14 ms·

My high school started at 8:30 twenty years ago, and it was hell waking up to be there on time. Cut a period and let kids go in at 10am. 9:30am at the earliest.

My high school started at 8:30 twenty years ago, and it was hell waking up to be there on time. Cut a period and let kids go in at 10am. 9:30am at the earliest. This, of course, will never happen. Even if it did happen, school at 10 implies that kids will wake up at 9 or earlier, which is still torturous.

munchenphile 4y ago
School start is really bounded by the start of the average parent’s workday, unfortunately. Mom and Dad start work at 9 am. Kids need to be at school before then. None of this 10 am start talk makes sense for the kids that aren’t on the bus line and have parents that drive them to school.
- Siira 4y ago
  They could make the first period an optional free study session. This problem is not that difficult.
- mbreese 4y ago
  It is also bounded in the other end by sports. If your school day goes too late, you won’t have time in the afternoon/evening for sports practices. So, if you still need X hours for classes, you’ll need to start early enough to get over in time for 1-1.5 hour practices. (It also applies to other extracurricular sports, but I doubt anyone really worries about play practice schedules)
  - munchenphile 4y ago
    Well, even in a world where theater is taken as seriously as sport, at least you can do theater indoors at all hours. You can’t really play soccer after dusk if the field is outside and you don’t have lights. So lots of outdoor sports have strict daylight constraints.
  - GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
    Remove the sports, can do that on the weekend
    - munchenphile 4y ago
      Delusional. Sports are competitive. They require daily reps. Sports are also meant to keep kids physically active and healthy, and to establish a routine of physical activity into their adulthood (alongside intellectual productivity). You can’t just be physically active and healthy on the weekend.
      - cgriswald 4y ago
        Then have sports be an acceptable substitute to gym classes and a regular part of the day. I doubt anyone can explain to me why the captain of our football team also needed to be in gym class playing flag football with us in order to graduate in a way where the answer isn't bureaucratic. At some point you have to decide on an optimum between time, sleep, and output.
        munchenphile 4y ago
        I’m not defending daily gym class. I’m defending daily sports. I was fortunate enough to go to a high school that did not have a gym period, but required all students to play an organized sport. Gym in large high schools is a waste of time due to the student to instructor ratio. One frustrated gym teacher to 50+ kids playing dodgeball? Of course you’re going to have theater kids just going through the motions and goth kids behind the bleachers smoking cigarettes. It’s not real exercise. You need small rosters, organized practices, uniforms, referees, fans (students and parents) and intra-school competition. It creates seriousness and expectations. You can’t hide from your coach when there’s only 14 kids on the roster. You need to do the sprints with everyone else and take the drills seriously. I don’t think this scales beyond smaller high schools. Not enough facilities, not enough coaches, not enough money.
        danenania 4y ago
  - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
    You could do sports in the morning instead.
  - Brybry 4y ago
    High schools already do sports into the night hours anyway. I don't know that "too late" has much meaning here.
  - NonNefarious 4y ago
    The school day ending at 3 doesn't preclude sports. A 9 a.m.-to-3 p.m. school day was the norm for generations, and there's no reason it can't be now.
- thatjoeoverthr 4y ago
  These are teenagers. Give them house keys and a skateboard.
  - munchenphile 4y ago
    Yeah, sorry. That doesn’t work in a huge percentage of areas in the US. Heat, cold, darkness, lack of infrastructure, and distance. When the high is 110 F in a Phoenix suburb, you can’t ask the 14 year olds to skateboard 20 miles to school on a country road with no breakdown lane. Similarly, you can’t ask kids from Maine to skateboard to school in the dark on ice. Whenever this topic gets brought up, a bunch of seemingly childless city dwellers think they’re making some massive revelation suggesting that kids just get their own butts to school at a comfortable 10:30 am. It’s actually pretty simple: Both parents work. Somebody has to drive the kids to school (hard requirement — there’s no bus and a bike/skateboard is too perilous). Work starts at 9 am. School has to start earlier than that.
    - daniel-cussen 4y ago
      That's what Americans get for building the suburbs so poorly. And Phoenix is uninhabitable, nobody lived there before AC. Let work start later too. Tell that boss he can get with the times.
    - naz 4y ago
      What time does school finish and why isn't getting home a similar issue?
      - munchenphile 4y ago
        Getting home is a big issue for a lot of families. School ends around 3 pm, but most kids do some sort of after school activity like a sport to bridge the gap until after 5 pm when a parent can come through the pickup line. Growing up, there was also just general “after-school” programs. Basically just day care for after the school day that would cost extra.
      - odessacubbage 4y ago
- derobert 4y ago
  For high school, the youngest of which are 14, probably closer to 15? That really doesn't seem like a requirement. Well, except when they have to get out the door before 6:15am...
- usrn 4y ago
  Yet another problem caused by having both parents work.
- midasuni 4y ago
  So how does school stopping at 2:30pm work? How do kids get back home?
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
  There is no reason for the tyranny of the minority to dictate terms on everyone else. Any parent that wants to torture their kid with a 7am start is free to do so. That choice however shoulsnt dictate the school time for everyone else. Early birds can show up to a long recess pre-class time but class should only start at 10am or so
- wheels 4y ago
  ...and most people have to work until 5 p.m., which is why all schools go until at least 5 p.m.
- quartesixte 4y ago
  This is the problem with American cities in general. A very beaten dead-horse, but look at Japan: Elementary Schools and Middle Schools placed within a MAXIMUM 10min walking pace distance at that age group’s walking pace. High Schoolers able to commute to their school of choice due to robust public transportation network. We have designed cities that create as byproducts incredible amount of self-inflicted wounds on our culture. We don’t have to live this way. This is a choice. Parents go to work or send their kids off. A parent personally accompanying a student to school is an indicator of something having gone wrong.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    A lot of elementary and middle private school students commute to their schools by train in Japan.
    - quartesixte 4y ago
      I lived in a very working/middle class neighborhood so I rarely witnessed this. But yes this is also a thing.
  - shiftpgdn 4y ago
    I see so many new urbanists saying we’ve made a tremendous mistake, and I agree. But how can we fix it? Tear down all the cities and start over?
    - quartesixte 4y ago
      Basically, yes. In piecemeal. But yes. Major US population centers who are not New York should have, at the start of their explosive population growth, experienced a massive construction boom. There should be so many people employed making a city right now that the other problem we have with people not making a living wage because they are working jobs that weren’t designed to be life-sustaining careers might not be a problem! Tear down all the “historical homes” and build mid-sizes apartment buildings. Build more schools. Hire more teachers. The “character” and “flavor” of a city will come naturally and organically as an emergent property of trying to build a massive city to house millions. Cities if done right turn into quasi-perpetual motion machines that feed itself the economic activity to sustain itself. And because they are denser and more compact, resource consumption can be scaled to be more efficient. Oh and all the people who used to be sprawled out now concentrated? That frees up land to build industrial centers on the outskirts that feed more economic activity. This is an oversimplification that ignores a LOT of externalities to economic activity and histories of urban decay, but essentially: yes cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles essentially need to be rebuilt from the ground up and hopefully it will be as a result of conscious decisions and not a Great Fire of London/Earthquake of 1906 type disaster. The other problem is bureaucracy and that is actually a consequence of the way US regulations approach regulation. It will make everyone’s life easier if we had very perspective building regulations that can be just checklisted through instead of ambiguous, litigious wording.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Angostura 4y ago
  In the UK schools get around that problem by running 'Breakfast clubs' kids can turn up early and get a nourishing breakfast from a bit before 8am. The school day doesn't start until just before 9
  - dunefox 4y ago
    That still means they have to get up early, though.
hstan4 4y ago
Is waking up prior to 9am really considered torturous? Go to sleep by midnight and you still get 9 hours of sleep, that’s not half bad.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  > Go to sleep by midnight and you still get 9 hours of sleep Assuming you can fall asleep at midnight, sure.
  - curun1r 4y ago
    A lot of that is sleep hygiene. People rarely had issues falling asleep early before electrification. And we’ve made it even worse with TV, computers and smartphones. Being very conscious of light consumption and turning off devices several hours before sleep makes it pretty easy to fall asleep earlier. I’m one of those people who normally can’t fall asleep before midnight and struggles to wake up early, but I’ve done a few digital detox programs where I’m without any electronic devices, and I’m always amazed at how quickly I fall into a schedule where I’m asleep before 9 and waking up at 4:30. And it’s also amazing how much better I feel both mentally and physically when I’m on that schedule.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      In my opinion teenagers need time for entertainment and socialization. When adults do it it's normal but when kids do it it's "TV bad, computer bad, smartphone bad". If you assume 8 hours per day for school, maybe one extra to get to/from school then homework and house chores, how much time does that leave for entertainment? No wonder kids stay up until very late because that's the only time they actually have for themselves to do something they actually enjoy and is not being forced upon them.
- johnfn 4y ago
  I don’t know. My schools first period was 7:50, but that meant we’d normally have to wake up around 5:45 in order to get ready for the bus, which came by our house around 6:45. A two hour period from waking to being in first period seemed pretty normal, and even if you subtract that from a “more generous” 9am, you still get 7am, which is pretty brutal on adolescents which are known to have shifted sleep schedules.
IYasha 4y ago
Same. Hell on earth. I would never get up fresh no matter how early I went to bed. Most of my health problems started there and so many possibilities were lost! I'd rather have skipped early lessons, get bad marks, but had more energy to study later!
rpdillon 4y ago
My son's bus comes at 6:35am, classes begin at 7:15. Really tough to transition to after elementary, which was an hour later.
- bonzini 4y ago
  What time does he have dinner and go to bed?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dzhiurgis 4y ago
Wonder how this sentiment varies across the latitude?
refurb 4y ago
Waking up at 9am is torturous?

munchenphile 4y ago

School start is really bounded by the start of the average parent’s workday, unfortunately. Mom and Dad start work at 9 am. Kids need to be at school before then. None of this 10 am start talk makes sense for the kids that aren’t on the bus line and have parents that drive them to school.

Siira 4y ago
They could make the first period an optional free study session. This problem is not that difficult.
mbreese 4y ago
It is also bounded in the other end by sports. If your school day goes too late, you won’t have time in the afternoon/evening for sports practices. So, if you still need X hours for classes, you’ll need to start early enough to get over in time for 1-1.5 hour practices. (It also applies to other extracurricular sports, but I doubt anyone really worries about play practice schedules)
- munchenphile 4y ago
  Well, even in a world where theater is taken as seriously as sport, at least you can do theater indoors at all hours. You can’t really play soccer after dusk if the field is outside and you don’t have lights. So lots of outdoor sports have strict daylight constraints.
- GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
  Remove the sports, can do that on the weekend
  - munchenphile 4y ago
    Delusional. Sports are competitive. They require daily reps. Sports are also meant to keep kids physically active and healthy, and to establish a routine of physical activity into their adulthood (alongside intellectual productivity). You can’t just be physically active and healthy on the weekend.
    - cgriswald 4y ago
      Then have sports be an acceptable substitute to gym classes and a regular part of the day. I doubt anyone can explain to me why the captain of our football team also needed to be in gym class playing flag football with us in order to graduate in a way where the answer isn't bureaucratic. At some point you have to decide on an optimum between time, sleep, and output.
      - munchenphile 4y ago
        I’m not defending daily gym class. I’m defending daily sports. I was fortunate enough to go to a high school that did not have a gym period, but required all students to play an organized sport. Gym in large high schools is a waste of time due to the student to instructor ratio. One frustrated gym teacher to 50+ kids playing dodgeball? Of course you’re going to have theater kids just going through the motions and goth kids behind the bleachers smoking cigarettes. It’s not real exercise. You need small rosters, organized practices, uniforms, referees, fans (students and parents) and intra-school competition. It creates seriousness and expectations. You can’t hide from your coach when there’s only 14 kids on the roster. You need to do the sprints with everyone else and take the drills seriously. I don’t think this scales beyond smaller high schools. Not enough facilities, not enough coaches, not enough money.
        danenania 4y ago
- ProjectArcturis 4y ago
  You could do sports in the morning instead.
- Brybry 4y ago
  High schools already do sports into the night hours anyway. I don't know that "too late" has much meaning here.
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  The school day ending at 3 doesn't preclude sports. A 9 a.m.-to-3 p.m. school day was the norm for generations, and there's no reason it can't be now.
thatjoeoverthr 4y ago
These are teenagers. Give them house keys and a skateboard.
- munchenphile 4y ago
  Yeah, sorry. That doesn’t work in a huge percentage of areas in the US. Heat, cold, darkness, lack of infrastructure, and distance. When the high is 110 F in a Phoenix suburb, you can’t ask the 14 year olds to skateboard 20 miles to school on a country road with no breakdown lane. Similarly, you can’t ask kids from Maine to skateboard to school in the dark on ice. Whenever this topic gets brought up, a bunch of seemingly childless city dwellers think they’re making some massive revelation suggesting that kids just get their own butts to school at a comfortable 10:30 am. It’s actually pretty simple: Both parents work. Somebody has to drive the kids to school (hard requirement — there’s no bus and a bike/skateboard is too perilous). Work starts at 9 am. School has to start earlier than that.
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    That's what Americans get for building the suburbs so poorly. And Phoenix is uninhabitable, nobody lived there before AC. Let work start later too. Tell that boss he can get with the times.
  - naz 4y ago
    What time does school finish and why isn't getting home a similar issue?
    - munchenphile 4y ago
      Getting home is a big issue for a lot of families. School ends around 3 pm, but most kids do some sort of after school activity like a sport to bridge the gap until after 5 pm when a parent can come through the pickup line. Growing up, there was also just general “after-school” programs. Basically just day care for after the school day that would cost extra.
    - odessacubbage 4y ago
derobert 4y ago
For high school, the youngest of which are 14, probably closer to 15? That really doesn't seem like a requirement. Well, except when they have to get out the door before 6:15am...
usrn 4y ago
Yet another problem caused by having both parents work.
midasuni 4y ago
So how does school stopping at 2:30pm work? How do kids get back home?
IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
There is no reason for the tyranny of the minority to dictate terms on everyone else. Any parent that wants to torture their kid with a 7am start is free to do so. That choice however shoulsnt dictate the school time for everyone else. Early birds can show up to a long recess pre-class time but class should only start at 10am or so
wheels 4y ago
...and most people have to work until 5 p.m., which is why all schools go until at least 5 p.m.
quartesixte 4y ago
This is the problem with American cities in general. A very beaten dead-horse, but look at Japan: Elementary Schools and Middle Schools placed within a MAXIMUM 10min walking pace distance at that age group’s walking pace. High Schoolers able to commute to their school of choice due to robust public transportation network. We have designed cities that create as byproducts incredible amount of self-inflicted wounds on our culture. We don’t have to live this way. This is a choice. Parents go to work or send their kids off. A parent personally accompanying a student to school is an indicator of something having gone wrong.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  A lot of elementary and middle private school students commute to their schools by train in Japan.
  - quartesixte 4y ago
    I lived in a very working/middle class neighborhood so I rarely witnessed this. But yes this is also a thing.
- shiftpgdn 4y ago
  I see so many new urbanists saying we’ve made a tremendous mistake, and I agree. But how can we fix it? Tear down all the cities and start over?
  - quartesixte 4y ago
    Basically, yes. In piecemeal. But yes. Major US population centers who are not New York should have, at the start of their explosive population growth, experienced a massive construction boom. There should be so many people employed making a city right now that the other problem we have with people not making a living wage because they are working jobs that weren’t designed to be life-sustaining careers might not be a problem! Tear down all the “historical homes” and build mid-sizes apartment buildings. Build more schools. Hire more teachers. The “character” and “flavor” of a city will come naturally and organically as an emergent property of trying to build a massive city to house millions. Cities if done right turn into quasi-perpetual motion machines that feed itself the economic activity to sustain itself. And because they are denser and more compact, resource consumption can be scaled to be more efficient. Oh and all the people who used to be sprawled out now concentrated? That frees up land to build industrial centers on the outskirts that feed more economic activity. This is an oversimplification that ignores a LOT of externalities to economic activity and histories of urban decay, but essentially: yes cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles essentially need to be rebuilt from the ground up and hopefully it will be as a result of conscious decisions and not a Great Fire of London/Earthquake of 1906 type disaster. The other problem is bureaucracy and that is actually a consequence of the way US regulations approach regulation. It will make everyone’s life easier if we had very perspective building regulations that can be just checklisted through instead of ambiguous, litigious wording.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Angostura 4y ago
In the UK schools get around that problem by running 'Breakfast clubs' kids can turn up early and get a nourishing breakfast from a bit before 8am. The school day doesn't start until just before 9
- dunefox 4y ago
  That still means they have to get up early, though.

hstan4 4y ago

Is waking up prior to 9am really considered torturous? Go to sleep by midnight and you still get 9 hours of sleep, that’s not half bad.

908B64B197 4y ago
> Go to sleep by midnight and you still get 9 hours of sleep Assuming you can fall asleep at midnight, sure.
- curun1r 4y ago
  A lot of that is sleep hygiene. People rarely had issues falling asleep early before electrification. And we’ve made it even worse with TV, computers and smartphones. Being very conscious of light consumption and turning off devices several hours before sleep makes it pretty easy to fall asleep earlier. I’m one of those people who normally can’t fall asleep before midnight and struggles to wake up early, but I’ve done a few digital detox programs where I’m without any electronic devices, and I’m always amazed at how quickly I fall into a schedule where I’m asleep before 9 and waking up at 4:30. And it’s also amazing how much better I feel both mentally and physically when I’m on that schedule.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    In my opinion teenagers need time for entertainment and socialization. When adults do it it's normal but when kids do it it's "TV bad, computer bad, smartphone bad". If you assume 8 hours per day for school, maybe one extra to get to/from school then homework and house chores, how much time does that leave for entertainment? No wonder kids stay up until very late because that's the only time they actually have for themselves to do something they actually enjoy and is not being forced upon them.
johnfn 4y ago
I don’t know. My schools first period was 7:50, but that meant we’d normally have to wake up around 5:45 in order to get ready for the bus, which came by our house around 6:45. A two hour period from waking to being in first period seemed pretty normal, and even if you subtract that from a “more generous” 9am, you still get 7am, which is pretty brutal on adolescents which are known to have shifted sleep schedules.

IYasha 4y ago

Same. Hell on earth. I would never get up fresh no matter how early I went to bed. Most of my health problems started there and so many possibilities were lost! I'd rather have skipped early lessons, get bad marks, but had more energy to study later!

rpdillon 4y ago

My son's bus comes at 6:35am, classes begin at 7:15. Really tough to transition to after elementary, which was an hour later.

bonzini 4y ago
What time does he have dinner and go to bed?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dzhiurgis 4y ago

Wonder how this sentiment varies across the latitude?

refurb 4y ago

Waking up at 9am is torturous?