<story><title>Schools Are Slow to Learn That Sleep Deprivation Hits Teenagers Hardest</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/upshot/schools-are-slow-to-learn-that-sleep-deprivation-hits-teenagers-hardest.html?ribbon-ad-idx=6&amp;rref=upshot&amp;module=Ribbon&amp;version=context&amp;region=Header&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=The%20Upshot&amp;pgtype=article&amp;_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sgentle</author><text>I predict this will be a difficult sell, for the reasons pg outlined in &amp;quot;Why Nerds are Unpopular&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&amp;#x2F;nerds.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&amp;#x2F;nerds.html&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend.&lt;p&gt;Schools are government-subsidised daycare first, educational institutions second, which is the reason they often fail at teaching students but rarely fail at keeping them in place.&lt;p&gt;From that perspective, why would you change a child&amp;#x27;s school hours to anything less compatible with their parents&amp;#x27; work hours? If anything, I would expect the trend to be towards longer hours at school, perhaps by more tightly integrating after-school activities.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>superuser2</author><text>Except we&amp;#x27;re not talking about people who need babysitting, but people who &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; babysitters. High school students are perfectly capable of waking up and getting ready for the day after their parents have left the house.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no good reason for high school hours and parents work hours to be coupled, unless it is necessary for a parent to drive the kids to school on their way to work (i.e. because the bus is too slow and would require waking up hours earlier).&lt;p&gt;In which case the actual problem has nothing to do with education policy, and everything to do with the parents&amp;#x27; decision to live in sprawl.</text></comment>
<story><title>Schools Are Slow to Learn That Sleep Deprivation Hits Teenagers Hardest</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/upshot/schools-are-slow-to-learn-that-sleep-deprivation-hits-teenagers-hardest.html?ribbon-ad-idx=6&amp;rref=upshot&amp;module=Ribbon&amp;version=context&amp;region=Header&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=The%20Upshot&amp;pgtype=article&amp;_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sgentle</author><text>I predict this will be a difficult sell, for the reasons pg outlined in &amp;quot;Why Nerds are Unpopular&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&amp;#x2F;nerds.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&amp;#x2F;nerds.html&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend.&lt;p&gt;Schools are government-subsidised daycare first, educational institutions second, which is the reason they often fail at teaching students but rarely fail at keeping them in place.&lt;p&gt;From that perspective, why would you change a child&amp;#x27;s school hours to anything less compatible with their parents&amp;#x27; work hours? If anything, I would expect the trend to be towards longer hours at school, perhaps by more tightly integrating after-school activities.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aab0</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s also the much-cited football problem: if high schools ended at a more reasonable hour like 3PM or 3:30PM, this causes problems for football coaches, who might see their after-school practices running to 6PM or something.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m reminded of how my school district carefully made sure that the austerity or budget-freeze budgets which happened when voters failed to approve their preferred budgets always just happened to not have enough funding for football...</text></comment>