What time do they start work in the US?
My high school started at 08:10 (I think) and elementary school at 08:15 and those were the earliest starters in the neighbourhood. University luckily started around 9.
In France kindergarten and primary school starts at 8:30 and ends at 16:30. Mid and high school at 8 or 9, never earlier.
This is very early for children and teens, really not physiological.
Personally I hated it at the time, because getting up early is not my thing, but now I appreciate the time I got to talk with my parents on my way to school thanks to that schedule arrangement.
Also to offset this early getting up, we jus went to bed earlier, like at 9pm or 10pm max, so not sure it really made a difference on anything.
> The combination of changing sleep patterns in adolescence and early school start times leaves secondary school classrooms filled with sleep-deprived students. Evidence is growing that having adolescents start school later in the morning improves grades and emotional well-being, and even reduces car accidents. Opponents cite costly adjustments to bussing schedules and decreased time after school for jobs, sports, or other activities as reasons to retain the status quo. While changing school start times is not a costless policy, it is one of the easiest to implement and least expensive ways of improving academic achievement
https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/181/pdfs/educational-ef....
Of course, most kids lived on farms, some even had chores before going to school, and early to bed, early to rise was normal.
We had a few antenna TV stations, no cable, VCRs weren't around for the average family, and of course no Internet.
We also didn't have city street lights / ambient light, street noise, the sound of neighbours.
People have gotten up early to do farm work for aeons, and go to sleep early too. In fact, to be more precise, staying up past 8 or 9pm is an urban / modern aberration.
Point is, staying up late is the problem. Nothing more.
Now of course, society has changed, so maybe change is needed. However, there is also a lot of counter literature on even TV as a sleep depriver. And now we have phone in bed, with a glowing screen, keeping a mind active.
My point? OK, change the time. However, will kids just stay up even later?
Or, as they do now, will they think "I should go to sleep now, or I will be tired tomorrow, but just one more text..."?
I mean with most clocks also being internet connected computers it wouldnt be too hard to make a system where you measure time in hours after average sunrise in a tike zone.
That is where I live right now it's sunrise +3.
I'll reschedule the daily 'standup' to SR+3.5, the banks open at SR+3 and close at SR+11.
One major consequence I can see is that now we have north south timezones on top of east west.
This would break in the extreme north or south where there are days without a sunrise.
At no point did I cite biology. Instead, I validated that different wake-up times have existed in the past, and in fact still do.
When does the garbage man, the builder, the mechanic get up? The blue collar man? It isn't 8am, that's for sure. People I know in these professions of start work at 7am. Or earlier. I see them get to sleep by 9pm.
Get to sleep sooner, discipline yourself, as with anything else, it's just that easy.
Or that hard?
Stealing hours later is a lot easier, because any amount of sleep will still break up the day compared to none.
The other reason of course is that the real trick is just staying up longer then your parents: that's the only truly unsupervised freedom you have as a kid.
Eating too much, borrowing more money than you should, eating junk food, staying up too late, being addicted to your phone, texting whilst driving, perhaps these are all the same problem?
And like any animal, we need to be trained to control ourselves, when young, for our own good?