Sleeping In

I want to follow up on one of the talk topics from a week ago, the one regarding the study saying kids are too tired, and teenager school start times should be moved to 8:30 AM earliest.  The story goes on to say:

"Delaying the start of the school day until at least 8:30 a.m. would help curb [teenagers] lack of sleep"

The whole story from the Associated Press and the Star Trib can be read here:

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/272522381.html

Let's find our one piece of common ground.  All kids do need to get a good nights rest.  Will any child or adult consistently be able to get 12 hour of sleep daily?  Unlikely.

When I brought this subject up, my point was simple.  If the kids need more sleep, why not have them go to bed earlier?  I got the impression, from about 50% of the response, I'm a fool to think parents can get their kids to go to sleep earlier.  Why can't they?  There is no right in this country to watch Colbert or catch a movie on a weeknight at 10:45.  If you remove the option of kids going to bed earlier, your analysis of the problem becomes very one sided: kids must be able to sleep in!

If you believe the problem is kids need more sleep, then there are two options; have them go to bed earlier or have them start school later.  I side with the easier, more cost effective, first option; have teenagers go to bed earlier.  This is something controllable within individual households, without too much impact to modern society.  The other option, having kids start their day later, would cause a dramatic shift in the modern working family paradigm, forcing most of American businesses to change their hours.  It would impose extra financial and schedule conflicts for the modern working parent.  It would change the way American's work or American companies do business, especially companies who need staff in-house early to work with European partners.  Don't fool yourself, it would cost billions for the worldwide economy to adjust to Little Billy starting school later.

Then there's the complete upheaval in education.  Every school in the country would have to change their hours of operation, dramatically affecting classroom plans and educational schedules.

This would also dramatically effect after school activities and potential employment for high school students.  Little Susie currently works 4 to 10 PM, three evenings a week.  Now she can't get to work until 5:30.  Does she work 4.5 hours less per week, or do we now allow kids to work until midnight?  If it's the later, aren't we just shifting the same problem to later into the night?  How about not getting home from a sport, band practice or the school play until 11 PM?

I know there are some who will say, "well if I could have started school at 9AM, then I would have done better."  I think it's candy coating the solution to imply a kid who has a problem getting going under today's schedule will be bright eyed and bushy tailed under the new schedule.  My guess is they'd adjust their bed time accordingly, being just as late at 9 AM as they were at 7 AM, but even if that one individual would become a straight A student with the later start time, isn't it an unstable premise to apply the same conclusion for all kids?  "It'll work for me, so let's do it for everyone!"  Most teenagers are not failing due to earlier start times.  Are we putting forward a later school start time theory without acknowledging there might be just as negative consequence on the kids who want to get up and get going earlier in the morning?

Alright, I'll play.  Let's start school for all 6th graders this year at 9 AM, and progressively move the start time later as that class got older.  In ten years, they graduate college and head out into the work world.  Either we have completely changed American work environment or not.  If we haven't changed, and the American business day is still the same as it is today, how difficult will it be for a group of people who have never had a real commitment before 9 AM to suddenly be awake and into the office for 7:30 AM conference calls, three days a week?  They are going to have a tough transition at some point, so why not when they're in their teens?

If they have changed the business model and the working world didn't get going until 9AM earliest, what quality controls do you have in place to prevent the next group in 20 years from insisting the school day needs to start at 11 AM, and 20 years later, the school day starting at 1 PM.  Eventually you might even get all the way around the clock and have kids going to bed at 9:15 PM for a 7:37 AM school start time (my 12 year old son's current bed time and first class time).  My method avoids the constant shifting over the next hundred or so years.

This topic was never a judgment on anyone individually, or an individual's specific circumstance.  It never was.  At no point did I ever imply that.

Humor me; let's start by trying to get teenagers to bed earlier and go from there.  If it doesn't work, then we can try the other options, but let's try the most controllable and least impactful option first.