https://doi.org/10.1038/s41582-025-01106-6
Abstract: “Aspects of modern society, such as artificial lighting and rigid schedules, create ‘social jetlag’ — a mismatch between biological chronotypes and societal demands. This circadian misalignment particularly affects evening chronotypes, leading to sleep deprivation, mental health issues and physical disorders. Flexible schedules and environmental modifications could restore natural sleep patterns and improve well-being.”
the timings for school and its length were not dictated by health needs nor education needs.
it was chosen to match parents work schedule, and to aclimatize children to factory work.
so its not out of ignorance of the childs well-being, but indifference to it
it was chosen to match parents work schedule
I can’t find a good source, but from what I’ve seen its actually student work schedules that dictate school start times.
Elementary and Middle Schools tend to start much later in the day (in part to conserve buses). But local Chambers of Commerce and Rotary Club groups will often lobby for earlier high school start times so that students are out of school in time for a 5pm work shift.
In some countries the school start at 6.30 AM so that parents can take their children to school before they start work at 8 AM.
High school teacher here. Obviously, I don’t speak for everyone, but many of us wish school would start at a more reasonable time for students. We don’t enjoy trying to teach first (and second, and third) period classes where many students are either absent or asleep. And of course, we care about the students and know it would be much healthier for them to sleep in. School can start around 10:00, thanks. But, as others have pointed out, the schedule is not dictated by what is best for the students.
Edit: some of the students in the schools I work at have to get up around 5:00. The often wait for 30+ minutes for buses to come (but that is a “the district doesn’t care about the students” issue, not a start time issue).
I was an incredibly angsty teenager, mad at the world and hostile to just about everyone by default. Apathetic, grumpy, and uninterested in physical activity or the things I liked as a preteen.
After having a baby and getting very little sleep for 6 months I recognized some of my old patterns. Turns out, it wasn’t just part of being a teen, I was chronically sleep deprived. I was up at 6am most days back then, when I would sleep until 1pm on weekends. I think a lot of teens are unfairly characterized as angry and defiant when they’re operating on half or a quarter of the sleep they need.
Ah yes, I remember those accusations of grumpiness. It’s the classic “MY issues are because of the circumstances around me. YOUR issues are because that’s just who you are.” The lack of empathy so many adults express is truly concerning.
I was in my late 20s when I realised just how much stress morning stuff is causing me, and had caused me for two decades.
(my solution was just to come to the office at 11 most days & now I also sleep more hours on average, but that’s is a separate issue for me)The way I see it, you’re probably freest from the ages one to four Around the age of five you’re shipped away for your body to be stored They promise education, but really they give you tests and scores And they predictin’ prison population by who scoring the lowest
So much of the education system is centered on child abuse and grooming children to accept abuse as adults
Also it’s affordable daycare for kids so parents can work.
That’s the real reason it starts early: so two working parents can get the kids out the door and then still have time to get to work themselves
So it’s a cycle of abuse then
I’d describe it more as systemic.
https://genius.com/Run-the-jewels-walking-in-the-snow-lyrics
Knew I’d heard this somewhere. RTJ is just 💋 🤌
Many African American slaves did not know they were slaves until about age 6, because they were not given work when too young to be useful. Sounds familiar…
Going to school is not comparable to literal slavery
What happens if you just don’t go?
Being the literal property of another human being is not the same as a mandatory education. Also before you ask having to listen to your parents as a kid also is not comparable to slavery.
But to answer your question the parents get in trouble for it
Of course definitely not the same in terms of violence, but in terms of our inability to have a choice. Slavery is different and “worse” but somehow it rhymes.
I’m stunned by the absolute ignorance of this comment.
Please stay in school kids or somehow you’ll wind up thinking slavery is comparable to school.
I don’t have the energy to full educate you on the horrors of slavery. But I can assure you having to go to school, recieve a free education, and fill in a scantron every now and again is not comparable in the slightest.
Sure that part is great. The part that’s not is the compulsory part that is in hours conducive only to corporations’ benefit and not children. Also the religious garbage spewed in many states. The inequal funding, the terrible teacher’s pay and conditions. High school sports as an industry. Lack of any flexibility for children’s needs. Long hours at too young and age. It’s not bad overall but there are very, very shitty parts of it in dire need of improvement. I’m sure we agree overall anyways.
Since the whole problem lies with parents’ work schedule, we should all push work time to begin at 10am instead of 8am, so kids can get to school a bit later in the morning. Everybody gets to sleep a bit more. Problem fucking solved
But then I would have to work until 8pm. That sounds horrible.
7pm if you take an hour lunch, 6pm if you don’t take a lunch.
I’ve worked a 10-7 shift before. Some people hated it, but I actually loved it. I got to stay up every night to a reasonable 12-1, okay videogames with friends, slept until a nice morning, woke up and drove to work. It was by far the best work shift time I’ve ever had. It also helped that I lived 3 minutes away, so I would literally wake up at like 9, sss, then drive to work. Saved so much gas at that job hahaha. I’d fill up my Corolla like once a month as long as I didn’t visit friends too much. And I was in an apartment with underground parking, so the uv damage to my car was like nothing.
The only downside is you don’t get to do errands during the week. Which… If you plan very very well isn’t an issue, but more often than not was an issue.
One reason for the early starts for high schools is that by staggering the start times for high school, middle school, and elementary school, school districts can use fewer buses and fewer drivers. If all the schools started at the same (more reasonable) time, you’d need three times as many buses and drivers and each driver would only get one or two hours a day (and thus would find something else to do, making the existing shortage of drivers even worse). The district I drive for has a transportation budget of about $3 million a year - we would not be able to afford $9 million a year and still afford our administrators’ enormous salaries.
If you just started all schools later by an hour, the elementary school kids would start at 9:30 AM which would not work out very well, either.
East Asian countries solve this by having the kids take public transit; just run a few extra buses and trains on the routes kids take, then you don’t need dedicated vehicles that sit idle all day.
With trains all you have to do is add an extra passenger car or two for the peak times and keep the number of trains running the same. You could also increase frequency during peak times if you have the track, train and driver availability to do that
I dunno, that sounds like socialism.
Good thing we were saved from the horrors of broadly accessible and efficient mass transit decades ago.
Could you imagine how dangerous mass transit would be if it was full of middle schoolers, calling out your biggest insecurities, while you’re just trying to get to work? John Mulaney educated us on the danger of them years ago.
Not sure which ones you’re talking about, but in Hong Kong, schoolchildren just walk to school. There’s usually a school attached to each housing estate.
Japan, Korea, mainland China
I think los angeles does this too, now.
You get a free pass as a student, but public transport in most of LA still requires a (relatively) long walk. Depending on where you live, might be a deal breaker.
It is much cleaner/safer than most people think though.
long walk
Really? Not my experience.
What’s your definition of long walk? If public transport is your only option, you have to take into consideration the fact you’ll occasionally be carrying heavy/bulky stuff.
I usually take 20-80 lbs
If I remember correctly most of the suggestions to account for that actually has elementary and middle schoolers start before high schoolers since high schoolers are the ones that need the most sleep while also struggling the most to go to sleep early
They don’t need to push everyone later, they just need to start the younger kids early, and the older kids later, which is the opposite of what most districts do now. Pre-teens have no problem getting up at 6AM.
Parents fight that because then they can’t have the older kids take care of the younger kids when they get home from school.
and those parents should be fought by cps
It’s not the parent’s fault the media has made them terrified of everything that they can’t let their kids just go around the neighborhood while they’re at work.
yes, but if they’re afraid of that they shouldn’t be having their other kids watch over their younger ones
What’s the alternative?
hiring a babysitter
My school district solves this by not having busses at all
deleted by creator
Yours might not, but do you really think that’s the case everywhere?
Huh, that’s curious. I’m actually a school bus driver and I’ve been driving high school kids for four years now. Your use of “transit passes” makes me think you’re not a United Statesian.
Not sure what the comment you responded to was, but I used public transit to get to my junior high. The school provided me with a transit pass for free, which was really nice. I also live in the US. I actually only took the school bus to school for first grade.
First grade - school bus 2-6 - walking and they also did not have school buses for anyone but kindergarten 7-9 - transit, they also had no school buses 10-12 - I was either driven or drove. They did have school buses, but I wasn’t allowed to use them because I lived out of the district
Now, to be fair, I had a pretty unique situation with almost all of my schooling.
The elementary school, all of the kids that went were super close and lived in a super dense area, so walking was feasible and buses were not really needed
Junior high was a “choice” school. Meaning it was part of the public system, but it had a special theme to it and students had to request to go and they only let in a few students each year. If you did they in, you went to the normal school instead. The school had a total of 90 students and so buses were not feasible, especially since all the kids came from all over the district. They provided bus passes instead.
High school, I lived outside the district and had requested to go the school anyways, and part of the agreement to allow me to go was that I had to get my own way there. My older sibling could drive my first year and then I drove myself the next two years.
Not sure what the comment you responded to was
They said high school kids don’t take school buses … like, no high school kids do, which is manifestly untrue. I actually grew up in a town with no school buses at all, but that’s because we had a big state university there and the school district contracted with the university bus service to provide adequate route coverage to get kids to school.
My mental health radically improved my senior year when I was ahead on credits and could skip the first block of classes each morning.
i highkey think school as it stands is child abuse.
i’m not a pedagogue or educator so i’m not versed on how to really articulate it, just had a constant feeling school was useless for learning, and felt like fucking prisons (and in retrospect i still think that’s true).
school 100% stunted my potential big time and i still fucking hate it for doing this and more. free our youth.
I left school around 9th grade, did “homeschool” which amounted to basically just watching documentaries and smoking weed and now I’m one of the highest earners out of everyone I originally went to school with. From being that weird poor kid who always got bullied to being quite comfortable- life is fuckin’ weird.
to be fair i learned more in life from weed and documentaries than i ever did from actual school. you are justified in doing great.
this image really resonated with me:
it’s from futurama btw, great show, i’m just re-watching it :D
This image inflicted mental damage on me :’(
Futurama really can tug the heartstrings.
School is just to prepare you for working in a capitalistic hellhole.
my country has been expanding the 48+ hour workweek instead of 40 for the last while, and sure enough schools are more and more starting to follow it.
My highschool used the same blueprints as the local prison, so… yep that all tracks and they don’t even try to hide it.
I learned more math from Khan Academy. If I knew about it, I would have started Khan Academy as soon as it existed (and bitcoin mining)
And god forbid your circadian rhythm doesn’t align and you fall asleep in class.
You can get referred for a drug test because only high people fall asleep during the day.
I have always struggled with sleep onset insomnia. In an ideal world, I’d probably sleep from around 5 am until noon, and my best working hours are from 7pm until 11pm, without fail. Even when I am exhausted from forcing myself to get up early for an extended period, I’ll still perk up in the late evening, and struggle to sleep before 3am. This combined awfully with school.
I remember once that I was so exhausted, I literally fell asleep while walking, and I didn’t wake up when I hit the floor. What’s striking in hindsight is how little sympathy there was. I wasn’t accused of being a drug user, but there were plenty of comments about laziness, which is absurd given that I was obviously severely exhausted.
A friend was the primary carer for a disabled relative, and this required her to get up at 5am each day, and to get up during the night to administer medication. She would often fall asleep in class, and she frequently got detention for this (which she would then often need to skip, to ensure she could get home in time to pick up siblings from school). Speaking with her years later, she lamented that if teachers had been more sympathetic and actually tried to understand what was going on here, it might’ve led to there being formal support to care for her relative. The amount of work she was doing was absurd for anyone, let alone a 13 year old, but she didn’t know this, let alone that there were support channels to help young carers like her.
I had a friend trauma & sleep psychology profesor visiting; she said improvement of school performance with better scheduling was proven in few real life (cross-sectional?) studies.
You can get referred for a drug test because only high people fall asleep during the day.
Let me guess: Murica’ ?
Yeppp
You can’t cause delinquency if you’re too busy getting 8 hours of sleep.
In my 30s and I’m still mad about it.
Especially considering how much time at school was an absolute waste.
Yea that only happens because capitalism needs your parents to slave their ass off which can only happen if their kids go to school earlier than their already early starting job
Generally, I don’t think that applies to high schoolers. They can manage themselves in the morning. We should have their school start last
America also has some deep structural issues that children aren’t able to get to school by themselves. In Japan, grade school children are able to get to and from school by themselves in most of the country. In America, parents aren’t allowed to leave children unattended, and certainly aren’t allowed to let them go to school alone
Yea missed the part about high school but those time schedules pretty much sum up my primary school times as well, hence why the reply. high school is a bit of a grey area depending on the country, I agree.
deleted by creator
The real reason is to accomodate for parents’ routines. You need the kid in a place where someone can watch them for you by the time you leave for work (or not long after). Plus yeah they gotta learn to follow schedules and have responsibilities and such. Not saying I think it’s a perfect system, I too hated getting off bed early in the morning.
i disagree. my elementary school started later and thats the age when parents really need to be more present. and as a kid i had no issue getting up early vs as a teen. they should just flip it. teens on a bus route, or hell even witj friends with a car, are way more capable of getting themselves to school
“Should” is doing some heavy lifting here.
Sleep patterns start changing around puberty. Young kids tend to get up earlier, naturally; teenage biorhythms are tuned to stay up later, and sleep late.
But we don’t have a society where it’s safe to let teens run around by themselves, except for some rural communities, so schedules are based - as GP says - around parent’s schedules. And because of workplace demands, whether it’s a reasonable requirement because the job demands an in-person presence like the service sector, or because of idiotic, arbitrary in-office policies, that usually means parents need to have their kids in school before 8, or 8:30 if they’re lucky, so they can be at their desks by the standard 9am.
Little kids, this is less of an issue, but it really fucks with teenager’s biorhythms, because they’re designed to be sleeping until 10 and going to sleep at midnight at that age.
There’s a ton of studies about this, and there’s been a lot of work by K-12 to figure out how to accommodate a balance; and some companies even have policies allowing for flex time to help, but on average - as usual - Corporate America fucks it up.
But we don’t have a society where it’s safe to let teens run around by themselves,
Really? By all accounts it is safer now than ever AND has tracking if you want. Add to that the fact that every teen I know left to their own devices would not bother running around anyways. They would stay at their computer/tablet/phone as long as they could.
Oh? What’s your source for that claim?
The US population in 2014 was 318.3M. In that year, 186 amber alerts for children were issued. Last year (2024), the population was 340.11M, and there were 188 alerts. That’s almost unchanged (0.56/0.58) in the past decade. In 2011, there were onu 158 alerts in 311.56M people, lower than today (0.51) (amberalert). There have been years where there were more, and years when there were less; 2006 was pretty bad (0.87).
I can’t get reliable statistics from 1880, when 72% of the population lived in rural communities. The population flipped from predominantly rural to urban in 1920 (1910: 54% rural; 49% rural in 1920, c.f https://www.seniorliving.org/ has a handy yearly breakdown), but the next best thing is to count alerts per million by demographic, and the metrics don’t break it down like that, unless you count % alerts by state, and measure the population in each state and the rural/urban breakdown. I’m not sure that’d be valid for extrapolating back into history to estimate how much safer children might have been from strangers in 1900. Anyway, amber alerts don’t tell us anything about stranger danger, since abductions are as likely to be by family members as not.
The point is, from amber alerts alone, 2011 was safer than 2024. The alerts/pop/year are all over the place, and claiming that it’s safer than it ever has been is wild, and I’d like to see some substantiation before I swallow that - even if we count only recent history for which we have reliable metrics, which is necessarily going to exclude anything earlier than, say, 1950.
abductions are as likely to be by family members as not.
So if it is family members, it really doesn’t matter if they are out and about does it?
Can we take a minute to say how something is very fucked up in Texas? People have talked about his before here. Texas is a fucked up state for children. 54 Amber alerts in Texas in 2024. California, Ohio, and North Carolina have the bulk of the rest, but they are like 15 and 16, not 54!
Remember I said Teens. So looking at Amber alerts as a statistic: the VAST bulk of the kids are 0 - 6 years old. For teens (ages 15-17+) there were only 12.
So have you compared the teen rate over time?
So if it is family members, it really doesn’t matter if they are out and about does it?
But yeah, it does, because it’s usually some estranged family member, grabbing the kid while they’re out. It’s not who’s grabbing them, it’s where.
Yeah, Texas is fucked up, in a great many ways. No argument there. It’s interesting reading, isn’t it?
No, I haven’t done an age breakdown. Getting more specific statistics, or culling them out of larger reports is more work than I care to invest in this.
Yes, you have a point about teens. 14 was “young adult” for ages; I’m not always convinced pushing it to 18 has been a wise thing. I kind of think having rites of passage and some more clear interstitial period where we recognize teens as “not children” would result in healthier teens.
and if parents are concerned about their teenager being abducted they could just give them a taser or other weapon and a phone
That makes sense for small kids, but teenagers shouldn’t need an adult holding their hand to the bus stop.
I suspect the real reason some high schools start stupid-early is to make time in the afternoon to accommodate jobs or extracurricular activities. My high school started even earlier than OP’s and kids in other schools would tell me, “At least you get out earlier.” Yeah, I would get out at 1:55 and (if I didn’t have a club or band practice) I’d be so exhausted that I’d promptly go home to nap for several hours. What I would’ve given for a saner schedule.
The problem is that this schedule is literally unhealthy for them. Like, actual health outcome in the long run bad for them. Its fucked up and “parent needs daycare” & “learning schedules and responsibilities” is a terrible justification.
Corporation’s routines*. Has nothing to do with what the billions of parents want. It’s what like 100 people want.
