Why Should Schools Start Later

 Why Should Schools Start Later

    Teens don't get enough sleep. It isn't due to social media, hormones, or their social lives. It's due to the fact that school starts too early to align with teenagers' internal clocks. Wendy Troxel, a sleep researcher talks about why starting school is detrimental to the health of teens. When hitting puberty, your biological clock sets back the time that your body naturally releases melatonin, a natural hormone that tells your body when to fall asleep. In teenagers, melatonin isn't released until roughly 11 pm. This is about 2 hours later than when adults and young children start to release melatonin. Troxel says in her TedTalk, " This means waking a teenager up at 6 am is the biological equivalent of waking an adult up at 4 am." 

    Not getting enough sleep on a regular basis can lead to chronic sleep deprivation. Chronic sleep deprivation doesn't only affect academics, it can have a lasting effect on multiple different parts of your life. Teenagers who fall into chronic sleep deprivation can suffer from a number of different difficulties that make it hard to function. These include difficulty concentrating, mentally drifting off in class, staying away from school, or taking more days off due to being tired. Then there are the effects that don't just affect school. These include depression, impaired memory, poor decision making, slower reflexes, moodiness, and aggression. 

Credit: Youtube

    The time that students wake up for school is affecting a large part of their lives, in and out of school. Across the world, many schools run their times differently. This can be because of their culture or just how they decided to conduct their school day. For example, in Spain, their school days go from 9am to 12. Then they have an up to 3-hour break for lunch and siesta, their biggest meal of the day. Then they go back to school from 3 to 5. This is just in general, schools can be different depending on location and what time of the year it is. 

    In Spain, they take the PISA ( Program for International Student Assessment), but on average they do worse than their neighboring countries. Spain has on average more class time than the EU and the OECD. But comparing countries that have close to the same amount of class hours such as, Sweden, Norway, and Japan, they all are ranked upwards of the best academically. 

    This here has proven that more class or instructional time isn't always the key to having better grades. It is how the time is used and how much information people get and retain within that time. While Spain may not be the highest-ranking academically, in 2019 they were ranked the Happiest Country while the U.S. was ranked 19th. I think that pushing school hours back will allow American students to be happier, and get more sleep. If students get more sleep in general it can positively affect their mental and physical health, their attitude, and their academics as well. 

Works Cited

Angloinfo Spain. "The Spanish School Schedule." Angloinfo Spain, 2018. Accessed 19 Jan. 2021.

BetterHealth Channel. "Teenagers and sleep." BetterHealth Channel, 2020. Accessed 13 Jan. 2021.

Radu, Sinita. "These Are the World's Happiest Countries." U.S. News, 20 Mar. 2019. Accessed 19 Jan. 2021.

Silio, Elisa. "Bad education? Why more class time has not improved academic results in Spain." El Pais, 13 Sept. 2019. Accessed 19 Jan. 2021.

Troxel, Wendy. "Why schools should start later for teens." Youtube.com, Youtube, 9 June 2017. Accessed 13 Jan. 2021.