Schools Must Change Start Time!
Teens Need to Sleep Late...

School hours should be changed because teens need more sleep! In a farming community everyone had to get up with the sun and go to bed at dark, since there were no electric lights. Our school hours are still set that way. This is wrong. Teens have a natural wake up time of about 9 to 10 AM, after most schools start. Teens sleep odd hours because of puberty and hormones. Teens have a different sleep cycle than adults or younger children, so teens should have a different school schedule too.

Teens would be more awake in school if classes were pushed back an hour or two. A study of 2,200 Ontario high schoolers showed that teens have a natural sleep cycle where they do not fall asleep until after midnight. Not only that, but teens need more sleep than adults. Teens can't really wake up until hours after school begins.

One US study showed that teens, during puberty, produce the sleep hormone, melatonin, at different times of the day than children or adults. This seems to be the main reason teens don't sleep the same hours that their teachers and parents sleep. It is not fair to expect teens to have the same school hours as younger kids.

The current system of early school days may be harmful to teens! The American Psychological Association put the following on the Internet, "Children in the sixth-grade may suffer adverse cognitive, behavioral and emotional consequences due to an increased risk of being chronically sleep deprived..." The group reported that in Israel, 140 students from second through sixth grade were studied. The sixth graders could not fall asleep until an hour after the second graders. The older children reported more "morning drowsiness" than the younger kids. This is because the teens had to get up too early! I say let teens sleep later!

Some may say that teens need to learn to adapt to an adult world where you have to drive to work at 7 AM, so getting to school early will teach teens how to act like adults. But, adults need less sleep than teens! I just think this attitude ignores what we are learning about teens and sleep and is very unfair.

Dr. Sadeh, one of the Israeli scientists, said, "There are increased school demands, the need of children to feel more like adults by having a more active night life and the incentives like late-evening or late-night TV shows and Internet surfing." Since teens' biological clocks don't run on school time, maybe it's time for schools to change their time! Running the schools from 9:30 AM to 2:30 PM would be better for teens. This way schools will become better places for teens to learn.

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