents, primarily mothers, drive their high school kids into school. One has to know that every 10 minutes the train stops at the school as it has their own stop. Busses also stop at school. Nonetheless the amount of kids in their teens being driven to school by parents is staggering.
- emerongi 5y agoI also lived next to a high school. Anecdotally I can say that the amount of kids being driven to school has risen. There is a huge traffic jam now every morning, people in the nearby buildings have adapted to either leave 30min before or after the traffic jam. It definitely wasn't as bad when I was a kid.
- mantas 5y agoNot anymore. I see more and more people driving kids to school.
- jhgb 5y agoWhen I was 9 years old in Europe, I was walking to school almost two kilometers on my own. And since that age I've never been hauled to any school by my parents using any means of transportation.
- onion2k 5y agoIn Europe, it's very unusual for a kid older than ~9 years to be driven to school. Here in the UK there are parking restrictions around practically every school to stop parents clogging up the roads to drop off or collect their kids. I'd suggest that's evidence that a lot of children still get taken to school by car.
- vladvasiliu 5y agoAs others have said, in Europe (at least in the cities where I grew up) transportation is not an issue. I went to several schools and kids being driven to school has always been an exception. They mostly walked or took public transport [0]. My sister went to high-school in a more rural area (read far-away suburb) and kids from the surrounding towns used to take the school bus. Yet, school still started very early, a little past 8:00 AM. I absolutely loathed having to get up so early in the morning (7-ish) and used to be half asleep for the first few periods. While US issues around transportation certainly don't help, there must be something else going on with the school schedules since they seem to be roughly the same in areas where transportation is not an issue. --- [0] I know there were exceptions for kids living far away, I was one of them since we moved during high-school, but I didn't change schools. However, this is absolutely not the norm where I grew up.
- AmericanChopper 5y ago> As others have said, in Europe (at least in the cities where I grew up) transportation is not an issue. Having spent many hours on the Parisian metro, there’s no chance I’d let my children anywhere near it. Even supervised.
- laurencerowe 5y agoAnywhere you have enough density for a metro local schools are going to be within walking distance.
- AmericanChopper 5y agoAh yes. The Parisian streets. Much safer.
- gpvos 5y agoWhat would be your solution? I hope not the car, that ruins children's self-reliance and is generally to be avoided. Also clutters the streets.
- HerrMonnezza 5y agoThis article is from a Swiss University. In the Canton of Zurich, kids are supposed to be walking to school alone by age 6 (law mandates that there must be a school within $WALKING_DISTANCE of any residential building). High schoolers that need to be taken to school by their parents are definitely the exception.
- silisili 5y agoI'm in complete agreement, but 13 year olds cannot secure their own transportation. Most school districts I've lived in seem designed to ensure parents drive their kids to school. As an example, my current district won't offer a bus unless you live more than 3 miles away. 3 miles is a giant distant to walk every morning. Luckily, we live about a half mile away and she bikes to school. I wouldn't let her bike 3 miles, because it would mean crossing multiple highways.
- katbyte 5y agothat is a failing of the school district not the parent...
- poulsbohemian 5y agoI’m not really disagreeing with you, though I will note in our district, parents who are willing to advocate for transportation options get a better result than parent who just go along. There’s a dirty little secret across the country where districts have limited bus options in order to save money (and due to driver shortages). So I’d you don’t demand that they make a bus stop near your house for your kid, they may just overlook you. I thought it wa s just my district until I did a little reading.
- silisili 5y agoTrue. If anything it's a failing of civil engineering though, I guess. My area is nothing but subdivisions connected by high speed hiways.
- blitzar 5y agoAhh the american dream.
- brnt 5y ago> but 13 year olds cannot secure their own transportation. Pretty much everyone here bikes to work at that age. Even if its 20km through wind and rain. On top of that, being dropped off by mommy and daddy does not impress your fellow students!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- laumars 5y ago“Should” and “can be trusted to” are two totally different things. Much as we want to give kids responsibility and as much as some kids will thrive off it, others don’t yet that the maturity to look after themselves even for short periods. And here lies the problem. You often end up setting up social systems to support the worst cases rather than the best of even average populous.
- laumars 5y agoI figured that would get downvoted by one of the liberals on here. Unfortunately civilised society doesn’t work to ideals and thus sometimes you need to impose boundaries rather than work entirely on faith (hence why we have laws). It’s one of those things you realise once you are responsible for kids of your own (and no, pets don’t count). Much as you cringe setting the same boundaries you hated growing up, you realise you realise they exist for a reason.
- rhino369 5y agoI think the idea is that you need to stagger the bus trips (so once bus can service 2-3 schools a day). And the high school students should be last since many families rely on older children to watch younger children in the morning.
- kristopolous 5y agoSo what about enrichment activities such as sports or clubs? Would you timeshift them to mornings if we're starting at 10? Continuing to tack them on to the end of the day would not only cut into traditional family time in the evening and but you'd also run out of daylight which for things like cross-country wouldn't work. I would have liked to have slept in too, but I wouldn't want to at the expense of killing football and drama club.
- silisili 5y agoNah. There was a lot of nothing time in school. Make core hours like 930 to 230, and keep the extra curriculars at the end of the day.
- parkersweb 5y agoI’m not so sure any more. My teenage kids have: - 100 minute long lessons - because they found that it minimises transition time between lessons - 35 minute lunch break and very short mid lesson breaks - twilight lessons - lessons both before and after school to study additional subjects (which is optional)
- watwut 5y agoNah, they will move after. So then we will discuss issue of teenagers never seeing sun. And then teenagers will move late activities even later and push sleep time 2-3 hours up, to make up for it. Then we will discuss that 10am is absurdly soon.
- hooande 5y agoOnly a small percentage of students take part in any extracurricular, especially the time intensive ones. Better to let everyone sleep in and let various sports and clubs find ways to adapt their schedules
- blitzar 5y ago100% of children should do sports, music, etc, especially time intensive ones (especially at a young age) not a small percentage.
- aaomidi 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wilbdhm 5y agoAgree. If you have to clarify usage use a more precise word…
- sokoloff 5y agoThis is a case where the word used was the precise one and other uses, where that word is used imprecisely, are offensive.
- bsagdiyev 5y agoThe word was used correctly and not in an offensive manner: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/retardation https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/retardation — perhaps you need to readjust your outrage detector?
- wilbdhm 5y ago
- C19is20 5y agoLooked it up. I use it correctly, as do each of my kids and their friends. What's your point?
- wilbdhm 5y ago
- bsagdiyev 5y agoI am well aware of this. That doesn’t negate my point or the actual, correct usage of the word in non offensive fashion. There is a difference between “retarding” as is used here and calling someone ”retarded” as an insult. The difference seems to be lost on the perpetually offended.
- GordonS 5y agoI guess it varied. My (primary school age) daughter greatly benefited from a more bespoke, one-to-one approach, and came on leaps and bounds during home schooling. But my wife wasn't working, so was fully available for her, which of course was not possible for everyone.
- vanusa 5y agoAnd led to a huge retardation (in the literal sense) of learning. Which is fine (from the point of view of the people who run these schools). Because the modern HS process is designed around passing tests, and generating positive signals for admissions to elite schools. Which sometimes overlap with the goal of learning -- but in general are orthogonal to it. By and large, "learning" as such has come to have at best anciliary value in the modern HS experience.
- emodendroket 5y agoI guess that's a silver lining, but I'd imagine it has more to do with the absurdly early hours schools set.
- poulsbohemian 5y agoIn spite of national and state level legislation aimed to standardize schooling, the reality is that education tends to be a local product. That is - I’ve heard bad stories from parents in parts of the country and world, but locally our kids really didn’t experience much negative. Our superintendent ordered chromebooks and hot spots for the district in December 2019 (!!!) because he was so afraid of what was coming. We are just a rural 30,000 person community so it may have been a lot easier for us to mobilize than other places. My own three kids are very different types of students, but it wasn’t a bad experience for any of the three. It was actually a blessing for my youngest - she was able to set her own schedule each day and as a result jumped way ahead academically. Now that we are back in the classroom, I definitely see more sleep and quality of life issues.
- andi999 5y agoI think your superintendent ordering chromebooks in dez 2019 is great, but how did he know. Basically the first whistle blowing was on 30.12.19 : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang
- quartesixte 5y agoApparently rumors were afloat on certain sites towards the middle of December. But parent post could also just have gotten dates pushed backwards or forwards a bit.
- andi999 5y agoDo you have links to these certain sites/more info?
- quartesixte 5y agoUnfortunately, the best I have is a screenshot of a weibo screen inside a discord server that is now defunct so no luck on getting that out.
- dukeofdoom 5y agoI noticed kids playing outside more in parks. But also, think of the benefit of missing out on hours and hours of preaching from their teachers. They can just research things on the internet now. And come to their own conclusions.
- another_story 5y agoI think a huge part of the problem with the American education system is exemplified right here with belittling the role of teachers.
- xondono 5y agoTo be fair, the average teacher in most countries is quite bad. Like it or not, schooling was originally designed as a daycare that teaches conformity and compliance. The idea that we can change that by improving things at the margins is IMO ludicrous.
- xkbarkar 5y agoNot at all. Mass schooling eas originally designed to teach the low-skilled to work on complicated machines in large factories. Modern society demands both parents working, a single parent can no longer cover even the cost of housing for an entire family. As is has become so expensive. Let alone medical expenses, hobbies, tutition etc. tldr; Schools turned into daycare facilites when housing became so expesive that both parents must work full time. That is maybe 40 years ago.
- LocalH 5y agoThis is the natural result when society is designed in some way to extract everything possible from every individual. Basic survival is monetized, promises are broken, in a race to the bottom. Modern society itself is the problem.
- watwut 5y agoAt the time when schooling started, 6 years old kids were not considered to need babysitting or daycare. They were to large extend able to move around the world independently. If they were not in school, they either did useful work for parents, in shops or played with other kids (or did mess on the streets). The origin of kindergarten is daycare - for 4 years old playing in streets with literally zero adult supervision.
- Extropy_ 5y agoI was in Grade 7 the first time they closed schools here in Ontario. I certainly didn't get enough sleep, usually around five or six, maybe seven hours at most. The second time around was even worse. I didn't do work, I didn't go outside, all I did was mess about on my computer. In general, it was- and is- a horribly unhealthy experience for me, both mentally and physically. Although, I still struggle with this "remote learning", I've matured enough to get by. Now I'm in Grade 9, and, sure enough, we're at it again.
- laurent92 5y agoThinking that lockdowns are a solution to anything, including a pandemic, was a neat way to drive many people insane. I won’t tell my personal… happenings… but I double on your difficulty.
- schleck8 5y agoIt was a good meassure when there weren't any alternatives. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-lockdowns-idUSKBN2842WS https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-lockdowns-idUSK...
- sofixa 5y agoPlease elaborate how are lockdowns not a solution to stop the spread of a pandemic, because they most certainly are, and stopped every country's health system to get to the terrible state Italy's got at the beginning. It's actually quite easy - the virus is airborne. If most people stay indoors and don't meet other people, the spread is significantly stopped.
- supperburg 5y agohttps://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/
- sofixa 5y agoDid you even read it? They're arguing that keeping a strict lockdown for long has too serious negative effects, not that it isn't effective in combating an airborne virus, which it is. Furthermore, it's from October 2020, more than a year ago. We have vaccines now and they're helping, but not stopping the virus fully. Hospitals are still filling up in some places, and for that various stages of restrictions up to lockdown are the main ways stop it.
- krasin 5y agoI am a father of two middle-schoolers. The period of school closures / distance learning was the worst in my life as a parent.
- senectus1 5y agoI'm a father of an 11 and a 13 year old. and the School from home lockdown period was fine for us. no real issues. I worked, I set them up with PC's and good internet. all was handled fairly easily. Could easily do it all again if we had to. but I doubt we will. (australia)
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoWhy haven't schools been opening later in the day already since the science has been clear for years that opening later would improve learning? Schools could at least give the option of "early-bird" and "late-bird" like I had in elementary school.
- rkk3 5y agoBecause improving learning outcomes is only 1 of the jobs schools have. Providing public child care and supervision is another main one and there priorities can conflict.
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoEarly bird/late bird would actually make it a more convenient day care service for parents.
- pcdoodle 5y agonot to mention more suicide
- hubraumhugo 5y agoThis reminds me of the book "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker. He writes about the centrality of sleep to the proper development of young minds. Early school starting times – particularly in the US, where almost half of public high schools start before 7.20am – are disastrous for the mental health of teenagers. There is serious evidence, Walker suggests, for viewing lack of sleep as a factor in the onset of depression and schizophrenia.
- watwut 5y agoOk, but isnt that book full of scientific errors? Being it readable and convincing does not equal trustworthy.
- refurb 5y agoDid that guy just make up a lot of what’s in the book?
- Claude_Shannon 5y agoDo you know more about that? It is the first time I hear of that.
- d33 5y agohttps://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
- Claude_Shannon 5y agoThank you!
- mrkentutbabi 5y agoother countries such as 3rd world countries started school early, seem they aren't stupider than US kids, quite the contrary....
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- blufuz 5y agoOriginal paper: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/articlepdf/2787630/albrecht_2022_oi_211174_1640186073.36314.pdf?resultClick=1 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/articlepdf/...
- julius_deane 5y agoYep, the link at the bottom is broken. It should be: https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.42100 https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.42100
- sersi 5y agoI remember waking up to go to school every morning at 6:45 and taking the bus every day at 7:05 when I was in high school in France. Most months the sun hadn't even risen yet. It was punishing, and I definitely was sleep deprived by the end of the week. Because of the schedule, my parents had me go to sleep around 9pm but I had a hard time sleeping then and tended to not fall asleep before midnight/1 am. I'd either lie in bed thinking, or use my radio alarm clock light to read books. Honestly, I think I would have been healthier and enjoyed school a lot more if school had started 90 minutes later. That's definitely a criteria I'd look out for when choosing a school for my son.
- White_Wolf 5y ago1AM? you are tough mate. I was in bed by 10PM-10:30 in high school, broken in every sense of the word. If I was lucky I could actually pull off a 11PM but it was rare.
- sersi 5y agoOh I was tired just wasn't able to sleep... Once I left high school and started university, I did pretty well on a schedule of sleeping at 1/2 am and waking up around 9:30 before going to class (unfortunately skipping any classes that were scheduled from 8 to 10).
- boringds 5y agoIn Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker there is a fascinating chapter about how teenagers are biologically programmed to sleep later and wake up later as well. He then explains that basically sending teenagers to school early in the morning is terrible health-wise and prevents optimal brain development. Anecdata of course but I remember much like you being extremely sleepy at school all day and sleeping a lot on weekends.
- AuthorizedCust 5y agoI would hesitate at using that book. Riddled with errors or non-factual stuff. Been discussed previously here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850
- max002 5y agoNight owls perform best in evening hours. There's more and more research about this - hopefully this will get incorporated into school and work system in coming years. At the moment its just "one for all" approach and it works great for larks, but brings problems to owls (not only in schools, but later on in adult life).
- wobblybubble 5y agoIt seems that adolescents tend to like to sleep for longer than older adults. That just seems how people are wired at different stages of life; nothing wrong with either preference. But the older adults run society, which means that getting up early is seen as the “productive” and “A-type” thing to do, and in turn we end up structuring people’s schedules accordingly. Adolescents of course don’t get a vote on when school is supposed to start.
- Proven 5y ago
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoI used to fall asleep on my bus journey and in class. I was punished for cheating because I had opened a test without realising what it was. Granted, I stayed awake into the early hours of the morning reading books but I still think schools should be starting much later. Though, schools are primarily daycares, so that wouldn't work.
- skeeter2020 5y agoImportant Note: this is a press release for a study linked at the bottom that cannot be found in the target system. I'd really appreciate if we tried to post the original paper vs. the university's PR piece when submitting this sort of topic. As is, all I got out of it was the headline "Teenagers prefer to sleep in later", because there's no mention of the methodology or underlying data supporting any claims specific to the experiment we're all currently running.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rustoo 5y agohttps://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/articlepdf/2787630/albrecht_2022_oi_211174_1640186073.36314.pdf https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/articlepdf/...
- sporklpony 5y agoThere was a movement in my town to push back school start times. However, there are some non-immediately-obvious consequences. Due to limited school buses, school start times need to be staggered, so the options were either to push all school start times back or swap school start times so adolescents start later and younger students start earlier. Pushing all start times back would have resulted with some schools ending around 6pm or 7pm, and swapping start times would have elementary schoolers arriving home before their middle/high schooler babysitters. While it still could have been all worked out, the district came to the conclusion that it would require too large a logistical shift to be practical.
- ianai 5y agoCite this next time people are wondering why no one's having kids.
- thethimble 5y agoBut wouldn’t you have the same problem if you kept the times as is? Is this because parents are unavailable to drop their kids off?
- apple4ever 5y agoWell I think at least it should be flopped from older and younger. But I see no problem with schools ending around 6 or 7. Welcome to regular business.
- vertnerd 5y agoI taught high school remotely in the spring of 2020 and I thought it was wonderful. Medical professionals reported a large uptick in mental health issues for teens and consequently our district will probably never close like that again (but think of the children!). From my perspective, however, I noted that many of my students who were miserable in school due to social issues flourished during the shutdown. Personally, I never felt better (sleep!) and the experience has prompted me to plan towards early retirement. I always wondered if the medical professionals in our area fully understood the impact on ALL our students and not just the ones who normally flourish with in-person schooling.
- dagmx 5y agoOne thing I've noticed (obviously completely anecdotal) in the workplace is the vocality of who's suffering during the pandemic is biased heavily to extroverts. The introverts never mention how they feel until directly asked and they usually like the new arrangement better So in meetings it often creates a biased sense of everything being bad, but actual surveys of the employees paints a different picture.
- desktopninja 5y agoFascinating. Just from the title, would have expected the total opposite: Adolescents not sleeping properly because they are indoors too much and on the screen all day. Also generally degraded personal hygiene (dental mostly) because of the later reason.
- ModernMech 5y agoThis article shows there are positive and negative consequences to remote learning. It would be a mistake to see only the negative consequences, and then to insist that we return to the old way of doing things, which also had negative aspects. We have to admit that everything is different now regarding education. The future won't look like May 2020, but it also won't look like 2019 and prior either. Forcing the issue on teachers is proving to be very bad for morale. Already, they were overworked and underpaid, but now they are being called lazy, their profession is being reduced to "babysitting", they are being demonized as anti-American and traitors, they are being harassed by parents who claim they are teaching their children socialist propaganda and pushing liberal agendas, school boards meetings have broken out into fisticuffs... it's getting to be too much. You can see evidence of this on the /r/teachers forum, which as of late has been a sea of negative posts in what used to be a pretty positive place. This has gotten enough attention that it was covered recently in the media [0]. Forbes notes that 48% of teachers are thinking of quitting during a time when there's already a teacher shortage [1]. I would not be surprised to see a mass exodus of teachers if things get worse. My school district was closed last week because there weren't enough substitute teachers to handle all of the students. For some districts, even a single teacher quitting would mean an entire school would have to close. The way forward is not backward. We need a new model that embraces positive aspects of remote and in person. We have to redefine what school is and is not. School cannot be a place where parents send their kids so that they are free to work. That can't be what it is for. I really liked an idea I saw which is probably impractical, but interesting nonetheless. The idea was to cut the work week to 4 days and turn substitute teaching into something like jury duty; once a month, you've got to go into school and teach or assist a teacher. I like this idea because it brings more community involvement into schools, which I think is missing now in our society. [0] https://news.yahoo.com/inside-rteachers-the-reddit-forum-where-educators-are-commiserating-amid-the-latest-covid-wave-100051269.html https://news.yahoo.com/inside-rteachers-the-reddit-forum-whe... [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/markcperna/2022/01/04/why-education-is-about-to-reach-a-crisis-of-epic-proportions/?sh=656fdfa978c7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/markcperna/2022/01/04/why-educa...
- LightG 5y agoSame with WFH during the pandemic. My sleep quality was incredible and quality of life was through the roof. My @sshole boss plucked us all back into the office just before Xmas and I'm back where I started. Note: if you're a boss and hate your staff being WFH, some of us hate you right back and will be looking for a new job. Factor that into your bullsh!t policies and untrustworthiness. (Yes, I've had a bad week).
- amai 5y agoI have never found good information about that anywhere, but I would like to know: At which time in the morning does school start in your country usually?
- Osiris 5y agoAll three of my kids start school at 9am. We don't even have to wake them up. They wake up on their own and it's no rush to get them to school. It's fantastic.
- xunn0026 5y agoThe study seems to limit itself to 3 months which is basically a vacation. I'm curious if those adolescents think after a year that their quality of life is better.
- h0nd 5y agoAt the same time, suicide attempts has increased fivefold for children. (https://www.svz.de/deutschland-welt/panorama/Corona-Bis-zu-500-Kinder-nach-Suizidversuchen-auf-Intensivstation-id34847312.html https://www.svz.de/deutschland-welt/panorama/Corona-Bis-zu-5...)