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Opinion | Let Teenagers Sleep In
Three out of every four students in grades 9 to 12 fail to sleep the minimum of eight hours that the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends for their age group. And sleep deprivation is unremittingly bad news. Anyone who talks about sleep as if it's some kind of inconvenience and getting less of it is a virtue should be challenged. These people are dangerous.
At its most basic, insufficient sleep results in reduced attention and impaired memory, hindering student progress and lowering grades. More alarmingly, sleep deprivation is likely to lead to mood and emotional problems, increasing the risk of mental illness. Chronic sleep deprivation is also a major risk factor for obesity, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and cancer. As if this weren't enough, it also makes falling asleep at the wheel much more likely.
In 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that middle and high schools start no earlier than 8:30 a.m., a policy now backed by the American Medical Association, the C.D.C. and many other health organizations.
[...] Whenever schools have managed the transition to a later start time, students get more sleep, attendance goes up, grades improve and there is a significant reduction in car accidents. The RAND Corporation estimated that opening school doors after 8:30 a.m. would contribute at least $83 billion to the national economy within a decade through improved educational outcomes and reduced car crash rates. The Brookings Institution calculates that later school start times would lead to an average increase in lifetime earnings of $17,500.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 25 2018, @11:56AM (5 children)
My guess is more of the former, less of the latter. Kids already spend "most" of their school time hanging out in group projects, accepting political indoctrination "agree with my politics to get an A", and semi-recreational stuff like gym, high school sports, hobbies masquerading as classes (or is it the other way around?). Its fairly unheard of for a K-12 student to spend much time on something actually vocationally useful, and even if it is, its never recognized in the economy, have to do it all over again at vo-tech school or university.
Given that, and given trends of the economic system requiring an ever smaller fraction of the population to participate, I suspect schools will simply give up on academics and vocational training and go pure recreation and indoctrination. That makes everyone happy. High school will be a place for teens to hang out.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 25 2018, @10:14PM (4 children)
Or more accurately, teen prison.
What trends? Not seeing that in the US or China, for example.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 26 2018, @01:08PM (3 children)
Short term, no, long term everything follows the path of ag and industrial production where eventually the graph approaches 2% of the population doing all the food production or whatever.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 28 2018, @04:29AM (2 children)
Then find 50 things for people to do.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 28 2018, @11:10AM (1 child)
With our 1800s era education system geared around prepping for industrial revolution factory jobs, most of the 50 things found are "pills" "meth" etc.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 28 2018, @12:18PM
And yet we're not having all that much trouble despite the weaknesses of the education system. I think things would be much better if we weren't trying so hard to get in the way of employment in the first place.