Why go to bed early?

Alison Getsloff
Blog # 8
pages 266-317
Rigorous Researcher

I have always been very intrigued by how schools start their school day differently around the country, and why?  But, I had always thought it had to do with the school bus schedule and how there just wasn't enough school buses to transport each kid at the same time. I think scheduling and buses do have some sort of impact, but I learned more on page 284,

"Research reports that, in general, adolescents need nine hours and fifteen minutes of sleep a night. Without this adequate amount of sleep, the brain never has a chance to move through the deep REM sleep cycles necessary for proper growth, healthy development and learning. Earlier starting times, overscheduled lives, inordinate amounts of homework, and employment are cutting down on this sleep." 


Michelle Kipke, director of academy's Board of Children, Youth, and Families, put it bluntly: "Sleep experts feel strongly that high school timings are out of sync with the natural circadian rhythms of adolescents." The research of "Boys and Girls learn differently" corroborates with these findings. "Teachers constantly tell us how difficult it is to teach teens in the early morning, how out-of-rhythm so many teens become for a few hours in the morning, and how difficult the already-tough teaching areas become (as with the verbals for many boys and the high math and physics for many girls)."


William Dement, director of the Sleep Disorders Center of Standford University and a sleep researcher for forty-eight years, says clearly: "Since the amount of sleep a student gets correlates strongly with academic performance and social behavior, it is important for high schools to have later start times." 


Detractors from this brain-based research might say, "It's not the school's fault that the kid doesn't sleep enough. The parents should make them go to bed earlier." The "Boys and Girls learn differently"'s response: "We must realize that the adolescent stays up later, by nature, than he or she did earlier in life."


An innovation schools can try regarding time-of-day scheduling involves timing certain subjects throughout the school day. "Spatial learning is, for instance, easier when the testosterone level is high, as at mid-morning. This is a good time for math learning. Verbal learning can improve with estrogen increases. Though these are less diurnally cyclic than testosterone, teachers can certainly watch when girls' minds seem 'electric' with learning; they may be seeing estrogen surges in the girls' bodies." 


All information is from: "Boys and Girls Learn Differently"