Research confirms that adolescent circadian sleep cycles differ from those of adults. Where an adult may be wide awake at 7 AM, adolescents generally are not alert until 10 AM. By this time, most schools have been in session for a couple hours. Students take their first few classes, even standardized exams, before their internal clocks allow them to function at their best.
Schools should adjust their start times to adapt to these shifted sleep cycles. This shift would not encourage laziness or antisocial sleeping patterns, but is a necessary step toward improving student performance and health.
For my classmates, sleep deprivation is not only common, but taken for granted. The nine hours of sleep preached by health experts is a laugh for students who are occupied with homework, athletics, work, extracurriculars, and other activities. But I have wondered why students struggle to stay awake in class because they are up late at night to do homework. How does a student escape this vicious cycle with GPA's intact? The later starting time is a plausible answer, supported by experiment and biological studies.
3 comments:
shame on you aya. you should try and be more like me and get your work in on time...
I agree with you assertion, from personnel experience, that teenagers are not alert until about 10am. What has always annoyed me, and you mentioned, is that the SAT's, standardized tests that could decide whether or not one goes to a good school for secondary education, are almost over by 10am. Grr. At least for such important standardized tests I believe that they should consider a later test time.
Good luck Aya you're doing awesome!
I appreciate your approach to this topic. Clearly, it is an issue that I face everyday, and I know that I am not the only student.
Post a Comment