If you went to high school in the United States, you might remember early morning extracurricular activities, sleeping in algebra in the first period, or late night study sessions. have). As an adult, you might wonder if there’s a better time to explore Shakespeare than 8am. Or you can take the bus at sunrise, go half asleep, and extend the Taylor series right after you collapse in your chair.
Ultimately, it turns out that high school start times in the United States are built on shaky scientific evidence. sleep deprived teenShe explains why high schools in the United States tend to start early, the science behind why it’s bad for kids, and why late school start times aren’t just for teenagers, but well… everyone. Read on to learn more about how it can help. Perhaps most importantly, she offers a primer on advocating for change in your community.
the wheels of the bus spin
Our early start time is a bit of a historic accident. In the first half of the 20th century, schools tended to be small and community-based, and most students could walk to school. Lewis points out that in 1950 there were still 60,000 one-room schools nationwide. By 1960, that number had fallen to about 20,000.
According to Lewis, the trend accelerated because U.S. authorities feared that education, especially in science and mathematics, was falling behind that of its arch-nemesis, the Soviet Union. A 1959 report written by James Bryant Conant, former Harvard president, discusses how high school Graduation class size With at least 100 schools, it’s a far cry from the smaller local schools. The consolidation of schools, which had already begun, was urgent. Neighboring schools remained closed. And the yellow school bus was trapped in a trajectory heading for its current iconic position.
To minimize the costs associated with buses, Lewis describes how many districts staggered school start times so that the same buses could be used to transport elementary, middle, and high school students. High school got the earliest time slot because at the time there was a social consensus that teenagers needed less sleep than young people.
And science says…
In the 1950s and 1960s, scientists still didn’t dig deep into teenage sleep. But that started to change in his 1970s. It began with an experiment in his camp at Stanford Summer Sleep, led by then-doctoral student and now professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, Mary Kirskadon. Lewis highlights a multiyear study in which scientists tracked sleep patterns and metrics from brainwave monitoring to cognitive tests in the same children during his decade from 1976 to 1985. introduces to the reader.
The first study of teen sleep yielded surprising results. For example, adolescents needed as much or more sleep than younger children. All children in the study, regardless of age, said that on average he got 9.25 hours of sleep. Subsequent research has shown that the ideal amount of sleep for a teenager is between 8 hours per night and her 10 hours. Yet Lewis reports that by 2019, only 22% of high school students reported that she had her eyes closed for at least eight hours on a regular basis, according to the CDC.
Another important finding from the Stanford Summer Sleep Camp experiment was that older children had bursts of energy later in the day. Subsequent research showed that the brain slowed the release of melatonin (the hormone that causes sleepiness) as children hit puberty. In teens, melatonin rises late at night and drops late in the morning, altering circadian rhythms. it’s academic.
But decades later, the average start time in 2017 was 8am, and 40% of schools started earlier. This is a dramatic change from his century ago, when high schools in the eastern United States started at 9 a.m., Lewis notes.
Why aren’t schools adapting to this influx of new information? Well, some schools have. Lewis gives several examples throughout the book, highlighting schools that have fully enjoyed the positive effects, even in the age of smartphones and social his media.
Lewis describes one study published in 2018. In that study, when a Seattle school district changed the start time to 8:45 a.m., students slept 34 minutes longer each night. This may not seem like much, but many students and families provided positive feedback and it did. Some teachers describe the atmosphere in the morning as “bright”. Many of us may find adjectives unfathomable in the first period.
