[HN Gopher] Let Teenagers Sleep
___________________________________________________________________
Let Teenagers Sleep
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 316 points
Date : 2023-02-13 20:57 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| As a teenager I was diagnosed with "ADD". Very intelligent, but
| unable to focus or complete assignments.
|
| My life habits were carb heavy unhealthy food (from the
| cafeteria), soda, lack of sleep due to long school commute, not
| much exercise
|
| As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables, I work from
| home and sleep in as far as I need every night. My thinking is
| laser sharp.
|
| They tried to medicate me with all sorts of anti depression drugs
| and amphetamines. Turns out I was just very unhealthy, from a
| basic lifestyle perspective. And the school was pushing that
| lifestyle. My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college,
| just a community college (despite the fact that I got admitted to
| a decent state school), or maybe go into the "trades".
|
| These large scale school systems treat students like cattle, with
| zero regard for the long term effects. Many mental health
| concerns would disappear if people were actually healthy in the
| most basic sense.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Modern psychiatry entirely ignores mechanism. All diagnoses are
| sets of symptoms, and treatments are drugs that reduce specific
| symptoms. It isn't surprising that in many cases the causes
| would be obvious, but there isn't any type of system for even
| trying to approach mental health that way.
|
| Another problem is the feedback loop of mental illness. A lot
| of people might feel better if they got exercise, ate healthy,
| got enough sleep, made some friends, took on some fun hobbies,
| etc. but most people aren't willing or able to do any of that
| if they are stuck in a bad mental state.
| ck425 wrote:
| > Another problem is the feedback loop of mental illness. A
| lot of people might feel better if they got exercise, ate
| healthy, got enough sleep, made some friends, took on some
| fun hobbies, etc. but most people aren't willing or able to
| do any of that if they are stuck in a bad mental state.
|
| I've found CBT super helpful for my ADHD because it focuses
| on the small steps to break that loop. I thoroughly recommend
| it for ADHD and mental illness, particularly for engineers as
| it's far more system based and obviously "logical" than any
| other form of therapy I've tried.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| I was never diagnosed with ADD, but I had a long commute to
| school (2+ hours each way - I was closest to the bus barn, so
| first on in morning, last off at night). So I was on the bus at
| 5:15am, and not getting home until 5:45-6:30pm, just in time to
| eat dinner and go to bed so that I could wake up at 4:30am to
| get my shower, and walk a half mile to the bus stop.
|
| The fact that they would pull that shit on 13 year old kids,
| then tell them they are dumb and fail them is ridiculous.
| Thankfully I had a few teachers that would stand up for me, but
| most of them though I was a lazy burn-out and would never
| amount to anything, and almost no teacher had empathy for me. I
| should be doing my school work on the bumpy bus that spent more
| than half its time on rural dirt roads.
|
| When I got my first real job, I was glad to realize how wrong
| they all were. But it shattered my confidence.
| rajin444 wrote:
| I used to be really big on trust the experts, seek authorities
| for advice, etc etc. Especially for areas involving mental /
| general health. Specifics like fixing a broken arm I'm still on
| the experts side :)
|
| Decades later I've had many (eerily similar) experiences to
| what you detailed above. I've gotten the best results
| evaluating issues on my own / with the help of a few trusted
| sources. Expert advice is about as reliable as chatgpt (in the
| majority of cases). There's too many devils in the details when
| it comes to complex issues like health. Find people who got
| results or find results yourself.
|
| I think the majority of modern healthcare exists to make a
| profit and curing patients isn't really a good business model.
| Unfortunately they can use those profits to create an army of
| experts and studies.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I don't distrust modern medical community, but I think it
| often suffers from overconfidence that leads me to more
| carefully scrutinize (but not outright reject) expert
| opinion.
|
| I've been listening to a podcast called Sawbones where they
| talk through the history of medicine. It's basically a tour
| of all the ways we got things wrong. My conclusion has been:
| and why are we so confident that this time we're right? Seems
| like every generation is confident that finally, they've got
| it right.
| waboremo wrote:
| If we expect every day to be an improvement, the needle has
| been moved forward that much more, how else would history
| function except a retelling of mistakes, missteps, and
| wrongdoings?
| Folcon wrote:
| > I think the majority of modern healthcare exists to make a
| profit and curing patients isn't really a good business
| model. Unfortunately they can use those profits to create an
| army of experts and studies.
|
| Not all healthcare is for-profit healthcare. I agree
| incentive alignment is an issue when we're talking about for-
| profit healthcare, but in other cases medical professionals
| treat patients to the best of their ability.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > I think the majority of modern healthcare exists to make a
| profit
|
| 100%. Healthcare is a big, big business.
| thinking4real wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Weird. My guidance councillor did the same. Well, I wasn't
| accepted to a school at the point in which they encouraged me
| to settle for less, but it was a very heartfelt "don't even
| try".
|
| I left the room very confused and upset. Went in with ambition
| and excitement about my future and left feeling like I must be
| a complete idiot.
|
| I remember her saying "Let's focus on being realistic. You
| aren't actually going to do this. You won't accomplish any of
| this".
|
| Like you I was diagnosed with ADD, though long after this. I
| was inattentive, but succeeding wildly in technology classes
| and even went to some programming and animation "competitions"
| which I managed to win. She still told me to set my sights low
| and aim for trades or something.
|
| For what it's worth I managed to trick everyone else into
| letting me become a programmer and I did well despite the
| advice. It still haunts me to think that kids are getting
| slapped in the self esteem with advice from people like that;
| people who are supposed to give them objective, constructive,
| actionable advice in order to begin setting up their academic
| and professional futures.
|
| I'd add though that unlike you, my diet more or less went the
| opposite direction and I feel much better too. I went
| completely plant-based with an emphasis on whole foods and as
| far as I can tell my entire body works better. I'm not saying
| you're wrong because I absolutely believe you and agree that we
| were probably just extremely unhealthy before. Maybe any
| healthier diet would have sufficed. But yeah, this thing seems
| extremely variable from person to person. Plant based with
| heaps of carbs might annihilate your brain, but a bowl of
| barley with steamed tofu, broccoli, carrots, and peanut sauce
| is like heavenly brain food for me.
|
| Exercise was the other missing link. The more I exercise the
| better I feel. I'm like a dog that needs to be taken or runs
| and swims. When my owner forgets I turn into a needy, whining,
| anxious, lethargic little beast of a human.
| darkerside wrote:
| Was this meeting before lunch? Maybe she was just hungry. As
| terrifying as that is.
| username3 wrote:
| Reverse psychology works if they're wrong and true if they're
| right.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| We're all winners! Here is your sticker.
|
| World is a savage place and everyone will try to keep you
| down. There are lucky few that are surrounded by a support
| group that cares and safety nets at every corner.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Its actually a elitist, slap down machine. Cause academic
| families will not fear such a slap. After all, everyone you
| know has studied. And some of them are idiots, you know
| those. So why shouldn't you.
|
| But the one person from a poor household, who never went
| far in life. No matter how bright, will have noone to put
| them back upright again. Its pure evil and very unamerican
| and anti-meritocratic. Its also a thing, thats very common
| in european societys with rigid class structures, like
| Britain.
|
| They sort you in, just for your dialect and your place of
| birth. And look what it got them..
| Fr0styMatt88 wrote:
| A bit of an aside but it's so strange to me seeing 'trades'
| referred to as a lowly thing. Here in Australia, tradies are
| admired, often earn really good money and get a lot of good
| attention. They can work hard and put in the hours to get
| ahead whereas us IT guys on salary have a much more 'fixed'
| earning potential.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I have no aversion to trades and actually worked in joinery
| for many years before I began programming professionally. I
| don't mean to look down on it at all. I actually find it
| absurd that I earn as much as I do compared to say, a red
| seal carpenter here in Canada where their breadth of skill
| and knowledge means more and accomplishes more than my own
| skill set in very tangible and crucial ways.
|
| If I could support my family as well in trades I might have
| considered staying -- I loved working the giant industrial
| CNC machine and began to love learning to set it up and
| create CAD drawings for it. I probably would have enjoyed a
| career headed in that direction, but I could have ended up
| earning around 1/3 of what I do now... At best.
| Fr0styMatt88 wrote:
| Oh just to clarify - I didn't think you were looking down
| on the trades at all, it's the sentiment expressed by the
| school guidance counsellor that I found strange. I've
| heard it is a very culturally-dependent thing, to be
| fair.
|
| Your comment reminded me of going with my dad to a place
| that had a huge laser-cutting machine when I was young.
| They were awesome!
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > I'd add though that unlike you, my diet more or less went
| the opposite direction and I feel much better too. I went
| completely plant-based with an emphasis on whole foods and as
| far as I can tell my entire body works better. I'm not saying
| you're wrong because I absolutely believe you and agree that
| we were probably just extremely unhealthy before. Maybe any
| healthier diet would have sufficed. But yeah, this thing
| seems extremely variable from person to person. Plant based
| with heaps of carbs might annihilate your brain, but a bowl
| of barley with steamed tofu, broccoli, carrots, and peanut
| sauce is like heavenly brain food for me.
|
| The great thing about the SAD (Standard American Diet) is
| that most any not-totally-insane restrictive diet will be
| significantly better. It hardly even matters which you
| choose, it _will_ be better. When you start with terrible,
| even "bad" is an improvement!
| beebmam wrote:
| > As an adult, I eat no carbs, all meat and vegetables
|
| This is contradictory. Vegetables are high in carbohydrates as
| a percentage of their calories.
| navierstokess wrote:
| Low carb doesn't mean you can't eat food with carbs, it means
| most of your diet is protein and fat, and you restrict
| carbohydrate consumption. He can have a low carbohydrate diet
| while eating vegetables, as long as he eats less vegetables
| than meat.
| beebmam wrote:
| He said he eats no carbs.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Non-starch vegetable have almost no carbs and almost no
| calories.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| But they have the fiber and other green goodness you need.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Betting here that "no carbs" = no bread or other grain
| products.
| [deleted]
| Spivak wrote:
| We've ruined multiple generations by not explaining that our
| bodies don't care that much about what form our nutrients
| take. Getting the meat sweats from an Italian sub doesn't
| mean it was unhealthy, it's just your body's reaction to
| processing it which can be a desirable feeling (say on
| Thanksgiving) or not.
|
| People who switch to "healthy" and feel better pretty much
| fall into three categories.
|
| * Their new diet is less enjoyable and they simply eat less
| and burning fat feels good.
|
| * They accidentally switched to a FODMAP diet and associate
| the lack of "reaction" from food as a sign of health.
|
| * They have been criminally deprived of fiber and are now
| regular for the first time in recent memory.
| solveit wrote:
| > My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college, just a
| community college (despite the fact that I got admitted to a
| decent state school)
|
| What's wrong with guidance counselors in American high schools?
| Why do I keep hearing about them giving kids incredibly stupid
| advice?
| musicale wrote:
| > just a community college
|
| Community colleges are the best deal in higher education, and
| often have faculty who are interested in teaching rather than
| research.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Most of them are really bad at their jobs, but the pay kinda
| sucks, so that's not likely to improve. And with all the
| glamour of telling burn-outs that they're not getting into
| Harvard all day long, and the low pay, you also get to be
| point person when a kid offs themselves or dies in a car
| wreck. Fun!
|
| You get what you pay for, and the pay's low. Also, the job
| sucks. That's a recipe for terrible service.
|
| [EDIT] Incidentally, you want consistently-great counselors,
| as far as the college planning side goes? Elite prep schools.
| Half of what you're paying for is an expert with insider
| knowledge & contacts to ensure your kid gets into the best
| possible school they can. They treat the position--at least
| as far as that side of it goes-- _very_ seriously, when
| hiring.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > Why do I keep hearing about them giving kids incredibly
| stupid advice?
|
| most people with insight on good advice do not become high
| school guidance counselors. why would they?
| xypage wrote:
| Because a guidance counselor doing a good job is really
| boring, they ask you where you want to go to school, get you
| links to those applications, and maybe walk you through the
| application/point you to a campus resource that'll proofread
| your essays before you submit them. None of these are
| particularly note worthy, no one's going to go home and write
| about that experience, so you don't hear about it. That's
| what my counselor did, they got me fee waivers too so I
| didn't have to pay a cent for any of my applications, it's
| just not something I raced to write about, like I would've if
| they told me I shouldn't go to college and then I did well or
| something.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| I agree. My guidance counselor had 2 3-ring binders FULL of
| schools that fit some criteria I had, but were also aligned
| to my disabilities. My mom and I spent ~2 hours with the
| counselor looking through the schools and applying. It was
| pretty boring. They also arranged for schools to come and
| talk to us about them. That was rad because we got to skip
| class
| clint wrote:
| I'm often surprised that so many folks seemed to have
| "Guidance Counselors" at their schools. I went to a public
| science and technology magnet school in Kansas during the
| 90s and I don't think I ever saw a guidance counselor ever.
| mjhay wrote:
| They have a strong tendency to steer high-performing students
| from lower-income families away from prestigious schools,
| despite the fact that those are often cheaper with
| scholarships.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I think I talked to guidance counselors twice during my
| entire high school career, and neither time came away
| satisfied, but had friends who were in and out of their
| offices on the regular without complaint beyond the usual
| ones you'd expect from teenage boys.
| kcplate wrote:
| I am not sure it's necessarily bad advice in this case--
| community college or trade school route--I would consider
| that pretty good general advice for an underperforming but
| intelligent teen. However, I do know firsthand from an
| experience involving my son's guidance counselor providing
| remarkably bad advice that at times the guidance isn't
| beneficial to the teen, but more to the school.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "What's wrong with guidance counselors in American high
| schools? Why do I keep hearing about them giving kids
| incredibly stupid advice?"
|
| Because most of them couldn't get a "real" job. If they could
| they'd be making more money somewhere else. (yes, there are
| some great people doing the job for ideological reasons too)
| hd95489 wrote:
| Yeah I mean the guidance counselor is at best a failed
| therapist so why would you expect good advice
| TylerE wrote:
| That is excellent advice in many states. For instance, here
| in NC you can do the first 2 years of almost any undergrad
| degree (all the basic non-subject matter stuff) for a
| fraction of the cost, and every single credit transfers.
| Also, much much smaller classes.
| Merad wrote:
| Why do you think this was stupid advice? More than a few
| "normal" kids go off to college and crash and burn or
| otherwise fail spectacularly because they aren't prepared to
| be on their own. It sounds _totally reasonable_ to suggest
| that a kid struggling with issues like the GP might consider
| community college so they can stay around family support
| structures, continue seeing the same doctors or therapists,
| etc.
| screye wrote:
| My cynical take is that someone who cannot figure out what
| career to be in themselves ends up a guidance counselor.
|
| The job isn't well paid. And anyone who can do large scale
| talent identification will likely be paid a lot more in the
| corporate world. So you end up with the least competent ones
| in public schools.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Selection bias?
| seeEllArr wrote:
| [dead]
| westurner wrote:
| /? ADHD and sleep; REM / non-REM:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=adhd+and+sleep
|
| Sleep hygiene: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_hygiene
| https://www.google.com/search?q=sleep+hygiene
|
| - Enough exercise and water
|
| - Otherwise, limit calories and/or protein in the preceding
| hours
|
| Sleep induction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_induction
|
| Pranayama; breathing yoga:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranayama
|
| 4-7-8 breathing:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=4-7-8+breathing
|
| Attributed both to Army and Navy:
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90253444/what-happened-when-i-tr...
| :
|
| > _The Independent says the technique was first described in a
| book from 1981 called "Relax and Win: Championship Performance"
| by Lloyd Bud Winter._
|
| /? "Relax and Win: Championship Performance"
| https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Relax+and+Win%3A+Champion...
| https://archive.org/details/Relax-and-Win_Championship-Perfo...
| phillipcarter wrote:
| > These large scale school systems treat students like cattle
|
| I think that's by design, though, as school primarily exists as
| extended daycare so that parents can work.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| I just think about how many people early in life are
| completely thrown off course because there isnt someone
| around to provide the basics. And it can happen in well off
| families.
| jxramos wrote:
| I wonder how the experience would have went if we were in
| on the design of it all. We had our suspicions but I wonder
| if some folks would have been more compelled to take things
| into their own hands than passively take all the crazy
| environments dished out on us. Sort of in the space of
| informed consent, I can react to that which I'm explicitly
| aware of you know? Youth frequently pay the price is these
| sorts of information asymetries.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college, just a
| community college (despite the fact that I got admitted to a
| decent state school), or maybe go into the "trades".
|
| While I can only assume the people at that school to have been
| clueless as to your personal preferences and capabilities I do
| not see anything wrong with advising someone to skip college
| and learn a trade. College is not for everyone, college is not
| needed for many types of employment and college is all too
| often only used as a filtering device to reduce the number of
| interview candidates to manageable proportions. Add to that the
| fact that many colleges have ditched or are on the way to
| ditching objectivity and the scientific method to replace it
| with a post-modern portion of bullshit bingo in the name of
| D.I.E. and such and it suddenly becomes sage advice for many to
| skip this needless and needlessly expensive step. If you're
| aspiring to build bridges, heal the sick or raise the dead
| you'd better get yourself a degree, preferably one which
| actually means something. If you're planning to go into sales,
| start a small business or tend to a farm you don't need
| college.
| alienalp wrote:
| This is the biggest issue with developing countries. Nobody
| really understand how important chronic diseases and a good
| diet is. In terms of this for majority of its population US is
| also just like an ordinary developing country. Very similar to
| Saudi Arabia. Majority of vegetables are also not very
| innocent. Maybe not comparable to processed junk food with tons
| of sugar but there is almost no developed country with high
| vegetable intake yet Vegetables are advertised as healthy and
| people in developing countries fall victim to it. Fortunately
| our body is very versatile but i don't think a sensitive organ
| like brain can keep its ideal condition over time.
| exfatloss wrote:
| [dead]
| peoplearepeople wrote:
| > My guidance counseler suggested I dont attend college
|
| Reminder to self, tell my children to ignore anything a
| 'guidance councilor' says
| krolden wrote:
| "What do you want to do with your life"
|
| Me: "I dunno"
|
| "Ok, back to class"
| hgsgm wrote:
| Should they take education advice from someone who changes
| correctly spelled words to incorrectly spelled?
| isk517 wrote:
| There's the old joke that if the guidance councilor was good
| at their job they wouldn't be working as a guidance
| councilor.
| Yoric wrote:
| I never quite understood what the role was. Does anyone
| listen to them?
| [deleted]
| xupybd wrote:
| My high school math teacher told me I wouldn't make it to
| university.
|
| I ended up with a math heavy engineering degree. First class
| honours.
|
| I'm home schooling my kids . They will do better with their
| parents as teachers. My friends have done it and their kids
| were academically ready for university years before their
| peers.
| Zetice wrote:
| Maybe just schedule the not-intellectually-heavy stuff earlier in
| the day, if we can't screw up the parents' schedules with a later
| start time.
|
| For example, start school with a study hall (that you can miss if
| you're so able e.g. if you can drive yourself to school), and let
| the kids nap. Honestly that would have been a game changer for
| me, as I never did my homework until the last second.
| trgn wrote:
| Yeah, a few hours of optional study hall before or after school
| would be so good. It gives some buffer for the studious kids.
| Plus, 50% of class time is wasted anyway. Just teach
| essentials.
|
| Getting on my soap box: most important buildings in an
| educational institution are the library and the sports hall.
| Healthy mind in healthy body. Dial in formal instruction
| tactfully. That's really it.
| legitster wrote:
| > And around puberty, their circadian clocks shift by a couple of
| hours, meaning they get tired later at night than before and wake
| up later in the morning than they used to. This shift reverses at
| adulthood. The biological nature of this daily rhythm means that
| sending a teenager to bed earlier won't necessarily mean they
| fall asleep earlier.
|
| It's not clear to me that this shift is actually biological in
| nature, or trained in from years of habit. I still have friends
| who never got jobs or careers after high school. Now into their
| 30s they are staying up regularly to 3-4am. If anything, their
| circadian rhythm has further extended.
|
| If this is the case, "letting teenagers sleep in" might just
| offset that habit correction into the college years, or the early
| career years, or etc. Or constitute a permanent change in
| circadian rhythm for that generation.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Kids can also go to bed earlier. When they leave the protected
| confines of public education, the world won't bend to your
| schedule (maybe with the rise of the 4 day work week being talked
| about on linkedin every other day). Every teen in my family is up
| till 2/3am on weekends, playing video games with friends,
| streaming something. All good, but best not for a school night.
| I'd be pretty tired too if I stayed up every work night till
| 2/3am. Perhaps try to read before bed, or go for a walk.
| harry8 wrote:
| What time does school start in the USA? I assumed it would be the
| same as here but apparently not, never heard of a school formal
| lesson starting before 8:30 here and 9am start is the norm for
| all school and always(?) has been.
|
| Separate to that how cynical should we be about these psychology
| studies? As a science it seems hell bent on demonstrating that it
| is closer to poetry or religion which means we should start with
| an extremely sceptical prior before closely examining evidence
| /especially/ when it is telling us something to which we're
| sympathetic. Stats is hard, sure. Get it wrong by all means,
| repeatedly wrong even. There is no excuse for not owning that and
| correcting it rather than doubling down when that comes out if
| you're claiming to be a science. None. No excuse for not clearly
| identifying it every time it happens and publicly noting it. [1]
| No excuse that every first year, university level psych textbook
| seems to contain the completely discredited [2] "Stanford Prison
| Experiment" as though it was anything other than gross scientific
| fraud. It is still being taught to first year as though it were
| science. How? Seriously. Is everyone in psychology a fraud?
| Surely not.
|
| [1] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2016/03/05/29195/
|
| [2] https://www.nine.com.au/entertainment/viral/stanford-
| prison-....
|
| edit: links backing it up for those who haven't yet heard how bad
| it is or just want it to go away. It won't.
| kesslern wrote:
| My school bus arrived at the school at 7:05 every morning. We
| were allowed in the building at 7:15. At 7:28 we were allowed
| to go to our lockers. Classes began at 7:30. My bus time varied
| by year, but the earliest pickup time I had was 6:20.
| harry8 wrote:
| Ok. Deeply surprised by that info. I basically never woke
| before 7am (and that was too early!)
| robg wrote:
| Really amazing that two key bugs in schools work actively hurt
| the brain's ability to learn, remember, focus, and make
| decisions:
|
| 1. Long school days mean brains are overworked and so don't
| function well 2. Multi month summer breaks actively overwrite
| what was learned the prior year
|
| When will schooling be built to best optimize brain power?
| Levitz wrote:
| To your second point, that's just a testament of the failure of
| schooling.
|
| If anything, the only things kids learn are those that they
| still know after summer break, or better yet, a couple of years
| afterwards.
|
| The current model is based on memorizing a whole lot of stuff
| and then later forgetting it. very little is learned at schools
| and high-schools. The relationship between invested time and
| knowledge returned is appalling, but it makes sense once you
| accept that, like others in the thread have said, school and
| high school are essentially grown-up childcare.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I've gotta ask: is this really such a big problem in other
| countries? If not, are they starting school later? How are the
| successful ones dealing with it if not that way?
| witheld wrote:
| The scientific consensus is that children need more sleep than
| theyre getting, and that waking up later is healthier. I assume
| this problem is the same in most parts of the world.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Can solve that by going to bed earlier too, but I doubt my
| teenager self would have listened to that.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Its more than just rebelliousness. Teens' circadian rhythms
| are naturally shifted towards falling asleep later in the
| evening and waking up later in the morning.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| The cicadian rhytm doesn't actually know what the clock
| on your wall says, only when you eat and get daylight. A
| late cicadian rhytm is functionally equivalent with poor
| sleep hyhiene.
| jltsiren wrote:
| And when other people are active. It seems to be fairly
| common that night owls need an hour or two of their own
| time after most other people have gone to sleep, or at
| least have stopped bothering them.
| jenadine wrote:
| Why not going to sleep earlier?
| djcannabiz wrote:
| in the article: ,,And around puberty, their circadian
| clocks shift by a couple of hours, meaning they get tired
| later at night than before and wake up later in the morning
| than they used to. This shift reverses at adulthood." I
| agree with you somewhat that there is some personal
| responsibility required here, but I disagree that the
| answer here is so simple as going to sleep earlier.
| dobbysfirstsock wrote:
| >I agree with you somewhat that there is some personal
| responsibility required here, but I disagree that the
| answer here is so simple as going to sleep earlier.
|
| I think this is where I'm at. I know its entirely
| possible to sleep earlier with lifestyle changes. I spent
| a summer at my grandparents with no wifi, tech etc and
| going outside to play, I was so bored but damn if that
| wasn't the best sleep I ever had in my life, lol... and
| early too, never more than 10 PM.
|
| I'm just worried if we start later and later, it could
| keep creeping up until you have no reasonable time left
| to start later. I suppose experimenting with it couldn't
| hurt though.
| juve1996 wrote:
| Did the article cite the source for this and maybe I
| missed it? It says a lot of things and "countless
| studies" but curiously doesn't list all of them.
| djcannabiz wrote:
| user jobs_throwaway posted a link to a paper on this
| topic
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222804/#:~:text=Res
| ear...
|
| In the article, they link to this website.
|
| https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/specialties/sleep-
| disord...
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Because teens have a natural tendency to fall asleep later:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222804/#:~:text=Resea
| r...
|
| Sure, it is possible to have them go to bed earlier, but
| you're fighting biology
| saurik wrote:
| You can just ask Google for the typical high school (noting
| that the term for such schooling can drift) hours in another
| country. I chose Spain, and it says 9-5 with a 2 hour break for
| lunch in the middle. Some of the sources say 8:30. Nothing says
| earlier than that. This article, in contrast, says it required
| this argument to even get some schools here to compromise on
| 8:30, and that 9 was the recommendation.
| ck425 wrote:
| All the high schools I know of in the UK start at 9am. Never
| heard of any starting earlier, though private schools might
| be different.
| staunton wrote:
| Spain has an absurd timezone though
| kzrdude wrote:
| Spain is just an hour off compared to the sun, comparing to
| countries close like UK (same longitude, 1 hr time diff)
| [deleted]
| corbulo wrote:
| We seem to be approaching enough chaos where major entrenched
| systems changes like this will start to become possible.
|
| There are no lobbying groups on behalf of 9am school start times.
| You have to break the national teachers unions to get this kind
| of change, which parents appear the right amount of pissed off to
| do at this point.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| Maybe schedule and school choice would be better. I even went to
| earlier classes before the official start of school and did fine.
| One size does not fit all, and pushing a universal change in
| start time will hurt some students.
| rahidz wrote:
| Sorry teens, school isn't about your wellbeing. It's about
| glorified childcare (if we let out later, who will watch the
| younger kids? Before it may have been a parent, but now both
| parents are away at work) and athletics (later start times means
| your kid will come back from sports practice when it's dark).
| exfatloss wrote:
| Can't stress enough how important this is. People's circadian
| rhythms shift with age, and during teenage years, they are the
| latest (or most "night owl"-like).
|
| Current school times practically guarantee that teenagers will be
| too tired and sleep-deprived to learn much.
| juve1996 wrote:
| And yet many teenagers do just fine and end up learning a lot.
| How do they manage? Are they tired? Do they have magical
| circadian rhythms?
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Ideal support at home in some cases. Being allowed to rest
| and sleep as needed, good food around, transportation to help
| minimize commute times, etc. Having this makes it much easier
| to meet the demands.
|
| Not in all cases. But there are absolutely logistical
| advantages some kids have and others don't, and some kids
| suffer significantly for that disadvantage.
|
| Always exceptions to rules of course. And humans can still do
| impressive things under duress. Maybe the question is not how
| do they manage, but how much better could they manage under
| more ideal schedules, and how many more kids would do better
| as well?
| exfatloss wrote:
| [dead]
| tmpz22 wrote:
| As a teenager I used to stay up until 2-3am watching movies on my
| ipod touch - which had a ludicrously small screen by todays
| standards.
|
| I'm in favor of moving back start times but we should also better
| study and educate on the consequences of bad personal habits.
| dobbysfirstsock wrote:
| I 100% agree. I'm unfortunately not an expert in the field but
| over the years I've seen "studies" that are very flawed or
| impossible to replicate. I'm all for some experiments for those
| willing... perhaps it would overall increase the amount of
| sleep students get... but for some I feel it would completely
| wreck their schedules.
|
| This is anecdotal but when I went to live with my grandparents
| for a summer, I hated every minute of it. They lived on a farm
| with no wifi. By the last week or two though, I realized I
| sorta enjoyed it. I was out like a light by 10 pm every day. I
| was getting more exercise etc. I had no reliable reason to stay
| up past 10 pm and my body seemed to adjust to what felt
| natural.
|
| As an adult, I can say that if school started later, I would
| have just stayed up later. There was even a time in college
| that I would stay up till 4-5 am. Sometimes you would know a
| snow day the night before and I would tell my friends on the
| west coast that I could stay up even later. It was awful but I
| couldn't see it at the time. It took me years to fix. I now
| sleep around 1 AM which I still wish I could sleep earlier but
| I'll take it.
| xyzelement wrote:
| // should also better study and educate on the consequences of
| bad personal habits.
|
| Yeah - and you can get away with bad habits until you can't. An
| ex of mine was very successful through her early 30s despite
| being out and partying late quite often. Then she joined
| Goldman Sachs where the bar is higher, and all of a sudden she
| was like "shit, I gotta go to bed early if I need to keep up."
| burlesona wrote:
| My high school in Texas started at 9:05 am. Sample size of 1, but
| my experience was:
|
| (a) It still felt "early" to me at the time, but not "difficult"
| to be up for.
|
| (b) I don't remember anyone complaining about school starting
| early or people being generally sleep deprived - if someone was
| exhausted in school we were all amused and curious what
| adventures they'd been having to stay out way too late.
|
| (c) I do recall that there was an optional "early period" that
| started at 7:30 and some people took classes then or had sports
| stuff at that time, and I specifically remembering thinking that
| you had to be out of your mind to participate in anything
| requiring you to be up that early.
|
| By contrast my wife, who is much more the "go to bed on time"
| type than I ever was, had band at 6am and school at 7:30, and
| describes her high school as a blur that she slept through half
| of.
|
| So the article's recommendation for a 9am start time seems pretty
| logical to me.
| tptacek wrote:
| One big reason this shift isn't happening is that it creates
| coordination problems: for many families, everyone leaves for
| school at the same time, so if you move grade 9 forward an hour,
| you have to do the same with grade 4 to get any benefit; the 9th
| grader is taking the 4th grader to school. That problem stopped
| this shift dead recently where I live.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| This is why we have school busses. Why are children being
| tasked with transporting other children to school?
| justinlink wrote:
| Not OP, but OP may have meant:
|
| Sometimes older siblings contribute to childcare. A 9th
| grader that is home at 3pm, can watch a 4th grader that is
| home at 4pm until parents arrive home at 5pm.
| legitster wrote:
| School busses are shared across age ranges. So teenagers get
| the first bus, then middle schoolers get one an hour later,
| then grade schoolers.
|
| So if you punt the highschool bus to later, you are either
| making for a _very_ late school day, or making younger kids
| wake up earlier.
|
| Or the solution could be to triple the cost of school
| transportation.
| [deleted]
| nicoburns wrote:
| Or locate schools closer to where people live. It seems
| like it ought to be possible to locate at least elementary
| schools within walking distance of the kids homes.
| lostapathy wrote:
| > Or the solution could be to triple the cost of school
| transportation.
|
| Yes, let's try to kill the one form of public
| transportation we have in the USA that works decently and
| is widely available.
| [deleted]
| bmitc wrote:
| This showcases other problems with American society. With poor
| social support structures and urban design, kids can't simply
| walk to and from school, take public transportation, or ride
| school provided transportation to remove parents being
| chauffeurs.
| weberer wrote:
| Got any citations to back that up? I remember everyone in
| high school in Philadelphia commuting via public transit. And
| what do you meant can't walk to school? The whole city is a
| grid, completely covered with sidewalks. Go pull up an online
| map if you've never seen it before. The only thing impeding
| people from walking everywhere is the fear of getting mugged
| or worse in certain neighborhoods.
| sologoub wrote:
| That would not fix the coordination problem - if the family
| includes one of each (elementary, middle and high school
| kids) you still have to make breakfast for them, get everyone
| ready and head out. Let's say they all don't have to leave at
| the same time, but most other activities have to be
| coordinated and the sheer noise in the household will wake
| people up, not to mention it's a bit easier to feed all 3
| kids together.
| bmitc wrote:
| That again relates to social support structures. In fact,
| many kids' parents can't afford breakfast or even lunch.
|
| It seems there are programs that exist already to help feed
| kids breakfast and lunch at schools.
|
| https://www.fns.usda.gov/programs
|
| https://www.projectbread.org/
| rcme wrote:
| > That again relates to social support structures. In
| fact, many kids' parents can't afford breakfast or even
| lunch.
|
| That's not what the GP is talking about. They're saying
| that there is an overhead to people leaving at different
| times.
| kyeb wrote:
| It would have solved it completely for my family - we just
| ate cereal or a bagel in the morning for breakfast, no
| coordination necessary.
| ginko wrote:
| >if the family includes one of each (elementary, middle and
| high school kids) you still have to make breakfast for
| them, get everyone ready and head out.
|
| Surely high school aged kids can make their own breakfast.
| shagie wrote:
| Surely the high school aged kids can make sure to not
| oversleep and be responsible enough to ensure that their
| parents won't get a call at 9:15 when they've failed to
| show up on time.
| humanizersequel wrote:
| The vast majority of them are... to the detriment of
| their health and learning. Did you read the article?
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| Most high schoolers are capable of feeding themselves
| breakfast and getting out the door. And in my experience,
| aren't going to let themselves be woken up early by the
| younger ones getting ready for school.
| peoplearepeople wrote:
| > you still have to make breakfast for them, get everyone
| ready
|
| Past a certain age they can do this themselves. A 12 year
| old is very capable of doing everything besides driving a
| car
| yamtaddle wrote:
| It is _heavily_ resisted by sports parents, especially. They
| like the extra afternoon time after school that an early start
| provides. It 's one of the main reasons I've seen these kinds
| of proposals shot down before it could really get going,
| locally.
|
| > everyone leaves for school at the same time, so if you move
| grade 9 forward an hour, you have to do the same with grade 4
| to get any benefit; the 9th grader is taking the 4th grader to
| school. That problem stopped this shift dead recently where I
| live.
|
| Where?! Around here they don't have enough busses for everyone
| to go at once. Young kids start late (which sucks, because
| they've already burnt at least one of their best and most-alert
| hours of the day by then) and older kids start early (which
| also sucks, of course). They could flip it--after all, the
| older kids are the ones best-equipped to get themselves to
| school after the parents leave for work--but see again the
| sports-parents' (and, within the schools, coaches and athletic
| directors') objections.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Sports have become way too important in high school. In
| addition to bad ideas about start times, site selection for
| schools based on having huge amounts of land for sports
| fields means far away schools instead of being centrally
| located near a lot of people so students can walk to school
| easily.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| We have one local district with a weirdly-far-removed area
| with a couple local schools but who have to travel _really_
| far to get to the high school, which is farther out of the
| city in an exurb town. That 's (the town) also where all
| the sports facilities are.
|
| Everyone concerned would clearly be better off if this
| little area could be absorbed by another district (it has
| _two_ better-fit candidates bordering it! Of the three
| plausible options, it 's connected to the silliest one!
| And, hell, those two are _both_ better ranked, academically
| than the one it 's attached to, by a long shot!) or become
| its own mini-district--the ones up in the town hate the
| ones from "down South" (and, yes, there's _very explicitly_
| a racist element to this for some of them--which is fucking
| absurd anyway, the area 's _majority white_ and includes
| some neighborhoods far richer than the average of the town,
| but having lived in a different but similarly-situated far-
| removed exurb growing up, I know exactly the kind of
| messed-up ideas they get about "the city") and resent
| sending any district money that way, while having to go way
| North for high school sucks for the ones down South, both
| due to the sheer distance and because of the, ahem,
| _cultural differences_.
|
| Why will they _never_ separate? Losing those kids would
| drop the district into a less-prestigious sports
| conference, since they 'd be smaller. No way they wouldn't
| fight any change, tooth and nail, despite _plainly_
| thinking the kids from farther south are shit. Plus they,
| ah, rely on that geographically-nonsensical southern annex
| for player recruitment. Yes, the whole thing 's just as
| gross, in fact, as that reads. All because of fucking
| school sports.
| powersnail wrote:
| I'm quite confused about this, since I'm from a place where
| nearly everybody is a lone child.
|
| But what if the 4th grader doesn't have a 9th grader sibling?
| Like what do the family do when the 9th grader was a 4th
| grader? Do parents literally drive them every day to school?
| Isn't there some kind of school bus system that transports kids
| from and to their school?
| flandish wrote:
| If.. uhh... society wasn't so capitalistically expensive as to
| require the entire household's adults to work, a lot of these
| logistical concerns would work out. Resulting in smarter and
| healthier children.
|
| But: smart and healthy children demand wages as adults that cut
| into shareholder profits...
| tptacek wrote:
| Plenty of families that don't _need_ two incomes have two
| working parents; parents work because work is fulfilling.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _If.. uhh... society wasn't so capitalistically expensive
| as to require the entire household's adults to work_
|
| It is a tragedy of the commons problem. As soon as the other
| spouse starts working, the family has more money, but once
| every family thinks to have both partners working, sellers
| will catch on and increase their prices, bringing you back to
| the initial problem but now with one fewer spouse at home.
| It's not a capitalism problem, it's a general markets
| problem.
| corbulo wrote:
| You can find counterarguments like this for any entrenched
| problem that has an obvious solution. When people want the
| solution they'll figure out those issues themselves.
| justinlink wrote:
| To answer some of the questions posed to this comment, I really
| think the problem is many school districts do not have enough
| buses and drivers to transport their entire student body at the
| same time.
|
| By having secondary start first, you require 50% less buses.
|
| If we were to switch secondary goes second and primary age
| students go first, your primary age children would leave for
| school around 7am and arrive home at 3pm. Most parents are not
| home at 3pm and this causes a large problem for families. In
| some instances, the older children who are in secondary schools
| -- watch the younger children until parents get home.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Yeah, IIRC Boston actually tried this, and the uproar from
| parents whose schedules were thrown into disarray was so
| intense it had to immediately be walked back. It sucks, but
| there are broader considerations at play.
| krolden wrote:
| Sounds like parents have too much to worry about since both
| parents have to work or their house will be foreclosed on.
|
| Ive read some speculation that the women's right to work
| movement was just a ploy to double the workforce. Not only
| that, thet get double the workers for less money since nearly
| all women are paid less than their male counterparts.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It could have had something to do with women desiring
| independence.
| krolden wrote:
| Ofcouse. however they may have been misguided to think
| their families would benefit from both parents working
| while it was actually a detriment to their family in the
| end. Again, not saying women should t be able to work
| like anyone else, I'm saying having g both parents have
| to go to work does not benefit the family unit as they
| hoped. Especially since women are paid nearly half as
| much as men across nearly every industry.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Who is "they", and why do you presume "they" pushed for
| women being able to work because it would benefit
| families?
|
| I want women to be able to work because I want the women
| in my life to not be caught under the thumb of an abuser.
| If it harms families somehow, that is a separate problem,
| with separate solutions that do not have anything to do
| with restricting the independence of women.
|
| >Especially since women are paid nearly half as much as
| men across nearly every industry.
|
| This is not true when comparing the price of the same
| labor offered by a man or woman.
| krolden wrote:
| "They" in this context are the people who benefit from an
| increased labor pool (capitalists, who want lower wages
| for everyone) and those who thought it was done for their
| benefit.
|
| >This is not true when comparing the price of the same
| labor offered by a man or woman.
|
| Okay, maybe not HALF, but you can't argue with the gender
| wage gap. Men make ~20% more than women.
|
| https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/occupations
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _Men make ~20% more than women._
|
| This is so disingenuous it really shouldn't be repeated.
| The pay gap within the same job is miniscule. Men and
| women make different career choices - there's just no
| accounting for the lack of women applying for high-paying
| positions as roughnecks.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I want to counter the "women's right to work movement was
| just a ploy to double the workforce" because it implies
| that there is a double meaning or some wild conspiracy. In
| reality, women being financially independent is highly
| protective against financial abuse. Financial Abuse occurs
| in the vast majority of domestic violence cases and a
| majority of victims who return to their abusers do so
| because of financial insecurity. With the additional risk
| that the majority of women who are murdered are murdered by
| their abusive partners, a woman's right to work is a matter
| of survival. That it has additional consequences
| societally, such as workforce doubling, doesn't mean that
| there aren't women behaving independently for their own
| benefits more so than there are "they" who manipulate half
| the population for some nebulous capitalist gain.
| autoexec wrote:
| It's odd that parents consider broader considerations like
| their 9-5 schedule more important than the health and well-
| being of their own children. With all the resources and
| technology we have it's not as if we don't have the ability
| to find solutions to problems like "How to move a child from
| point A to point B at time C", so I guess this is more of a
| lack of will than a lack of capability.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's odd that parents consider broader considerations
| like their 9-5 schedule more important than the health and
| well-being of their own children.
|
| For most parents, the ability to maintain the work schedule
| demanded by their employer is rather central to, not a
| separate unrelated interest from, the health and well-being
| of their children.
|
| When we have both the economic structure to support and a
| government run by a political ideology that will allow a
| robust UBI that makes this optional (and thereby forces
| employers to accommodate it if they want to have employees
| at all), we can discuss the issues as if they were
| separate. But in the concrete would we live in, they are
| not.
| Merad wrote:
| > It's odd that parents consider broader considerations
| like their 9-5 schedule more important than the health and
| well-being of their own children.
|
| Why are you blaming the parents? Most people in the world
| don't have the benefit of flexible tech jobs that allow
| them to work 10-6 or to come and go as needed during the
| work day.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Why are you blaming the parents?
|
| Because when Boston tried this, uproar from parents was
| sufficient to cause meaningful change, but that uproar
| was directed at their schools and not their workplaces.
| They used their collective power to defend their work
| schedules at the expense of their children.
|
| Why not insist on more flexibility in their work
| schedules, or for additional transportation solutions to
| assist in getting teens to/from schools? Is this really
| an insurmountable problem?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Because when Boston tried this, uproar from parents was
| sufficient to cause meaningful change, but that uproar
| was directed at their schools and not their workplaces.
|
| School officials are _locally democratically
| accountable_. Employers generally are not, and are often
| able to play workers in different localities (and even
| states and countries, in many cases) against each other
| to create a race-to-the-bottom effect.
|
| Parents directed their force against the movable object,
| not the immovable one.
| eganist wrote:
| It could've happened if the transition to remote work was
| allowed to keep going, but too many companies were invested in
| commercial real estate (e.g via REITs etc) to let it happen.
|
| ^^gross oversimplification, but I'm standing by it
| bsder wrote:
| Most people in the US work in businesses shelpping shit
| around (Amazon, WalMart, UPS, etc.). Work from home simply
| isn't in the cards for them, ever.
| eganist wrote:
| Yes, that much is true. But their schedules are also not
| necessarily fixed at 9-5.
|
| So there's something to be said for labor where it very
| easily could be flexible but arbitrarily isn't.
| jameshart wrote:
| The sequencing in districts where high schools start earliest,
| then middle schools, then elementary feels backwards to me
| though.
|
| Elementary school parents who have jobs to get to wind up
| needing preschool care to fill that gap between their departure
| time and school start - high school age siblings aren't even
| available to cover. Late elementary school drop off times
| impact parents' options for work and commuting.
|
| High school age kids can (or certainly should be able to) _get
| themselves_ to school, so later starts don't interfere with
| other family routines.
| lolinder wrote:
| The staggering works best for the _return_ from school. There
| are 2-3 hours at the end of the day where school is out but
| mom 's not home yet, and having the high schooler finished by
| the time the 3rd grader is out means they can fill in that
| gap.
| jameshart wrote:
| Elementary age kids whose parents work are going to need
| afterschool care. I think that's inevitable, and honestly
| solvable. Teenage siblings are a fairly limited part of
| that solution.
|
| I think forcing all the additional logistical complexity
| and cost of pre-school-day care is an accidental and
| unnecessary layer though.
| hgsgm wrote:
| The obvious solution is extdended day care at school, on both
| sides, not focing5 older kids to run parenting around their
| own school commute.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I think high school generally starts earliest so that
| sports/extracurriculars can practice after school for two
| hours before the sun sets. Elementary schoolers just go home.
| thatjoeoverthr wrote:
| So find another solution to the coordination problem.
| rr888 wrote:
| The problem is if you start later, you'll end school later which
| means you'll start activities/dinner/homework later and go to bed
| later and there wont be much difference.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Pet peeve of mine: some older adults are _proud_ that they get up
| early. And that's OK in isolation. The problem though is that
| older adults rule society moreso than younger adults, and
| certainly compared to teenagers. So for many older adults it
| feels natural to go to bed early and to get up early. But then
| _we_ as a society confuse that with universal "good behavior"
| /good character, so everyone has to dance to that tune.[1] And we
| _do_ get up to things so that we aren't expelled from school or
| fired from our jobs. But some of us do it at the cost of our
| health and well-being.
|
| [1] Or maybe the cause of our early starts is completely
| different. It's not like I have any proof.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I do think there's actual correlation between getting up
| earlier and achievement. I don't know many successful people
| who get up super late. Don't know if that's correlation or
| causation, just that there's something to getting up early to
| crush it.
| waboremo wrote:
| There are only a certain amount of hours in a day that you
| can be actively chasing something. Your energy depletes,
| places close, sun goes down. So it doesn't matter if you get
| up at 4AM or at 10AM, what matters is the active hours you
| give yourself. The 4AM person is probably going to sleep
| earlier than the 10AM, so it equals out.
|
| The only real catch about this all is the simple fact society
| is based around the sun, and so if you are someone who wants
| to get up extremely late (2PM+), you have to work harder to
| accommodate. But those are very rare outside of health
| conditions. Even most night owls who say they're not a
| morning person, tend to wake up before 12PM purely because of
| how society functions. They can't have meetings when others
| are asleep!
|
| Although the interesting part is how much this changes in the
| future, with increasing levels of remote work and automation
| to compensate.
| xyzelement wrote:
| // So it doesn't matter if you get up at 4AM or at 10AM,
| what matters is the active hours you give yourself. The 4AM
| person is probably going to sleep earlier than the 10AM, so
| it equals out
|
| What I am observing is that it doesn't actually seem to
| equal out for whatever reason.
| lolinder wrote:
| There may or may not be a correlation, but how much of that
| is a vicious cycle?
|
| The kids who grow up to be high achievers tend to have done
| well in school, which means at the very least they were able
| to cope with an early schedule. They then observe the
| correlation that you note and think to themselves "huh, my
| parents were right, everyone _should_ wake up early " and
| proceed to preach it to the next generation, who learns it as
| if it were some fundamental fact of life and not a
| consequence of the way we've designed our systems.
|
| It's like the problem with math education: the people who
| dictate the way that the world works tend to be the ones who
| did well in the existing systems and can't see anything wrong
| with them.
| rcpt wrote:
| We have ceded far too much power to the morning people.
| providedotemacs wrote:
| We change our clocks every year for the night owls.
| anthomtb wrote:
| First mover advantage.
| asciii wrote:
| I feel like you're onto something. Growing up, I was always
| told "The early bird gets the morning worm." In my opinion, I
| did not want to be the worm waking up early.
| CadmiumYellow wrote:
| It took me a long time to accept that I wasn't going to grow
| out of my night owl tendencies (or at least I haven't yet, in
| my 30s). So much conventional wisdom about health,
| productivity, and even diet begins with "early to bed, early to
| rise" type of advice. I've never been happier and healthier,
| though, than when I gave up trying to force myself into that
| kind of schedule. I enjoy my most alert and creative hours in
| the evening and I hate the world in the morning. I have no
| appetite til the afternoon, so I can't comply with all the
| advice about no eating after 6pm or after dark or whatever.
| When I try to get up early to go to the gym my workouts are
| terrible because my body does not want to be awake or alert at
| that time. I wish society was more flexible and had more career
| paths that allowed for a less morning-oriented schedule! There
| is natural variation in human circadian rhythm and not everyone
| will grow out of that teenage sleep schedule. Well, I certainly
| sleep less now, and get up at a time my teenage self would have
| considered early (9 am), but I cannot properly enjoy my life
| when forced to go to bed before midnight so I've simply given
| up trying. We need a night owl movement!!
| [deleted]
| ArchOversight wrote:
| > This shift reverses at adulthood. The biological nature of this
| daily rhythm means that sending a teenager to bed earlier won't
| necessarily mean they fall asleep earlier.
|
| No, this shift does not reverse in adulthood for some people... I
| am in my 30's and I still fall asleep midnight to 1 AM, and wake
| up "late" by most adult standards at around 8/9 AM.
|
| I can not shift my sleep schedule to earlier, I've tried many
| times, it's just not how I am wired.
| asebold wrote:
| Same. I tried having a bed time routine, eating/drinking at
| certain times, reading before bed, no phone, etc. Nothing makes
| a difference. I get sleepy around midnight and wake up around 8
| - 9 am.
|
| All I wanted to do growing up was sleep. We were the first ones
| on the bus at 6:30am every weekday, and then my parents dragged
| us to some kind of sport extracurricular on Saturday mornings
| and church on Sunday. I would have been so much easier to deal
| with if I'd just had a chance to sleep.
| xyzelement wrote:
| If you are anything like me, what you are able to do is driven
| by what you have to do :)
|
| I used to be a developer/dev manager and in that life, if you
| booked a 9 or even 9:30 am meeting with me, the odds of me
| being in by then were low. I loved sleeping in.
|
| Then I moved to the business side and my life was that quite
| often, I had to be at the airport say 7am. So now there was a
| REASON to move my life to an earlier schedule and it was
| doable.
|
| Now we have little kids, who get up super early so there's yet
| another pull towards an earlier start to the day, and I am able
| to do it fine.
|
| If there was no pull, I'd probably sleep till 10 but I don't
| think I'd be happier or more productive.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| do you consume any caffeine after 12:00 noon? Caffeine's half
| life is 6 hours. So if you consume at 3pm, you still have 1/2
| that caffeine in your body at 9 pm. 1/4 of it at 3am.
| [deleted]
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I was a nerdy, awkward kid with a lot of social anxiety, that
| experienced a lot of bullying and hazing at school. I would stay
| up all night playing on the computer, and just sleep in class
| during school. At home I would draw the blinds and stay in my
| messy room alone, in the dark. I was overweight, had bad acne,
| and had no energy.
|
| I was in a lot of pain, and felt like absolute shit, but nobody
| seemed to understand or care. They would tell me I needed to stop
| being "lazy" and clean my room, and do my homework. I wanted to
| really bad... but didn't know why I couldn't focus. I felt an
| enormous amount of guilt, like I was a total failure.
|
| As an adult, I was able to turn all of that around by focusing on
| basic health things- exercise, sleep, diet, and processing
| emotions. It seems like I was just extra sensitive to those
| issues, more so than most people. As a father, I hope I can help
| my son from going through the same.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Weird did I write this?
| agomez314 wrote:
| Is smartphone/digital screen attributable to some degree to
| teenager's late-night habits, and therefore a need for later
| school times?
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I was an avid reader, and my best opportunities to read were
| late at night. I'd start with a flashlight under the covers,
| but I found out that the best way to slip by was to go into the
| bathroom, lie in the dry bathtub with the light on, and read
| for as long as I wanted. It worked fairly well for a while, I
| guess. My mom went absolutely nuts over that strategy though. I
| suppose I was about 10 years old at the time. Later on, when I
| was 16, I had a so-called "girlfriend" and I would fall asleep
| during late night phone conversations with her. Or I'd go visit
| her house and come home late at night.
|
| In high school, I was beginning to feel the onset of a chronic
| major depression, and I absolutely could not wake up on time.
| My hair regimen took 60-90 minutes to fix up in the bathroom,
| and by the time I was driving myself, I found an 11-minute
| route to rocket to school as fast as possible. Most of the
| time, it would be my father pouring cold water into my face
| just to get me roused out of bed. Therefore, mornings became an
| absolutely traumatic time in addition to all the other
| childhood traumas I was undergoing, and it took me decades to
| recover from that.
| daneel_w wrote:
| To some degree, perhaps. But this problem/requirement was
| around long before smartphones, long before home computers.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| I was a pre smart phone teenager. Up into the late late night
| reading, drawing with pencil and paper, and playing acoustic
| guitar. Sleep did not accept me early in the night no matter
| how much I wanted and tried.
|
| Now mornings are the best part of my days. I'm in my later 40s.
| krolden wrote:
| I was going to school at 6am and sleeping through class long
| before everyone had screens in their pockets.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Research into teenagers' shifted body clocks has been going on
| since well before smartphones and even laptops, if I recall.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Anecdotally, as sometime who was a teenager in the pre-
| smartphone era I stayed up late plenty without any personal
| portable screens. I'd just be staying up to watch TV or read
| a book instead.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| You are correct. I think research started into the effects of
| TV screens on teenagers sleeping patterns.
|
| _Research has indicated that extensive television viewing
| tends to be associated with sleep problems among children,
| adolescents, and adults.1-6 However, few studies of risk for
| sleep problems have assessed television viewing.1 Only 2
| studies have investigated the sequencing of the association
| between television viewing and the development of sleep
| problems during childhood or early adolescence.2,5 The
| findings of both studies suggested that television viewing
| was associated with increased risk for sleep problems during
| the next 9 to 12 months. However, no prospective longitudinal
| study has investigated the long-term association of
| television viewing with the development of sleep problems
| from early adolescence through early adulthood. Thus, little
| is known about the nature and direction of the association
| between television viewing and sleep problems during
| adolescence and early adulthood._
|
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/.
| ..
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I read about it several times in Discover magazine as an
| early tween/teen. I had a subscription, haha. So, it was a
| recurring topic 20+ years ago in a fairly popular magazine.
|
| This was well before kids commonly had phones, and while I
| owned a palm pilot, it didn't keep me up at night and it
| was... atypical at best for kids to have or perhaps even want
| them, haha.
|
| Around the time I turned 18 most kids my age had cell (not
| smart) phones and computers had become common in households,
| but I don't recall them being a major sleep disturber yet. I
| would stay up on mine learning to program and playing
| StarCraft around 20 years ago, but again, I don't think this
| was nearly as typical as kids watching tv in their rooms back
| then, let alone using phones or tablets today.
| murphyslab wrote:
| The issue has existed since well before widespread availability
| of smartphones and cheap laptops.
|
| Here's a clinical review from 2003 (largely citing studies from
| the late 1990s) where the same issues were already clear:
|
| http://web.mit.edu/writing/2010/July/Wolfson%26Carskadon2003...
|
| One major part of the problem is that teens tend to go to bed
| at the same time regardless of when school starts the next day.
| Hence those students in school districts with earlier start
| times simply get less sleep, resulting in more irregular sleep
| schedules. In turn, that leads to worse cognitive performance.
| greenflag wrote:
| Anecdotal, but as a pre-smartphone teenager I was a night owl
| which has gradually vanished despite the introduction of
| smartphones, so I think there's more at play
| exfatloss wrote:
| [dead]
| gabereiser wrote:
| The real blame for early high school is extra-curricular sports.
| Basketball, Football, etc.
|
| For those sports to thrive, teams need to practice, in order for
| practice to be efficient, it needs to be at least an hour. So 2
| hours are allocated (suit up, practice, suit down). In order for
| children to be able to commit to 2 hours extra of their time
| BEFORE their parents get home (5pm), class would have to end by
| 3pm. Now, pair that with the fact that most school districts
| don't have enough bus drivers for every school, they pair up. A
| single bus driver will start their day bussing high school, then
| will bus elementary school (which starts later in the day). So
| high school ends a little earlier so the bus drivers can bus the
| elementary school kids home after they bus the high school kids.
| In order for the kids in high school to end at 2:15pm for sports
| and to save money on bus driver employment and bus fleet, they
| have to start 2:15pm - 8hr: 6:15am. It's crazy. It was like that
| when I went to high school in the early 90s, it's still the same
| today.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > In order for children to be able to commit to 2 hours extra
| of their time BEFORE their parents get home (5pm), class would
| have to end by 3pm
|
| Why would they need to be able to complete their sports before
| their parents get home?
| uncletaco wrote:
| It was probably more accurate to say before their parents get
| off.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I still don't really understand why this is important.
| Presumably kids aren't playing sports every day of the
| week, so they'll have plenty of time to spend with their
| parents on the other days. I used to play Tennis from
| something like 5pm to 7pm a couple of days a week when I
| was a kid and that didn't seem to cause any problems.
| [deleted]
| twright0 wrote:
| The reason that sports dictate school start times isn't
| difficulty in scheduling practices (since you could, at least
| on paper, put those practices before school starts rather than
| after). The problem is that sports are competitive between
| school districts, so you need shared non-school but school-
| adjacent time blocks between neighboring districts to schedule
| games in. Shifting one district much later (to run 9-5, for
| example) would make it impossible for that school to compete
| with others after school, which is going to be a practical
| nonstarter.
|
| In my mind, this is one of the biggest obstacles to changing
| school timing significantly. Most other objections are internal
| to a school district, so a single motivated school board could
| tackle and fix them, but this problem requires coordination
| between many different school districts all at once.
| snapetom wrote:
| Uh, this is pretty much the case with other extra-curriculars,
| too. My school had a very strong and diverse performing arts
| program and kids often stayed late enough for parents to pick
| them up after work.
| uncletaco wrote:
| Same principle but it was different in my schools system. High
| school starts 30 minutes after elementary and middle school.
| joezydeco wrote:
| This is exactly why. We've been at our administrators for years
| and the response always is "the bus routes" but in reality it's
| because of the sports schedules.
|
| High school sports is a drain on the educational system, plain
| and simple. It lacks equity - an disproportionate amount of
| money is spent on very few children. The football coach in our
| HS has a Vice Principal title, so he doesn't have to teach
| classes but knocks down $100K+ to run the team. There are maybe
| 120 kids in the football program, in a high school of 2000.
|
| If you look at Europe, sports clubs are run by outside groups
| and happen after school on their own resources. I'd love to see
| that here. I mean, we do have year-round club teams and that's
| another problem. Too many parents overload their kids with
| sports either because they're living through their kids, or
| they think it's a shot at a college scholarship. It burns the
| kids out and rarely turns into anything profitable.
| boringg wrote:
| It's weird to discuss children as turning them into something
| profitable
| joezydeco wrote:
| When college costs six figures, you hope to break even. And
| that's a whole different ball of wax in America.
| jandrese wrote:
| That's the entire purpose of the school system. To make
| them into workers that can produce value for companies.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Having an educated electorate is a goal as well, at least
| in some places in the world.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Private sports outside of school are too expensive for all
| but the well-off families. School sports are basically free
| for the participants, and they are good for kids' social
| development and physical health. Sports keeps many kids in
| high school, certainly if my oldest hadn't had cross-country
| and track he probably would have dropped out.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| That's another difference between Europe and the US. When I
| grew up in Germany there was a huge amount of sports
| available that were taught by volunteers. Soccer, judo,
| karate all for free even in the rural area I grew up in. I
| wonder if it's possible because everyone isn't constantly
| threatened by looming bankruptcy if they don't save big
| piles of cash.
| runarberg wrote:
| In Europe these clubs are often community or publicly
| funded. If they charge partition fees, you'll often find
| municipalities subsidizing them heavily making them
| effectively free for kids and parents. Now there is still
| some problems with this system (in particular overemphasis
| on sports over other cultural activities such as theater,
| music, etc.)
| raincole wrote:
| After reading all of these I still think it's "the bus
| routes", or more generally speaking, "the commuting".
|
| I grew up in an asian country and my parents never picked me
| up after I was 10. I just took buses from home to school and
| then from school to home. I'm not saying our system is better
| than the US, but it's a bit of culture shock that everyone
| commutes in their (parents') cars there.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Huh? Sports can practice before school. And high school
| athletes don't need parental supervision.
|
| School hours are set by transportation needs, as you already
| observed.
| greedo wrote:
| School hours are set by tradition. My city provides no bus
| service to any students (excepting special needs kids). Crazy
| I know. Kids can ride the city metro buses for free, but
| those aren't the same as school buses.
| prawn wrote:
| What's the rationale for some schools having a bus service
| and others not? In Australia, I'm not aware of any
| metropolitan state school having a bus service, so it
| sounds bizarre that buses would dictate starting times.
|
| Some private schools might have small buses. Otherwise,
| public and private students would use public transport,
| ride, walk or get dropped off by parents.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > Sports can practice before school
|
| Hilarious, given the original thread.
|
| School already starts far too early.
| sidibe wrote:
| No such thing as too early. Our public HS swim team used to
| do the water part at 6am then cross training (running or
| weight room) after school. Probably because of pool
| availability
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Swimming seems to have a tradition of pre-dawn practice
| times. I never understood that. Nobody uses the high
| school pool after school (unless there's a meet).
| sidibe wrote:
| No schools around here have pools, have to share the YMCA
| pools with other groups
| layman51 wrote:
| You're kidding right? To me, requiring students to wake
| up before 7 AM should be considered hazing.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| They're saying that, rather than having school from 8am to
| 3pm and sports to 3pm to 5pm, you could have sports from
| 8am to 10am and school from 10am to 5pm, for example.
|
| In other words, have the students who do optional
| activities come in early rather than stay late. Then only
| some students come in early instead of all of them.
| smileysteve wrote:
| In the Friday nights lights states, we lift every other
| morning at 6am, practice ends at 6pm
| asdff wrote:
| In my high school we had a few "competitive" sports teams,
| which really meant just absolute suffering. Kids would be
| waking up for 2 hours of swim practice before class, where they
| would be puking on the edge of the pool, followed by more
| practice after class, then they had to you know do the whole
| homework part time job and get into college thing in whatever
| time is left. Wrestling was just as bad but the kids would
| starve themselves or wear trashbags under hoodies during the
| day to make weight on tournaments, along with chewing tobacco
| to spit more water. At least our football team and basketball
| teams sucked enough for the players to never take practice or
| games seriously.
| JenrHywy wrote:
| 6:15? Holy crap. High school here (Australia) starts at 8:50.
| And even then I think that's too early for natural teenage
| sleep patterns.
|
| My kids are lucky in that we're close enough to school that
| they can leave at around 8:15. When I was in high school I had
| to get the bus at 7:30, which was a real struggle. The idea of
| starting school at 6:15 is just pure insanity.
| calt wrote:
| My public school in the US always started at 8:00.
|
| I've never heard of a 6:15 start time.
|
| Also, school was never a full 8 hours. So I'm confused about
| their reasoning.
| bookstore-romeo wrote:
| A teenager myself, I agree schools should start later. To my
| surprise, the gym teacher is allowed to make some students wake
| up at 5 A.M. to run laps. There's also no reason why classes
| starts so early at my specific school, as sport teams and
| extracurriculars are basically inexistant. The bureaucracy behind
| all of this must be such a nightmare in Canada too...
| graycat wrote:
| Naw: Not all but much of the unwritten but standard rule of all
| of education from K-Ph.D. is (A) to exercise the standard drive
| people, the teachers and their bureaucracies, have to control and
| direct other people, the students, and (B) to make those under
| the control to _knuckle down_ , put their nose to the grindstone,
| shoulder to the wheel, burn the midnight oil, be disciplined,
| prove themselves, be obedient, stimulate the metabolism to be
| able to work while sleep deprived, ....
|
| One way to see this -- as I did twice in grad school and once in
| high school -- is to take a _filter, flunk out_ course when
| already know the material very well and easily and effortlessly
| make As and lead the class -- the prof can become really angry
| that he was not able to intimidate the student, lower the student
| 's self-esteem, show the student that they, the prof, know more
| than the student could hope to know, etc.
|
| In this case, the 3Rs, the STEM fields, the term papers, etc. are
| not really the _preparation for life_ but merely the packaging
| while the real _preparation_ is (B).
| heisenbit wrote:
| When I went to school I had to be there at 7:20 which meant
| leaving home at 7:00. It sucked but it also meant I had most
| afternoons free to play with friends. When looking how schools
| today for various reasons swallow whole days I wonder whether I
| did not grow up in a golden age.
| Jun8 wrote:
| This post on the front page was SO timely for us! My son (16) was
| feeling very sleepy and tired the past week. On Friday he took a
| brief nap at 5pm, but woke up next morning, after 15 hours.
|
| This morning when I went to wake him up at 6am he just couldn't
| make it so I let him stay at home. This never happened before.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Please have him do a sleep study. It turned out that I had
| undiagnosed narcolepsy for decades. Sleeping 15 hours is
| exactly what I used to do.
|
| It's a low cost high return kind of thing. If I'd had early
| diagnosis, I wouldn't have been fired due to getting jobs that
| really, really wanted my butt in a chair at exactly 9am.
| (https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1392213804684038150)
|
| That said, the rate of narcolepsy is extremely small, so
| there's probably nothing to worry about. But hey, it happened
| to me, so maybe worry a teensy tiny bit.
| jaggederest wrote:
| Add sleep apnea to that. I don't have it myself, but some of
| my friends had a night-and-day difference in their life as a
| result of getting their obstructive sleep apnea treated.
| Significant weight loss, depression gone, no headaches, doing
| well in life instead of struggling every day.
| kimixa wrote:
| One of my friends effectively dropped out of university due
| to sleep apnea. He just wouldn't be able to get up for
| lectures or engineering labs, or be so out of it he had
| difficulty absorbing the material. A shame as he was a
| sharp guy, and has struggled with things in the decade
| since due to various knock-on reasons.
|
| We used to laugh about how loud he snored echoing through
| the house - but looking back this was more a symptom of a
| medical issue than a joke.
|
| It's a failure of modern western society IMHO where we see
| people actually needing sleep as "lazy", rather than a
| requirement to actually be their best.
| cperciva wrote:
| In addition to things like sleep apnea, this could be a viral
| illness (mononucleosis is famous, but there are other "post-
| viral fatigue" culprits) or even type 1 diabetes (before I was
| diagnosed, the first sign I noticed was sleeping 16 hours a
| day). Has your son lost weight recently?
|
| There a lot of possibilities but I'd encourage you to not just
| write this off as "he's a teenager". He didn't just become a
| teenager in the last week.
| isk517 wrote:
| This describes a lot of what my life was like between the ages
| of 17 to 20. I would sleep for 12+ hours at a time if I got the
| chance and would also take constant naps. Got tested for a few
| things but nothing ever came up. Eventually my sleep patterns
| returned to normal and these days I get by on 8-9 hours a sleep
| a night.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Its a common misconception that the goal of Education System is
| to educate. It's not, and the system will never accept
| 'improvements' that run contrary to it's purpose.
|
| In actuality education system serves four purposes:
|
| One: make both parents avaliable for the job market. For that it
| must supervise children during work hours, to make sure they
| aren't getting in trouble, drugs, or worst of all, into politics
| and protest
|
| Two - They must habituate little wild chimps into highly
| unnatural behaviour. Wake up early, commute into arbitrary
| location, sit in one place for hours on end, stare into paper,
| whiteboard or screen, perform meaningless tasts tasks that have
| no meaning to your life. Thats your whole life.
|
| If you don't ease people into this gradually, you run out of
| psycaotrists.
|
| Three - grade people into quality batches, based off their
| punctuality and ability to perform meaningless tasks to arbitrary
| and meaningless quality standards
|
| Four - because the management has gone trhough the same system of
| educations, the pupils must learn to read through poorly worded
| vague instructions and understand what their superior actually
| wants to see, even though they are not capable of expressing it
| clearly. Poorly worded exam papers serve as good training.
| mc32 wrote:
| If the above is all true, that would prepare pupils for future
| jobs --whether self-employed or working a corporate job.
|
| One cannot run (successfully) a corner bakery without being
| able to handle routine and carry out mundane tasks or without
| getting up early and doing basic chores as well as being able
| to interact with others, keep track of your finances, etc. Corp
| job is much of the same.
|
| You're getting moulded to have the potential to be a productive
| human being. The alternative is to have people find out what
| works and not on their own.
|
| Even drugs dealers and macs know the importance of all the
| above.
|
| Now, sure some people for various reasons cannot conform and
| revert to more "chimp self" and don't do well in civilization.
| But even if they became foragers and lived off the land, they'd
| have to learn routines, patience and so on.
| codingdave wrote:
| You are grossly mischaracterizing the word "purpose". The
| purpose is to educate.
|
| Yet the flaws in the system are quite real, and you have called
| some of them out. But calling out the flaws and claiming they
| are the intended purpose is quite simply wrong.
|
| BTW, you can change who is in control - school boards are
| locally elected. Your vote has more power to change schools
| than almost anything else. If you want improvement, get
| involved.
| tuatoru wrote:
| The purpose of any system is what it does.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I dunno man, pre-civilisation and education wasn't exactly much
| fun either. I'd rather be a part of the system that basically
| gives us everything from food to iPhones and the Internet than
| fight against it (while avoiding predators in the wild).
|
| This is not to say that education, especially for boys and
| young men couldn't be made considerably better.
| d136o wrote:
| Sometimes I think it's also naive to think that food and
| modern conveniences (for you and your descendants) will
| continue to arrive if you just do your job... today you may
| have food on the table for your family by just showing up to
| work. But are you sure that whoever you work for won't keep
| upping their share and reduce yours as time passes?
|
| Maybe just maybe "the system" (as you called it) is just a
| seemingly more civilized way of doing what was done before:
| surviving.
| kbrannigan wrote:
| The older I get the more I'm realizing "pre-history", "pre-
| civilisation" are very Western European Concepts.
|
| Like when the Conquistadors "civilized" mexico Or when the
| Portuguese and French "civilized" West Africa.
| asdff wrote:
| Plus when the bombs go off over the Amazon warehouses, who
| lives? You, who can follow a Hello Fresh recipe reasonably
| well, or the paleoindian who can flint knap all the tools
| they need to process their calories?
| freejazz wrote:
| but iPhone!
| tim333 wrote:
| Early civilisation mostly kicked off around Egypt and China
| so not all that Western European.
| notch898a wrote:
| There's always the question over whether a comfortable
| unnatural life is better than the sort of hunter-gatherer
| life our brains and bodies spent most of the human
| generations adapting for.
|
| No matter, without organized mechanized agriculture and the
| nitrogen fixation process and other technology of the
| present, most of us would be dead and not able to ponder the
| question.
| fosk wrote:
| There should be two categorizations for students: highly
| creative students should be placed on a different path to
| adulthood, everybody else could use the current system. Highly
| creative people are more likely to be successful dropouts.
|
| To force highly creative people into this routine, is
| dictatorship of the mind. That's how it was for me.
| prawn wrote:
| Why not three? One stream for creative types, one for
| practical types, then the rest. For the practical stream,
| unless it's changed, we already do this - from year 10 (about
| 15yo), Australian students can begin an apprenticeship/trade.
| From that age group, students are choosing electives and
| focusing on their strengths or interest, whether STEM or arts
| or physical electives.
|
| And otherwise or for highly creative people, a grounding in
| most other things is useful. If you're an artist of some
| sort, you're going to be writing supporting documentation for
| exhibitions, or running business admin selling your work. To
| some degree, I think it's healthy for people to be pushed out
| of their comfort zone here and there.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Nice caste system you've got there
| krolden wrote:
| That's like, the opposite of a caste system
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Do you suppose there should be a test to get into the
| creatives path? Because every kid will want to be there
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| How would you identify highly creative people? Genuinely
| asking. If you advantage them, parents will do everything
| they can to make their kid look like one even if they aren't
| one. And some kids will not look like one due to a bad home
| life or food insecurity or untreated developmental disorder.
| fosk wrote:
| You don't advantage them. A creative track is probably as
| infuriating to a non-creative person as the current system
| is to creative ones. Creative tracks should still have
| outcomes.
|
| It's like trying to cheat your way into professional
| sports: if you are not a good fit, it won't be pretty. And
| indeed we do have a track for athletes.
|
| To think that all students are identical and they all
| deserve the same track is myopic. Turns out, we are all
| different people.
| kiba wrote:
| I argue that the school's purpose is to educate. These effects
| you describe are merely incidental to the process of education.
| It's not about producing disciplined workers for an industrial
| era, it just a story we concoct after the fact.
|
| Now, could we reform the system? I supposed we could, but
| society relied on a set of assumptions on how schools work. If
| you need to implement reforms, you cannot focus on school
| systems in isolation.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| Some of this is true, and some isn't. It is quite a mishmash.
| That said it is easy to find places in the world where kids
| aren't required to go to school, and those places aren't any
| kind of utopia.
| msla wrote:
| Thinking everything is a conspiracy is giving the assholes too
| much credit.
|
| The education system is an education system. It's bad because
| it's underfunded, mismanaged, and pulled in multiple directions
| for political reasons, not to mention occasionally tasked with
| impossible jobs, such as keeping a roomful of emotionally
| disturbed children going in the same direction using only one
| underpaid teacher and a couple para-professionals. If it were
| actively designed to be malicious, it would be a lot more
| competent.
| sixo wrote:
| I'm sympathetic to OP, it's not that it's a conspiracy--it's
| the survival criteria of the system. It has to "work" as an
| institution to go on existing. Things that make the
| institution of education more effective tend to happen:
|
| 1. It has to be compatible with the modern system of
| employment (feat the 40hr workweek, generally a commute,
| workers who typically fit into many companies in standardized
| roles)
|
| 2. Opportunities to make it more efficient that don't run
| directly contrary to its stated goal of educating tend to
| happen, e.g. standardized testing. And because students move
| around and its inefficient for everybody everywhere to invent
| their own curriculum, they need to be standardized.
|
| 3. It needs to be legible meritocratically, to justify and
| measure it's own existence and also as an input into the
| employment system.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| These are excellent points. Especially the last one, the
| veneer of meritocracy is an important socialisation tool as
| much at is a sorting tool
| Lammy wrote:
| > Thinking everything is a conspiracy is giving the assholes
| too much credit.
|
| "maxwellhill"? :)
| https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/18/business/mcgraw-hill-
| and-... / https://archive.is/bZKuA
| Cerium wrote:
| My dad is a teacher, and each day when dropping my off for high
| school he used to say "be careful, it is an institution out
| there."
| koonsolo wrote:
| Nice that we can have a conversations here. Where did you learn
| how to read and write? English is not my main language, guess
| where I learned it.
|
| I don't know your background, but we learned loads of things in
| school.
|
| Go talk to some kids in the world that are unable to go to
| schools, and explain them how lucky they are.
| rimliu wrote:
| #iam14andthisisdeep
|
| On the more serious note, this crap which is so popular among
| the people who have zero understanding of what education is
| gets really tiresome.
| nineplay wrote:
| I'm not sure how this all jibs with "classroom" education far
| predating the modern era. See English boarding school stories
| or any number US girl coming-of-age stories. Certainly none of
| them justify the idea that education's purpose is to support
| two income families.
|
| With that, I think you'd find that most leaders of politics and
| industry had some manner of classroom education. Homeschooling
| is not a common practice among the elite. It may still serve
| the purpose of "habituating chimps into highly unnatural
| behavior" but if so, it's behavior that is so commonplace as to
| be indistinguishable from "natural" behavior.
|
| So I'm not sure how we can ascribe all these negative
| objectives to the Education System as few better methods have
| come along and found wide acceptance. There's the Waldorfs and
| the Nontessoris and the variety of homeschool co-ops of course,
| but they are serve a pretty small percentage of students
| worldwide.
| sushisource wrote:
| What a completely absurd and nonsense take. Where does this
| "purpose" get decided? Some secret cabal that controls the
| education system? Insane.
|
| There are some flaws in our education system that are likely
| the result of the fact that it is huge, serves an incredibly
| diverse set of people, and thus is a very complex and difficult
| to manage system.
|
| There's no secret back room of evil people controlling the
| populace via an imperfect education system. What a weird take.
| louwrentius wrote:
| "They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are
| just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork....
| " -- George Carlin
| password11 wrote:
| I generally agree with your criticism of the education system
| as an instrument of filtering/segregation but I would argue
| school has some practical value.
|
| > _Three - grade people into quality batches, based off their
| punctuality and ability to perform meaningless tasks to
| arbitrary and meaningless quality standards_
|
| For example, doing math is a useful skill, not a meaningless
| task.
|
| > _Four - because the management has gone though the same
| system of education, the pupils must learn to read through
| poorly worded vague instructions and understand what their
| superior actually wants to see, even though they are not
| capable of expressing it clearly. Poorly worded exam papers
| serve as good training_
|
| There is a lot of nuance to English communication, at least
| among native speakers. Things like active/passive voice,
| hyperbole, and different kinds of logical arguments are
| implicit to communication in professional circles. It's
| important to study them.
|
| Also you're ignoring the cultural education that studying
| literature/writing provides you. There are tons of literary
| references in everyday communication and you will be at a
| disadvantage if you don't know them (a "Scarlet Letter", "Big
| Brother", etc.). These stories are foundational to Western
| culture and you are expected to know them.
| moonchrome wrote:
| > For example, doing math is a useful skill, not a
| meaningless task.
|
| I can't define trig relations, I sort of remember how to do
| multiple unknowns/linear algebra, can't even remember the
| definition of a quadratic equation and I couldn't do
| derivations if my life depended on it.
|
| Funny thing is I used to know this stuff and actually used
| some of it when I was in to game dev. 10 years later anything
| that's above elementary school I'd probably need to Google or
| Wolfram.
|
| > There are tons of literary references in everyday
| communication and you will be at a disadvantage if you don't
| know them (a "Scarlet Letter", "Big Brother", etc.)
|
| You can look up idioms/references without reading the works.
| [deleted]
| chasing wrote:
| This is a deeply cynical view and mistakes what makes educating
| children challenging for the goals of education. Some educators
| suck. Some educational systems suck. Some engineers suck. Some
| tech companies suck. But to paint the entire educational system
| with the same shitty brush is absurd. I know many teachers and
| many people who work in education who go _above and beyond_ to
| try to give kids the best experience possible. And despite what
| the tech universe seems to think, educational approaches change
| and improve and new ideas come into the mix, sometimes fairly
| rapidly. If anything, it 's the fact that educational systems
| seem to be habitually underfunded that hinders them more than
| anything.
|
| Fund free public education. It pays back huge dividends.
|
| And treat teachers with respect.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| I find a lot of commentary here to be false dichotomies.
| Here, education is either bad or good when the reality is
| that it depends. Some aspects are good, some are bad, some
| are good in some places, worse in others.
|
| A lot of people struggle with complexity and it is telling
| that a forum focused on computer science, IT and general tech
| is so challenged to realise this.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Being good at one thing doesn't make you good at
| everything. See elon musk.
|
| Whilst I love the cynical view, and it somewhat sadly
| clicks. I agree high school education sits in the grey.
| From personal experience the most valuable lesson I leaned
| in high school is when I was doing something I was
| interested in getting sleep didn't matter. But learning how
| to grind through work is a really useful like skill.
| There's no way to teach hard work. You just got to do it.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Adults ought to be liberated as the starting point. HS is
| full of violence
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