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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

I agree that ascribing human behaviours to (particularly animal) biology is shaky. But the changes going on in teenage years (ie puberty) lead me to think teenage rebellion isn’t just cultural.

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Teenage rebellion is often “rational but dumb”, in the sense of being an understandable but unskillfully directed protest against actual injustices.

If you take off the “teenager” lens and imagine that you’re witnessing the behavior of an adult who is being denied every variety of personal choice, while being pushed and browbeaten into spending their time in activities that don’t earn them money or status, the behaviors seem almost reasonable.

Just to take one example, if you were forced to wake up at 5:30 AM to get on a bus to sit in chairs for 7 hours listening to mediocre lectures, got in serious trouble if you took more than 5 minutes to move between rooms, had to ask permission to use the rest room, and that’s just what happens before you get home and have a new sequence of orders and chores issued to you ... then you would rebel.

> if you were forced to wake up at 5:30 AM to get on a bus

I know this is an American thing, in the UK high school for me started at 0845, which meant leaving home about 0820, so getting up about 0800. Still way to early, but at least it's not in the middle of the night.

I don't understand how a school day would even work with a 6:30 start. When's lunch?

I haven’t been to school in decades but basically, the bus arrives when it arrives, maybe 30-45 minutes before school starts, and you want to be at the stop early for obvious reasons. It gets a little less stupid once you’re old enough to drive yourself, if you have a car or can carpool. But no way would a 20 minute commute be assumed.

UK average commute for high school is 25 minutes, and 3.4 miles [0], but a 30-40 minute doesn't sound awful on a bus, means leaving home 0800 so getting up 0740.

So your high schools start at 6.30 AM?

[0] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

20 minutes from alarm clock to getting on the bus is unrealistic by an extremely wide margin. High school students typically shower, eat breakfast and get dressed at the very least.

I never had breakfast as a high school kid (still don't). 5 minutes for a shower, 5 more to get dressed and pick up bag, that leaves 10 minutes to get to bus stop.

I've posted this before, but first bell was at 7:18, bus was at 6:30. I had it luckier in that I lived ~1 mile from school, but lived in an area where you couldn't safely walk. There were students that lived ~15 miles from school whose buses arrived ~5:45 to be able to make the 7:18 bell.

Why wouldn't you have just leave home at 7AM and walk to school if you're that close?

(A 7:18 bell seems crazy though - what's wrong with a 9AM start?)

From my post:

> but lived in an area where you couldn't safely walk.

It was 1 mile on a four lane heavy traffic road with no sidewalks.

I haven't seen a single American kid who could get ready for school (eat breakfast, get dressed, etc) in 20 minutes. I believe you that it's different in the UK, but in the US you need to budget at least an hour for this.

Then, when I was a child I'd spend about 45 minutes to an hour on the bus, which would normally arrive at the school about 30 minutes before start time as a buffer in case things were slow. This was decades ago, but my understanding is it hasn't changed that much.

School actually started at around 8:00, but we still had to wake up before 6:00 in order to get there on time.

Our lunch was split up into 3 to accommodate the amount of students our school had. If you unluckily got put into Phase 1, lunch was at 10:48.

The hormonal changes are hard wired, but certain behaviors aren’t.

As an interesting corollary, did you know that the symptoms experienced by schizophrenics is extremely culturally dependent? Here in America the voices heard by someone with schizophrenia often urge violence, but in other countries (India is the one I’ve heard) they say nice, positive things. Same condition, culturally dependent outcomes.

Interesting.

What happens to someone with Schizophrenia who moves from the US to India ?

I have no idea.

There are cultures that deal with it better

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