Persuasive Essay On Why School Should Start Later

It is a well known fact that teenagers in general need more sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation: “[teenage sleep] is as important as the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat. It can even help you to eat better and manage stress of being a teen.” When schools start as early as 7 o’clock, it puts students health at risk. Adolescents already have a natural shift in their internal body clock, or circadian rhythm when it comes to sleep. Puberty allows this to happen, causing a “sleep phase delay” of about two hours. When teens can't fall asleep until late and school starts so early, they aren't getting nearly enough sleep. Lack of such, according to CDC, makes the individual

Another factor in this whole mess is a sleep inducing chemical called melatonin. This chemical is what tells your brain that its time to take a rest so it doesn’t go into over drive. More specifically, this chemical starts to go to work at around 10 P.M., and wears off at around 8 A.M. This means that there are still significant amounts of this chemical in a teens mind at 7 or even 6 o’clock in the morning. His, or her, whole morning is then reduced to a blur of events and their is no point in teaching them anything that early because many times they don’t even remembers it! Eventually, when they reach adulthood, this changes and it starts to merge into their evolved circadian clock, the internal sleeping mechanism that dictates sleeping patterns. Simply, it means they will be able to wake up earlier, and have to sleep less.

All children need sleep and want sleep during the weekdays and that is very difficult. It has been noticed that older students and younger

As a person gets older, the amount of sleep needed each night gets less. Teenagers are an exception to that rule. The years from 15 to 18 packs on a whole new level of stress. Exams, homework, after school clubs, jobs, college, relationships, it’s all running through our heads at every second of every day. With a jammed packed schedule, hormones running wild, and teachers loading up the work, we could use some slack. If that could come in the form of a better night’s sleep, we’d be eternally grateful.

This also falls in the school systems hand to where they set an unreasonable time causing kids to wake up earlier. Getting to bed at a disobliging time after doing hours of school, homework, and other activities is very hard when you also want to be active in the things you do because many still have a social life and want to spend time with family or friends. These many hours of going to school and then returning home to continue doing schoolwork is rough. While also trying your best, it is very hard to maintain sleep and stay aware in your

Some people may ask, “Why don’t teenagers just go to bed earlier, instead of having school later?” This is a common concern for parents and teachers as well. The fact is, adolescents have different sleeping patterns than adults do. Throughout the day, teenagers are most tired during the morning, and most alert at night (Cerve 4). “The body’s internal clock shifts after puberty, making it

As a result of a changing body and mind, adolescent sleep cycles have different needs than those of adults or younger children. As a matter of fact, Biologically, sleep patterns shift toward later times for both sleeping and waking during adolescence -- meaning it is natural to not be able to fall asleep before 11:00 pm (“Teens”). In addition to biological change in sleep patterns, teenagers also tend to have eccentric sleep cycles. Obtaining less than healthy hours of sleep during the school week and then catching up on their sleep on the weekends. Most teenagers during the school week, do not get the suggested amount of sleep. In fact, according to a recent poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, 80% of teenagers do not get the suggested amount of sleep of 9 hours on school nights (“School Start”). With changing bodies and minds, along with an increased amount of schoolwork and extracurricular activities, teenagers need more sleep than children of a younger age. Experts believe that moving back the start time of school for high school students will improve grades, test scores, and the overall health and personality of many students.

School start times play a very big role in a student’s overall development, especially when they aren’t getting enough sleep because of it. An important factor to consider for a student’s development is the act of sleeping; that a lack of it can cause serious problems to the students’ growing body. According to research done with Brown University’s Julie Boergers, the author of the letter “Benefits of later school start times”, the amount of sleep that adolescents need ranges from 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep. Only 17 percent of these students

There may be some of you out there who simply believe, “Why don’t they just go to sleep earlier?” The truth is, that the biological clock in adolescents can change on average two hours from middle school into high school, which means that they are supposed to go to sleep at 11 and wake up at around 8 (“Teens Need”). This time frame is not taken into account in high school start times, which suggest adolescents going to sleep at 9 and waking up at 6. The time suggested by the schools goes against a high schooler 's biological clock, leaving most teens going to sleep around 11 and waking up at an average time of 5:30; a mere 6 ½ hours of sleep is achieved with this time frame, 3 hours less than what has been recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (Maloney-Dunn). The American Academy of Pediatrics suggest a high school start time of 8:30 or later

As children age and move from the first decade of life into the second the temptations to stay up later increases. The preference to stay up later is nearly universal among teenagers in all cultures and has even been observed in other mammals suggesting a biological basis. At the same time teenagers are beginning to stay up later and their recommended amount of daily sleep (8-10 hours) remains unchanged. Teenagers are unable to sleep in later as school start time determines when they must wakeup in the morning. This has led to an epidemic of chronically sleep deprived teenagers with only a small number of teenagers actually receiving

"Sleep deprivation among american teenagers is an american epidemic," says Wendy Troxel, a sleep researcher. What she is trying to say is that the fact that kids all over america lose the sleep they need is a widespread problem. She even has a entire ‘Ted Talk’ saying how bad sleep is for children's learning and developing brains, and how school is responsible for many of those problems. Kids need to have sleep to function and get good grades.

First of all the early start times mess with a teenagers inner clocks. It’s difficult for teens to go the bed before ten thirty and wake up before nine o'clock. Messing with these clocks can cause sleeping problems later “we’re fighting biology.” says Anne Wheaton, an epidemiologist at the center for disease control. Kids are also loaded with a plethora of homework, causing them to go to bed later. Between these two thing alone can cause sleep deprivation.

It is estimated that only 15 percent actually get these amounts (Kids Suffer from Sleep Deprivation). This is particularly important for students who wish to do well in school. Dr. Carl Hunt, the director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research, is spearheading a sleep campaign. Her philosophy is, “Sleep well, do well.” This is something that shouldn’t be taken to lightly. Sleep problems effect about 70 million Americans of all ages. Teens often have problems with daytime sleepiness. The old idea of early to bed, early to rise isn’t necessarily the best answer. Society is simply asking to much of teens (Sleep experts to teens). A combination of school, work, study and leisure, leaves very little time left for sleep. Being deprived of sleep definitely has an effect on how well students do in school and may be putting their health at risk. College students who stay up all night to study for a test or write a big paper that’s due often have no choice because of the pressures to do well and succeed, but at what price do they pay?

Research has shown that teenagers experience a change in their internal sleep clocks so that waking up early and going to sleep early are difficult. Most parents would disagree with this because their schedule at work would have to change because they are used to getting kids to school at eight o’clock in the morning, The day would be an absolute mess, and we couldn’t really do any extracurricular activities without affecting school time. I disagree that we don’t get enough sleep for if a student goes to bed at eleven o’clock.

Many individuals, especially adolescents, do not function well early in the morning. “…many teenagers are going to school with their brains essentially in sleep mode” (Kaufman, 2001). This makes it difficult to retain information and in return use the information they have learned later on according to Robert Gerson, a physician and parent (Heinen, 1996). There is a reasonable explanation for why adolescents need the sleep they need at the times in which they need it, or do it for that matter. “Their circadian rhythms, determined by release of the hormone melatonin and other factors, were telling them to stay up later (even if their homework was finished and the day’s chores complete) and to get up later. On basic biological level, many had no more control over that circadian switch than they did over growing facial hair or breasts” (Kaufman, 2001).