Yin Sau Lau/Edge columnist
High school students always go to school early, but is it good for them? Waking up too early may cause a lot of problems, affecting their health and studies. Schools should not start too early in the morning.
Canadian schools mostly start from around 8:30 to 9:00 am, this provides more time for students to prepare for school in the morning and have more sleep. However, schools start early in some countries. In the United States, the average high school start time is 8:00 am in China, the schools usually start at 7:30 am, some schools even start at 7 am, which means students need to wake up before 6 am.
It is a bad idea to force students to wake up early to school, most students who go to school early don’t get enough sleep at night. According to CDC Healthy Schools, teenagers aged 13-18 years should have 8-10 hours of sleep every day. When students do not have enough sleep, they have trouble with thinking and concentration, they cannot focus on the lessons which leads to a bad performance in school.
Late school start times could help teenagers have a healthier lifestyle. Many teenagers skip their breakfast to get to school on time, which has affected their health. Breakfast is important for a student; a good breakfast provides energy in the day and starts the metabolism. Students who eat breakfast in the morning have a healthier body and better memory. Most of the time, students miss their breakfast just to sleep for 15 more minutes. If school starts later, most students will have enough time to eat their breakfast.
Students have a better mood at a school that starts later in the morning. If school starts early, students wake up in the dark every day, which makes them feel like they are waking up at night and don’t get much sleep. When students wake up after the sun rises, it can help regulate the body’s biological clock, they have less depression, less sleepiness, and have a better mood during the school day.
Some parents may worry that delaying school time will also delay the bedtime of their children, causing bad sleeping habits and short sleeping hours. However, most teenagers have difficulties falling asleep before 11 pm because they experience a natural shift in circadian rhythm. Some of them have a lot of homework and extracurricular activities after school so they cannot sleep early. Delaying teenagers’ wake-up time is an efficient way to increase their sleeping hours.
There is a lot of research supporting that later school start times help solve teenagers sleeping problems. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that high schools should begin later than 8:30 a.m. They propose that delaying school start times has potential benefits to students in physical and mental health, safety, and academic achievement. Therefore, schools that start too early should delay their start time.
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