Before the sun fully rises, yawning children slowly drag their feet into a school building, forced to learn while they can barely keep their eyes open. Attempting to survive on a cup of coffee, students slump in their seats and try to not doze off in the first period. This raises the question; should school start later for students? There are definitely plenty of pros and cons to the proposal, but overall, students would benefit more from school starting at a later time.
According to the Sleep Foundation, high school students should get around 8-10 hours of sleep per night. high school students should get around 8-10 hours of sleep per night. However, the average teenager goes to sleep after 11 pm. Most American schools start around 8 am, so the average teenager does not get a good 10 hours of sleep. Along with this, some students have extracurricular activities that run late into the evening in addition to massive amounts of homework. This can result in teens not going to bed until much later at night.
During the second semester of the 2019-2020 school year, I would be at Northwood from 7:30 am to 9 pm on most days due to all of the extracurriculars I participated in at the time. This hindered my sleep schedule, and as a result, I was less able to focus in my classes, and I would doze off on many occasions. Other students I knew were in the same clubs as I, so it is likely that they may experienced changes to their sleep cycle as well.
I personally enjoy doing my daily activities in the day when the sun is out. I feel more awake and focused later in the day. Even when I get two hours of sleep the night before, I feel at least a little more awake when there was daylight than my first few classes. According to The Baltimore Sun, teenagers’ brains do not start to function until 10 or 11 in the morning – which explains why I’d be so sluggish in my first period class!
Critics of a later start to the school day say that extracurricular activities and sports would begin too late in the day. A possible solution to this would be to move practices to the morning before school starts. After all, it is scientifically proven that physical activity wakes your brain up!
There are many reasons that a later start time for school would benefit students, and there can always be adjustments made to schedules to accommodate this. If we committed to a later start time, young people could live a healthier life, and have a better state of mind.
