[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 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-02-13 23:00 UTC)