file under d -- for 'duh'

[totient]

Teens aren't getting enough sleep. What are we doing about it? Restricting their ability to drive.

We'd save a lot more lives by starting school later.

Comments

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

Nah, the real answer is to raise the drinking age again. If they aren't out clubbing with fake id's, they'll be home sleeping.

Or we could always lower the draft age. That works too...

[frotz.livejournal.com]

I've had a growing suspicion lately that most of the worlds ills are caused by a lack of sleep. (Which leads me to a long discussion of dysfunctional societal norms, but that's another rant...)

[frotz.livejournal.com]

The problem is, though, sometimes being up at 5am is a moral imperative.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

Sure. But is being up at 6am a moral imperative?

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

It's been known for a while that the sleep cycle of teens doesn't fit into a world with an early more start for school. But changing the school's schedule doesn't fit in with the sleep cycles of teachers who get up earlish and with parents who work, so the kids who need to be in school, lose.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

Sure. Except in many school systems, start times of primary and secondary schools are staggered to allow reuse of buses and/or avoid traffic jams at shared entrances, and it seems like it's always the secondary schools that get the earlier start time -- when it's the little kids who tend to wake up early anyway. We could start by swapping the start times.

[cogitationitis.livejournal.com]

My kids are up before 6am most mornings, and they have to be on the bus at eight; school starts at 8:45. The high school bus goes by at 7am. Yes, it makes no sense. I am told it's because teens should have after-school jobs or might need to care for younger siblings after school.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

And we can't provide after school programs for the younger kids because that would be giving their parents something that they'd otherwise have to pay for, and giving people things is communism. Never mind that it'd save more lives per dollar than many of the foolish programs we do spend money on.

[cogitationitis.livejournal.com]

Actually, our school system does have an after-school program, which costs extra. But it only goes until 5pm, and many parents are home at 6pm after work, so I'm not sure how useful it is. Also, it's all or nothing, and there's no day sign-up.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

5pm is plenty late enough to cover until any putative older siblings get home to take care of the younger kids. So that kind of puts a big hole in the reason they've given for not swapping.

[radioactiverich.livejournal.com]

When I heard this on the radio, Science Friday did a whole hour about it without once addressing the kinds of expectations our society is putting on teens. Jobs, hours of homework, sports, oh and you should have a healthy social life too. How is someone supposed to fit that all into a day AND sleep for nine hours?