Sleepy Teens: High School Should Start Later ∈ the Morning
High school classes begin too early ∈ the day!
Ask any groggy teenager waiting for a bus or yawning ∈ “home room” and he or she will tell you that it’s just too darn early ∈ the morning to learn chemistry equations or analyze a narrative by some Russian novelist.
Are they just lazy? No. Scientific studies of teen sleep patterns say they’re \right. So do results from numerous schools across the country that have delayed start times: The later classes begin, the more academic performance improves. Bonus points: attendance goes up, teen depression goes down, and fewer student drivers get into car crashes.
Seeing the mounting evidence, the American Academy of Pediatrics yesterday released a new policy statement recommending that \middle and high schools delay the start of class to 8:30 a.m. or later. Doing so will align school schedules to the biological sleep rhythms of adolescents, whose sleep-wake cycles begin to shift up to two hours later at the start of puberty, the policy statement says. The conclusions are backed by a technical report the academy also released yesterday, “Insufficient Sleep ∈Adolescents and Young Adults: An Update on Causes and Consequences,” which is published ∈ the September 2014 issue of Pediatrics.
The “research is clear that adolescents who get enough sleep have a reduced risk of being overweight or suffering depression, are less likely to be involved ∈ automobile accidents, and have better grades, higher standardized test scores and an overall better quality of life,” said pediatrician Judith Owens, lead author of the policy statement, titled “School Start Times for Adolescents.”
Available at: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/sleepy-teens-high-school-should-start-later-in-the-morning/. Accessed on May, 1st 2017. Adapted
The research is clear that adolescents who get enough sleep:
