Maybe school shouldn't start so early then? Starting at 8:30-9 would reduce a lot of that, though not all of it. Also, as a Canadian and Vancouverite... so what? Darkness is a fact of life, get over it.
[1]: https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/11/06/proposition-7-pas...
I mean, it's their parents, not some random strangers.
If the expectation was that one parent cared for the children and the household, that would drastically shrink the supply of workers, and force wages up, recognizing the actual, formerly unpaid cost of maintaining a household and raising children.
I know a number of people who work with children in education and there is a very clear change happening in the last 20 years with how prepared children are when starting school. The average amount of actual parenting time many children are getting now has dropped dramatically and it is showing in behavior and basic education preparedness. Of course it is the right of either parent to work but society has now made both parents working a requirement in many places, not an option... and it seems the fallout is affecting the children.
If you're concerned about society then the focus needs to be on preparing the next generation better. Either you structure it so that single income families are an option, or you dump a lot more into the education system to make up for the lack of input kids are getting from their parents.
You can always unilaterally decide to do things on a different schedule; the problem is getting everyone else to do it too.
Package it with pay increases and/or shortening the day (also good for students) so that teachers still get off at the same time, and it'll go over fine.
Even aside from that, teachers aren't the majority of the electoral base for either local school boards or state lawmakers, so if it's important enough to non-teachers, it will get mandated whatever teachers prefer.
Like walking to school in the dark is worse than walking home from school in the dark?
The only advantage of the former is that it gives the sun a chance to warm up the air a bit more so it's not quite as cold in the morning.
There is no place in California where the amount of daylight is so short that kids would walk home in the dark as long as school starts around 8-9, regardless of whether they use PST or PDT during the winter.
The choices are, if school start times stay so that they are before parent work start times, between walking both to and from school in the light, and walking to school in the dark and from school in the light.
If it were a choice between walking to school in the dark or walking home from school in the dark, walking to school in the dark would be worse, because the school day is shorter than the adult work day. The kids going to school overlap with the morning commute traffic. The kids coming home beat the evening commute traffice.
Actually, yes.
Not just California, but starting an hour later also lets the temperature rise. That's not an undue consideration when you have snow and ice.
My neighbors kid has a middle schooler who starts at 7:30 and a 1st grader who starts at 9:30!
Personally, I went to a rural district with an 8:05 start time. The bus picked me up at 6:40AM, and I typically didn't see daylight outside of school in December.
They are in the wrong timezone, in my opinion. The sun sets super early in the day. If I was the dictator of the planet, I'd set japan's clocks forward by two hours year round. Then the sun would set at 18:40 instead of 16:40 today.
Getting off work and having some daylight is pretty important, IMHO. It is quite hard to do in Japan.
Japan is indeed ahead of solar time, as opposed to many other places on their longitude. (Though perhaps not by two hours).
Interestingly, many more places are behind their solar time then places that are ahead of it.
[1] http://blog.poormansmath.net/how-much-is-time-wrong-around-t...
Using the statement 'well maybe school shouldn't start so early then' as an argument in favour of making schools start earlier seems rather contradictory.
That said, even for K12 students, I’d say it’s a give and take. Waking up and going out in the dark each morning does sound bad for mood and potentially for circadian rhythms. But school gets out at 3PM, and on the shortest days of the year, the sun sets around 5PM. That leaves only 2 hours to potentially spend outdoors in the sun, at best; after-school activities can easily consume much or all of that time, not to mention homework. Or even if you spend all day indoors, the earlier the sun sets, the sooner your body starts producing more melatonin and making you feel tired; robust artificial lighting can help, but then it’s harder when you are ready to start winding down for the day. And then there’s seasonal affective disorder (Google it). In all these cases, going from 2 to 3 hours of sunlight after school would be a big help.
Even in the U.S....Washington, Montana, Michigan, Maine...this is fact of life stuff.