New California law requires high schools to start later
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How bizarre to read that an entire culture apparently has promoted extraordinary lazy kids for 5 or so decades, because their standard school starting time differs from the US one.
I don't know if it's envy, if they oldies are uncomfortable with change, or they just feel incomplete if there isn't someone lower down on the foodchain.
Arguing with them is of little use, they already decided their position, and what they are giving you are their justifications and confabulations for why it's okay to do so.
That's why there are articles about how Millenials have destroyed the economy and the housing market because they eat too many avocados and are all turning gay and genderfluid. Millenials even broke politics, but all the politicans are like 80
It's okay for a senile 90 year old to vote even if he never finished school and voted for the same party his entire life, but a 17 year old just isn't mature enough. However it's okay to draft them into the army just 1 year later and send them off to die in a foreign land, without them ever having had a chance to vote on the issue. It's also okay to send them to prison.
1 - Adults that get some kind of power trip out of tyrany and justify it by 'toughening them up'. They demand respect and dicipline they never had themselves. They will have endless stories about how their childhood was tough, and they had to talk to school and home 10 miles, alone, thorugh the snow, and it was uphill both ways
2 - Adults that 'care', by helicoptering over kids and try to shape them into a career they wish they pursued themselves. In practice they rob kids of all agency and don;t let them gow. These guys are like a 'left-wing' version of the above, for lack fo a better metaphor.
3 - Adults that actually respect children as people with independant thoughts and emotional needs - seem to be a minority.
Because everything gets easier with experience. I think everyone has thought at some time what they would do differently if they were kids again or back to school again. Some things we'd do better and have a handle on because as an adult you have some school and life experience.
If they then without empathy look at schoolkids they don't understand how they think and what they struggle with.
What do we have now? Self managed 401k which you have pour a life savings and second mortgage into in order to beat inflation, overpopulated suburbs, record levels of pollution, rising temperatures, impossibly expensive homes, their kids getting shot in schools, their rights being stripped away, skyrocketing college tuition costs…
I actually believe a lot of millennials don’t know how bad they have it comparatively and somewhat ironically, boomers also don’t know how good they had it.
That's a better description of the Silent Generation than the Boomers.
(But, now that you mention it, a lot of the Silent Generation would have no memory of the Depression and little to none of the war, and the main formation of their adult expectations would be the immediate post-War period whereas Boomers either missed that entirely or were infants/toddlers, so...)
What's worse is the end of day. My kid is younger and I need to be at the bus stop at 3:50 PM every day to meet her.
Not sure why this is a big deal. Kids can manage on their own.
After school, sometimes I'd hunt a bear for dinner.
Jeez, we've really infantilized our kids.
Though, with that said, I don't know what is the youngest age I could generalize it with. Depends so much on the maturity of the child and also how far where you live is from the bus stop. But I think it is safe to say that age is equal to or less than 13.
But this was a time when neighbors knew each other well and you could go next door for help if you needed it. (and also if you did something dumb, you could count on your mom finding out from a neighbor)
Sorry, my kids aren't riding the bus.
Schools shouldn't be forcing developing humans into a schedule that impairs their ability to learn and function, no matter what they want to decide
On the other hand if you do nothing mentally stimulating or physically tiring all day long, then of course you won’t be able to sleep till late.
You heard it boys and girls, back to ploughing the fields it is!
"Schools shouldn't be forcing developing humans into a schedule that impairs their ability to learn and function, no matter what they want to decide"
If you actually believe that, then you have to be against this law. Any schedule will negatively affect someone. A later schedule would have been terrible for me.
As someone that has sleep issues that deviate vastly from the norm, I empathize with this point, but it doesn't really mean much when it comes to designing policy, which is supposed to serve its demographic broadly.
> Societal life should be a factor as that does factor into the holistic well-being of the student. Not just some myopic rule about start times that negatively impacts everything else (after school activities, jobs, parent schedules, etc).
The rule being set by the state or by the local school district is hardly of consequence. You're okay with painting broad strokes about parents' lives but then make an argument about individual students.
> If you actually believe that, then you have to be against this law. Any schedule will negatively affect someone. A later schedule would have been terrible for me.
Unless you're suggesting that the start times be adjusted to cater to every single individual's needs, this is just pointing out that the start time the school you attended coincided with what worked for you personally.
Which the current times do.
"The rule being set by the state or by the local school district is hardly of consequence."
This is totally untrue. At the district level, parents have more say in creating the rules that work for them (their local demographic!).
"You're okay with painting broad strokes about parents' lives but then make an argument about individual students."
Either one is broad. I'm pointing out that the very argument you make can be used against the position you're defending.
According to... what? The whole reason that California passed a law like this and why it's been suggested to push up the start time for high school is largely because the time that many school districts started their high schoolers at was of negative consequence to the children.
> This is totally untrue. At the district level, parents have more say in creating the rules that work for them (their local demographic!).
Are you saying that you'd have no objections if the local school district chose to start high school at a later time? I might agree with you that the state is overstepping its bounds by mandating an earliest start time, but that doesn't seem to be what you're complaining about. It seems more that you disagree that a later start time is beneficial to students (because you personally benefitted from the early start time of your high school) and that it's inconvenient to parents because they have to figure out the logistics of getting their kid to school at a later time.
That hasn't been proven yet. I guess we'll see with the next year's test scores compared to this year. I don't expect much to change test-wise. I do expect extracurricular partipation will drop.
"Are you saying that you'd have no objections if the local school district chose to start high school at a later time? "
Yes, I would be fine with districts starting later if the district was the one deciding it based on parental representation. At least then we could have a local discussion and do what works best for us.
Not really, tehre seems to be 3 groups of people:
1 - Adults that get some kind of power trip out of tyrany and making kids miserable and justifying it by 'toughening them up'. They deman respect and dicipline while demonstrating total disrespect towards kids and usually have little dicipline themselves. They will have endless stories about how their childhood was tough, and they had to talk to school and home 10 miles, alone, thorugh the snow, and it was uphill both ways
2 - Adults that 'care', by helicoptering over kids and try to shape them into a career they wish they pursued themselves. These guys are hardly better.
3 - Adults that actually respect children as people with independant thoughts and emotional needs
Your list also entirely excludes neglectful parents, whose lack of presence and guidance can be of great detriment to their children's progress in life.
I think that there are a lot of parents who might encompass all sorts of different stereotypes as they try to raise their children the best they can. "Toughening up" children is important. Building up resiliency in a controlled and safe environment is necessary for a person to navigate regular life. Showing compassion and interest in your children is important because it allows them to live their most honest selves. Providing structure for children is important because it helps them succeed in a world that very much relies on various constructs.
I think ultimately, parenthood is hard and finding the right balance of things is hard and unfortunately, you can't just undo the mistakes that can have lifelong impact on your children. I don't think my parents raised me the best they could have, but I don't doubt that they definitely tried.
Me too. I have always been an early riser, early sleeper. Forcing me to go to school later in the day would have been awful.
I think the goal of these sorts of policies is to increase the breadth of students which can benefit from you know, actually being well rested inside school hours. A person that sleeps later and wakes up later (which studies that justify these sorts of policies indicates teenagers largely are) would benefit from a later start time.
Of course, the buses won't run that early, so only well-to-do parents will be able to use those daycares in the first place, leaving poor parents even worse off than they were before.
Do you think something magically happens on their 18th birthday?
The bigger issue is requiring some sort of pre-care. Which if necessary, makes this whole law moot because you're waking the kid up for that.
It's to late to help us.. my youngest just turned 16 and will be able to drive themself to school next year and we'll finally get decent sleep during the school year. But this would be a big boon to lots of people.
1) The flipside to starting much later is that kids will be exiting schools later. Want to participate in some after school activities or clubs that aren't physically in school? A HS kid wants to hold down a little part time job so she can save to buy that first car or afford that summer trip she wants? Any activities out of school become much more difficult to manage if the exiting time moves any later. And these extracurriculars are also a big part of many peoples' lives.
2) I think it's naive to think that kids will get much extra sleep regardless of the school starting time. Their need for socialization and leisure activities out of school doesn't suddenly vanish if school starts later: they just get shifted. If you tell kids that they can manage to wake up at 9 instead of 7 and still make it to school on time, they'll just tend to stay up about 2 hours later playing games, watching movies, or chatting with friends. The end result might be about the same amount of sleep.
3) Logistically, it's hard enough for most parents to see their kids for a few minutes and deal with getting their kids out of the door in the morning (or driving them to school) when their wakeup times roughly coincide and they can get a little breakfast together or have a few minutes to chat. Trying to arrange a much different school schedule for kids is going to present a lot more difficulties to working parents, particularly if the kid has some special needs, is a tad rebellious about going to school, or you have to drive them for some other reason.
Just thinking out loud here, but I'd say that getting rid of the nightly busy work (homework) is a better way to fix teens schedules. They already spend enough time at school learning. Stop forcing them to waste an hour or two every night regurgitating mostly busy work and then feeling like crap and needing to stay up another few hours decompressing. Let them get their fill of fun and socialization after a long day. Without the burden of homework, most teens have enough extra time in the day to get a little extra rest and still have enough to unwind and feel like a human.
2) There have been bunches of studies that show teenagers don't get proper sleep specifically when they get up early. There is something about that age that requires sleeping later to get good rest. No matter when they go to bed.
3) Who says their waking coincides with the current times? Doesn't for us. Something like 9:30 or 10:00 would.
You have reinvented the German Gymnasium (grammar school). Congratulations.
To comment on your points...
> 1) They wouldn't need to get out any later. Most of the school day is basically baby sitting and they could easily fit the actual teaching in <4 hours.
I agree that they wouldn't need to get out any later and that most of the school day is a waste and can be radically compressed, but I sincerely doubt that this is what would happen. If we're talking about showing up to school later and leaving at the same time, I'd say that's a big win over the current situation. Please tell me I've misread things and this is what we're talking about. I'd be happy to have that be the outcome, but I doubt it.
> 2) There have been bunches of studies that show teenagers don't get proper sleep specifically when they get up early. There is something about that age that requires sleeping later to get good rest. No matter when they go to bed.
I've seen similar tendencies in the studies I've come across as well, but I'm not convinced that the stats are interpreted correctly based on human nature. My thinking is that the people who need sleep the most probably aren't going to go to bed at a sane time and end up with a large net sleep gain. That said, I'm a little open-minded about this point applying to many (but not all people)
> 3) Who says their waking coincides with the current times? Doesn't for us. Something like 9:30 or 10:00 would.
Everybody's job and life situation is different, but I'd bet that a lot of lower income people have to deal with getting to work earlier, and have more transportation issues (trying to connect to multiple busses and trains, etc) and more complex childcare requirements necessitating less overall time flexibility in the morning.
I'd wager it's largely the technical, white-collar class that can show up later and generally has a quicker path to work (work in pajamas in living room, or hop into the car in the driveway and drive to work with no connecting delays)
Or they could just give that time back. Maybe things have changed, but back when I was in school, almost every class was a waste of time.
This is how people can go to college and spend comparatively little time in class yet learn more than they did in high school.
A plurality ~35% of high school students are driven to school, though not necessarily by a parent.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0739456X1772514...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-07/how-dista...
EDIT: This is nationwide, there's reason to believe this percentage is probably higher in California.
Bus was awful. Kids had no respect for the driver or other kids. Plus it easily tripled the commute time.
If I drove them (or when they were old enough to drive on their own), they could sleep nearly an hour later than if they had to take the bus. Since it wasn't much of a detour on my way to work, that's what I did.
I spent most of my school aged years in an city with a mediocre transit system. Most parents did not drive their kids to school except in very bad weather. Also, most people attended the school closest to their home. This meant the mediocre transit system used buses for special school routes usable only by students. I rarely took this bus as I preferred to bike or walk in about the same amount of time the bus would take.
Where I live now, something similar happens at least for the kids that are bussed across town to achieve a somewhat consistent racial mix in all schools.
Has everyone driving their kids to school eroded the viability of walking, biking, or taking a school bus?
Exactly. Similar to the problem many adults have trying to get to work by bus, it often doubles or triples a commute time.
If they're in after school activities and/or have a job, then it seem unlikely that they would get into trouble anyways. Pushing the time back will make these after school activities unfeasible for many, and limit opportunities.
If you can't leave them unsupervised in the mornings, surely they can't be left alone after school either. Net net, there's going to be some time they're unsupervised. May as well let them get some rest. Maybe the lack of sleep deprivation will even encourage better decision-making.
After school has after school activities. It also typically means they don't need to cook if the parents are home for dinner.
Dictating diet by limiting options doesn't sound like a great plan to me.
You know what else is a non-problem? The current start times.
Their voice at the state level is highly diluted by non-interested parties. Voting for school board members tends to be more focused and doesn't have as many people voting based on non-school issues like you would for a general representative.
if a 15 year old can't be unsupervised at home, then their parents have different problems besides letting them cook for themselves.
As an anecdote, 100% of my class was coming to the school and back without being supervised since age 8. This was in 90s and not in the US, but the gap of "mature enough to go to school" between my experience and the statement feels a bit high, somehow.
> The American obsession with helicoptering their kids all the way through their first job is super weird and unhealthy.
My kids, along with many others, were getting themselves to & from school without my supervision starting in third grade. Earlier, even, for my son since his sister is two years older and was with him.
This is normal. What is the fascination that so many Europeans (and others) have with making wild unsupported assertions about what Americans do and then build an entire critique from that?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Modern parents would have a heart attack.
That's insane. I walked to school at 6. At 8, I walked to the bus stop and rode a public transit bus to school. The helicoptering has gone way to far and it is creating generations of crippled kids. I wonder if this is solely caused by the media pushing fear or if there are other factors.
In most cases, this should work out better for parents. With elementary school starting latest (as was the norm in many places a decade ago), the little kids end up in pre-care AND after-care. Now, they’ll start earlier, possibly avoiding pre-care.
Sometimes I have to start work at 4am, does that mean that schools should start at 3am to make it convenient for me? What about when I finish at 11pm? What if I'm working overnight?
That sounds incredibly privileged.
https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/overflow-data-finds-th...
Nearly all workers that perform non-mental labour.
You should really consider talking to some less privileged people sometime.
Most of the world's workers aren't white collar, are they?
Even if they were, are all white collar jobs allowing full remote these days?
Everyone I know that works in a location works shift patterns or other non 9-5 jobs. My wife might start at 7.30 am one day, or another day not finish to 9pm.
If you're working 9-5 every day it's increasingly unlikely you need to be in a specific place to do so. Those who do work in specific places tend to have to cover a far larger range than 9-5 and thus require alternate child care arrangements anyway.
https://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/0006-322... https://you.com/search?q=light+melatonin+production
1. They know they and everyone else will just stay up later. 2. School will go on too late in the day, sports participation is dropping appreciably. 3. Those who work after school or school/sports are quitting sports to work, and planning ways to leave when they did previously to go to work.
This is incredibly short-sighted, and will not last a year.
Anecdotally, when I was in high school, with a 7:30 AM start, around 25% of the class was asleep through 1st period. And this was in honors/AP courses with the kids who wanted to learn, get good grades, and generally be successful.
So my anecdotes don't match your's.
Teens who go to bed at a reasonable hour are getting enough sleep and performing well.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-03/californ...
If I were back in high school, all this would have told me is that I'm staying up until at least midnight, if not later. I was usually good about sleeping around 9:30pm which gave me roughly 9 hours sleep.
Since I assume this means school will end later in the day, this just means homework gets pushed much later too. My parents were very strict about homework being done the same day, so there's no chance I would have been able to keep my old schedule and do homework in the mornings.
I'm curious what the effect is on the average and median kids. This would have been incredibly annoying for me.
Your school admins were assholes. What unholy sadists would start school that early??
What country was this?
I'm happy my school admins made this available to us. I don't understand your rage.
But if anyone wants to get to school at the crack of dawn, have fun! Just don't impose that on those of us with different internal clocks.
I'm in Southern California now. My kids middle school starts at 9... I'm glad High School will now be similar.
I would always pretty much get as little sleep as I could function with because at that age, video games were more important, lol. But I don't want to extrapolate my experience, I'm sure most kids will adjust... but I can see a fair amount having even worse sleeping schedules.
All that to say, glad to know that future generations of high schools will be getting more rest.
1. elementary school starts at 7:30AM, middle school at 8:20, high school at 9:10 here. So, the youngest kid gets up at 6:50AM, older ones at 7:50AM, oldest at 8:40(assuming you're not too far from school that is). why the youngest ended up getting up the earliest puzzles me.
2. School is off in hot summer and cold winter, I would prefer they study on campus then, so they can enjoy longer break in spring and fall, where outdoor weather is much better to get around.
>Since the 1950s Americans have been moving away from cities to sprawling suburbs with limited public transport. Families became car-dependent and buses were used to get pupils to school. But to save money schools often have to share bus fleets. High-schoolers are usually picked up first, then middle school, to prevent elementary pupils from waiting in the morning darkness.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/06/23/californi...
> the youngest kid gets up at 6:50AM, older ones at 7:50AM, oldest at 8:40
The comment you posted said
> High-schoolers are usually picked up first, then middle school, to prevent elementary pupils from waiting in the morning darkness.
They seem opposite, no?
I think there's been quite a few studies indicating that teenagers benefit the most from later start times due to the shift in their internal clock. Little kids can deal with earlier start times.
Staggered start is frequently due to logistics; they don't want to pay for a larger fleet of school buses and drivers to facilitate the schools starting at the same time.
Supposedly Summer break is so that kids can help with harvests on family farms.
With the pandemic and WFH I shifted much closer to my natural schedule.
We're officially back in the office now, but nobody is really taking attendance so I get up at around 11, do some email while I eat breakfast, then head in to the office until about 6pm. I'm still getting as much or more done as I ever did, because I was too tired to be effective when I was coming in at 8:00 and basically just stared at the screen for two or three hours until I really woke up.
It's so parents who have to go to work, can drop their kids off. The youngest are the ones who shouldn't (in most cities unfortunately) be going by public transports by themselves. While teens can just take the bus or subway.
If the school system would team up with public transit, they are already a quarter of the say to all day bus service for everyone.
I've always heard teenagers need more sleep than younger kids. I've never actually verified this claim.
In my area it's the opposite, and the reason is simple: high schoolers don't need childcare.
> School is off in hot summer and cold winter, I would prefer they study on campus then, so they can enjoy longer break in spring and fall, where outdoor weather is much better to get around.
That's a pure anachronism, but switching costs are genuinely high so not totally irrational.
2. Highly regionally variable (California summer is the best season by far, east coast summer is much worse than fall) - summer also has the longest daytime light which is nice.
The west coast summer can be hot, but is rarely humid.
Middle of the country varies too much to really generalize imo.
While letting yawning teenagers get more sleep seems obvious, the lesser evil is having them get up while it's dark out instead of making 10 year olds walk to the bus stop in darkness, or walk home in twilight. Folks would drive their kids to school if they could, my dad did for me and my little brother as much as possible, but in a household where both parents have jobs, it's not a realistic solution, and that was the reality for most people in the district I lived in.
School curricula have changed significantly the last couple of decades, esp. in california.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31711020
Based on an Atlantic piece:
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/06/american-...
Another quicker read is here: Chronotype and Adolescence: Why being an "evening person" as a teenager is disadvantageous [https://www.psychologyinaction.org/psychology-in-action-1/20...]
Basically, even for those who don’t have a night owl chronotype, our sleep shifts back during adolescence. We now know how important sleep is for learning and memory consolidation.
Having schools stagger start time for different cohorts based on preference sounds like the most obvious answer to me to alleviate the problems caused by imposing early start times on all students. One size fits all is hardly ever the best solution.
So getting up at 7 to make an 8:30 start wasn't so bad. My high school was a fifteen minute walk, or a similar bus ride in the winter. So it wasn't so bad.
Still living the old ways like you see in old TV shows.
My high school started at 8:20 but we had a 0-period option at 7:15 which is when we were able to take other arts classes like concert band.
I ultimately was in 3 music related classes in high school: concert band at 0-period, jazz band at 4th period, and a small combo band after school 3-days per week.
I loved having a longer day when it meant I could do more of what I wanted to do and also get some flexibility around the school's otherwise rigid schedule but looking back I really appreciate that the longer day was at least partially from starting earlier.
Starting these longer days early meant I still had a lot of free time after school as well to spend with friends even if they were involved in the "standard" day and gave me unstructured free time before my parents came home and before I had to worry about doing things like homework.
So I guess the time that kids spend in public schools can be cut tremendously, instead of its start being shifted from early morning to a bit later morning. But I doubt that useless time elimination can be achieved via legislation.
So while this will obviously have a positive effect on 'night owls', may it have a negative effect on 'early birds'?
And before you say, "Good!", keep in mind that not everyone has the priviledge of an all paid ride from their parents.
I personnally never had any proble getting up early, but I went to bed at a reasonable time. My peers who had trouble in the morning all tended to stay up late.
A few sources, there are tons more:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15402002.2014.96...
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1111/sbr.12003
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/07420528.2012.65...
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1540200070126380...
Please don't cross into personal attack.
I really doubt that. Sleep deprivation comes in large part from online behavior (source: personal anecdotes). Whether or not anyone wants to talk about that is another matter.
The new law is unlikely to change the sleep-deprived status of students. Parents taking responsibility can.
There are a lot of factors that go into adolescents not getting enough sleep, and it's pretty clear that early school start times are one of them: and one that can be controlled.
Also I think suggesting that parents can take responsibility for the bed time of their teenagers is more than a little unrealistic.
[1] http://www.sleepforscience.org/stuff/contentmgr/files/94a9f6... (from 1990 about sleep deprivation in adolescents)
It is certainly stronger evidence than personal anecdotes about "teens are always on their phones".
Longitudinal studies observing that teenage circadian rhythms shift towards sleeping in later long predate "online behavior".