Exhaustion in high schools has become an epidemic. In 2009, writing for the journal, Developmental Neuroscience, researchers commented, “Sleep deprivation among adolescents is epidemic”. Why? Because high schoolers everyday say the same thing at least once, “I’m tired,” and it shows, but the students are not to blame. In fact, the blame is put on the school system, for expecting teenagers to live a a life during the week against how they are biologically designed to. Melatonin is a hormone produced by the body that pressures the body to sleep. For teenagers this hormone is actively produced approximately between of the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. This means that teenagers attending their first class at school at around 7:00 a.m. should be sleeping, not taking a quiz or writing a five paragraph essay, and it shows. Schools start the school day for teenagers unnecessarily early, and the students are feeling the harsh effects of that decision. Early school start times need to be later because of the negative effects the start time has on a student’s mental health, academic performance, and physical health.
After hours and hours of homework and barely getting five hours of sleep, most teens are not the picture of friendliness in the morning. In fact, they are the opposite and are usually in a bad mood. They are tired, lethargic, and want to do nothing but sleep at 7:00 a.m, talking to their peers or staying positive is not even something they would consider because mental health and sleep come hand in hand. The more sleep you get the better mood a person will be in. “Subjects who were limited to only 4.5 hours of sleep a night for one week reported feeling more stressed, angry, sad, and mentally exhausted. When the subjects resumed normal sleep, they reported a dramatic improvement in mood,” said researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, something that almost everyone has experienced first hand when comparing sleeping on weekdays versus weekends. Students going to school and trying to learn before they are biologically supposed to is the equivalent of a businessman/woman trying to sit through a six hour work day full of lectures and board meetings without any coffee. Unpleasantness is only one dialed down adjective to describe most sleep deprived teens in the morning during school. Early school start times need to be later because of the unnecessary effects the start time has on a teenagers mental health.
A student’s academic performance is reliant on sleep. Without sleep a student cannot learn, and with the teenagers around the U.S. staying up late doing homework and playing in sports, how can they can any solid sleep? They can’t, and academic performances are reflecting that. “No getting enough sleep may result in problems with attention, memory, decision-making, organization, and creativity, all of which are clearly important for success in school,” said Mindell & Owens, ((Clinical Guide to Pediatric Sleep: Diagnosis and Management of Sleep Problems (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2nd ed, 2010) p. 258)), a statistic that every high school student has experienced at multiple times during the school year. A student is up all night studying for a test first block at 7:00am, which is way too early to be learning or to be tested, and does bad on the test because everything the student studied for that night cannot be recalled because of the sleep deprivation that student feels. In a 1998 survey of more than 3,000 high-school students, for example, psychologists Amy R. Wolfson, PhD, of the College of the Holy Cross, and Mary A. Carskadon, PhD, of Brown University Medical School, found that, “Students who reported that they were getting C's, D's and F's in school obtained about 25 minutes less sleep and went to bed about 40 minutes later than students who reported they were getting A's and B’s.” A study done by Wahlstrom (2002) further supports the correlation because they, “found that [not just grades but] attendance rates improved [as well], continuous enrollment remained the same or increased, grades showed slight improvement, and students reported bedtimes similar to students in schools that did not change start times when obtaining one more hour sleep on school nights,” once a later school start time was introduced. Professor of Neurology and Director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center, Dr. Mark Mahowald, adds that “Not a single excuse we’ve heard relates to education. None of the excuses have the word ‘education’ in them. We should send kids to high school in a condition that promotes learning rather interfering with it.” Early school start times are ridiculously early and need to be changed because of the harsh effects the start time is having on teenagers’ academic performance.
"Almost all teen-agers, as they reach puberty, become walking zombies because they are getting far too little sleep," says Cornell University psychologist James B. Maas, PhD, one of the nation's leading sleep experts on teen sleep deprivation, and thus creates a major safety and health concern. “Adolescent sleep systems appear to become more vulnerable to stress at a time when social turmoil and difficulties are often increasing,” says Wise, Hopkin, & Garland, ((Handbook of Aviation Human Factors (CRC Press 2nd ed. 2009) p. 18-3))which is caused by stress primarily from school whether it is studying for a test or completing an assignment. Students need that extra 45 minutes or so of sleep so that they can recover that portion of sleep that they barely do get that is corrupted by stress. Stress from school and waking up early to be on time itself is a factor on an adolescence’s health, Wise, Hopkin, & Garland adds saying, “Prenatal development, infancy, childhood and adolescence are times of increased vulnerability to stressors. The presence of stressors during these critical periods can have prolonged effects, such as sustained cacostasis (defective homeostatis, dyshomeostatis, distress) that can last the entire lifetime of an individual.” Safety however is even a bigger concern. School districts in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1999, delayed start times for high school students county-wide to 8:30 a.m. and, “the average crash rates for teen drivers in the county study in the 2 years after the change in school start time dropped 16.5%, compared with the 2 years prior to the change, whereas teen crash rates for the rest of the stated increased 7.8% over the same time period.” Researchers concluded that “allowing adolescents to sleep more on school nights by delaying the start of school not only results in them sleeping more, but also may have a measurable positive effect on their driving safety”. John Cline, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, added on saying, “Given the danger posed to young people from car accidents this is a strong reason in itself to change school start times.” School start times need to be changed because they are posing an issue of health and safety among teenagers.
Changing school starts time is an obvious matter than needs to be addressed by the school districts, and as far as many researchers are concerned, has obstacles that can absolutely be easily overcome. The obstacle of transportation can be overcome by flipping schedules with the elementary school children. Elementary school children can wake up much easier than high school students, primarily because they don’t have the type of homework or participate in a sport yet that creates a need for them to go to bed late. The elementary school children can wake up early, and unlike teenagers, can still be fully rested and healthy. Also, unlike elementary school children, high schoolers are fit to be home alone while elementary school children cannot. By flipping the schedules schools could eliminate morning C.A.R.E.S and parents could get to work earlier knowing their young children are in school. The early dismissal times that young children would have would be solved by the already existing afternoon C.A.R.E.S programs. Conflicts with after school sports is another major issue that can also be comply solved. First of all, many students report that games and practices do not take place for them until sometime after 3:00 p.m. anyways, but if practice usually start earlier due to daylight, Brookings Institute economists suggest schools “consider installing lights for athletic fields that allow students to practice later in the day.” For example, Ann Arbor Public Schools estimated that it, “Costed roughly $110,000 to put up lights for an athletic field, and $2,500 to operate the lights annually,” and that, “This investment certainly seems worthwhile compared with the estimated $17,500 per student benefit of later start times.” “Many who oppose changing school start times cite the disruption of extracurricular activities as a prohibiting factor. Some school boards have successfully implemented a start time change without disrupting extracurricular activities – and, ironically, without having to schedule after-school activities before school – simply by scheduling events later.” (Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 1998b). My solution to the sleep deprivation caused by early school times is simple. Schools need to delay the start of school by at least one hour so that teens can get adequate sleep to function properly at school. School start times need to be later, and there is no obstacle that cannot be overcome in order to give the adolescents of our country a healthier, safer, and better quality life.
Works Cited
"A. Academic Performance." The Impact of School Start Times on Adolescent Health and Academic Performance. School Start Time/ Wordpress, n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014. <http://schoolstarttime.org/early-school-start-times/academic-performance/>.
Carpenter, Siri. "Sleep Deprivation May Be Undermining Teen Health." Http://www.apa.org. American Psychological Association, n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014. <http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct01/sleepteen.aspx>.
Mindell, Dr., Owens, Dr., Lippincott Williams, and Wilkins. "Clinical Guide to Pediatric Sleep: Diagnosis and Management of Sleep Problems." Clinical Guide to Pediatric Sleep: Diagnosis and Management of Sleep Problems 2 (2010): 258+. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.
"School Start Times." South Orangetown Central School District, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. <http://www.socsd.org>.
"UMinn. Study: School Start Times Affect Grades, Health." KSTP.com. News Center Five, n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014. <http://kstp.com/article/stories/s3359710.shtml>.
Wise, Hopkin, & Garland. "Handbook on Aviation Human Factors." Handbook on Aviation Human Factors 2 (2009): 18+. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.
"School Start Times." School Start Times. Orange County Central School District, n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2014. <http://www.socsd.org/pdfs/schoolstarttimes.pdf>.
Works Cited for Pictures
http://www.okwassup.com/2014/09/teens-let-them-sleep.html
http://diabetic-supplies-online.com/blog/diabetes-news/teenagers-lacking-sleep-at-risk-of-type-2-diabetes/
http://7hillscanvass.org/survey-reveals-significant-student-stress/
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