The powerful thing that happens when the school day starts in the afternoon | Hacker News Reader

The powerful thing that happens when the school day starts in the afternoon

washingtonpost.com

14 pointsjorkro7 comments

This will never happen, and the reason is that School (Elementary, Middle, and to some extent even High School) isn't really about educating our children; evidence suggests that people who start school in 5th or 9th grade end up doing as well (or even better) by 12th.

School is socialized daycare, so parents can work. If a country can accept that, and stop forcing children to learn things at absurdly young ages, then maybe we can reach the point where children who need rest can simply arrive at school and sleep some more, comfortably and unreproachably. But I highly doubt that will ever happen in America.

So, it's just that boys in general get less sleep and are more tired, resulting in worse grades. By not starting as early, they get more room to sleep and the gap closes.

No, the article linked to a study that claims that girls perform better with sleep deprivation than boys do under similar circumstances.

As a boy who hated early-morning school and was consistently tardy, then switched to the joys of an afternoon schedule in high school, this rings pretty true. My grades didn't change much (pretty good, not great, before and after), but my enjoyment of school did.

Did I miss it saying whether this effect was equally strong for the middle school and high school children? From what I've read previously I'd expect it to be a bigger factor for the older children.

people always good at doing things they are interested, I don't buy the timing of doing things can effect the result.

On the micro level, maybe, but what about the macro level? As in, "most boys have trouble being interested in anything very early in the morning," or "most boys have trouble being interested in anything after sitting for an hour."

Also, your reply implies we can just "make" MS/HS boys be interested in subject matter, which is kind of not how interests work. If boys are consistently under performing, it s a worthwhile venture to figure out which factors contribute to the performance, as well as which negative factors can be mitigated with basic changes (starting later, class length, etc).

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