And for those kids, particularly teenagers, sleep deprivation can mean failure at school. Which is why schools that pushed their start time back are reporting remarkable improvements. One school in England reported that persistent absenteeism dropped by 27 percent, while a high school in Toronto, Canada, claimed that the 11th-grade math failure rate dropped from 45 percent to 17 percent. Not only that, but kids going to school later say that they're less depressed, and their parents claim that their kids are easier to deal with.
"He's still terrible at art, but at least the cat's alive in this one."
Why Does This Work?
Because of a hormonal switch in the natural body clock, teens are often not sleepy late at night, unlike most adults and small children, so they stay up late. But then we force them to be at school by 7:30 a.m. As a result, most teens are getting something like 6.9 hours of sleep rather than the nine hours they need. That two-hour difference may not sound like much, but it makes a HUGE difference in the classroom. As many as 20 percent of students end up falling asleep in class altogether.
And not because she was trading on the Chinese markets at 3 a.m., the little scamp.