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Sleep Deprivation Lowers School Achievement In Children
New submitter josedu writes:"Sleep deprivation is a great, hidden problem that afflicts a great percentage of children in affluent countries. About 73% of 9- and 10-year-old children in the U.S. are sleep deprived, as are 80% of 13- and 14-year-olds. The new study thinks this is linked to the increased access to devices such as mobile phones and laptops late at night. One of the researchers put it very simply: 'Our data show that across countries internationally, on average, children who have more sleep achieve higher in maths, science and reading.' This disruption is also causing schools to dumb-down their instruction to accomodate the reduced capacity of these kids. Thus, even the kids who are getting enough sleep will suffer. The long-term impact of sleep deprivation on nationwide education levels is enormous."
Duh!
I'd wager ambient urban noise levels have increased tremendously over the last while as well. Given increasingly shoddy construction, antisocial behaviour from the party set and general vehicular activity you'd have to be living in a rural area to get a decent night's sleep in most places. It's a very serious business with major health implications for children and adults.
They managed to reproduce results fifteen or twenty years, and offer a stupid interpretation. Not bad!
The sleep-deprivation thing is well known, and not new. However, there's nothing tying it to "mobile devices". Rather, there's strong evidence that teenagers tend to have a circadian rhythm which favors being up later and not getting up that early. Schools have historically shoved their schedules extra-early so that extracurricular events like sports can occur before the sun goes down, but after school. Last time I heard about this, a school district had tried simply moving the high school day an hour later, and gotten a very noticable improvement in basically every measure of achievement available to them.
Now that I'm an adult, I sleep until I feel like getting up, and if I'm up a bit late, fine. I pretty much wake up between 11 and noon, and I work "late" most nights... But I get a heck of a lot more done, and a lot better, than I did when I was trying to work 9-5.
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The beauty of it is that they will grow up to have kids of their own and will do an even sorrier job of raising them than their parents did with them. It's like watching water flow down a drain. Thank God for immigration. Without it the US would be doomed. In particular the oriental immigrants seem to do well due no doubt to actually having a solid family oriented culture. Here in the US most kids seemed to be raised by electronic devices.
...kids, is that many parents don't put their kids to sleep the same way they did when I was a child (70's/80's.)
My kids go to sleep between 7:30PM and 8:30PM depending upon their ages (ranging from 5-9.)
At 9PM at night during the week I'll hear quite a lot of our neighbors' kids still playing outside, much less getting ready for bed.
School starts VERY early here as well (kids have to be at school by 7:30AM.)
Now, some of these kids who are staying up later are doing quite well in school, so who knows. It's just different from when I was a kid and it seemed to be a pervasive adult conspiracy to put all children to bed early...
My parents made me go to bed at 7:30 till I was in middle school. It was evil. I didn't need that much sleep, and the sun was still shining most the time. It would take me hours to fall asleep. If that help my grades, I don't know. I was the kid who always had the "can't pay attention" in class. But later, in middle school and beyond, when I wasn't going to bed at 7:30 (it was then more 9-10ish) I got B+ grades without trying.
Be seeing you...
The book 'the end of homework' explained this pretty well. Research has found that school starts an hour before children are typically awake. School starts so early so that there can be long afternoons of sports practice. Prioritizing learning over sports would thus lead to improved learning.
I recall Junior year of high school. Biology and Geometry were my first two classes, and I would fall asleep during the latter due to late nights exploring the nascent Interweb. Late at night there are no parents nagging you, you can go to sleep whenever you want, it's quiet and you can think or do whatever you want. And, ya know, less sleep means more free time, of which high schoolers feel quickly slipping away as their homework load increases.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
When the problem predates the technology (or at least the wide adoption of the technology), it's pretty unlikely that the technology is the primary problem. It may be aggravating things, but the root cause is somewhere else.
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Actually I read once that teenagers are better "profiled" to perform during the mid day and hence they should really be sleeping much later at night and into the early morning, class for teenagers should be starting at noon not 9am. Well I'm not going to argue a good night sleep is important, it is very important, we need to be setting class times that revolve more around the natural clock of the body and not what works best for the adults. If science can show that 12 - 7pm works better for teenagers then I think we should move class times to work in that area. It would also be worth figuring out when the best natural class time is children, I have a problem when we base sleep patterns for the teachers rather then the students.
This link from the BBC talks about it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7932950.stm
So I think the solution, at least for teenagers is to move the class time back so they can best perform when biologically they're ready to.
Alcohol is no solution, don't be ridiculous.
Pay some attention in chemistry class, it's a distillate.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm sorry, what Government Agency needs to pay attention to this and what should they do about it?
Answer: None.
The only reason 9 and 10 year old children are sleep deprived is because of dumb shit parents who don't give a fuck about their kids.
And the only people who can do anything about it is the dumb shit parents.
The only reason 9 and 10 year old children are sleep deprived is because of dumb shit parents who don't give a fuck about their kids.
And the only people who can do anything about it is the dumb shit parents.
Thank GOD we have someone here who knows the answer and no doubt or exceptions!
I'm intrigued that you know everything - do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
So first, Every sleep child is apparently allowed to stay up as late as he or she wants because those parents don't "give a fuck"?
Not a single school aged child has ever had to staye up late because a parent was out working and they had to baby sit. I babysat my little sister while my parents were working late. Making ends meet. Not because they didn't "give a fuck". Lot's of children get to do this. Not everything is as it was in the Brady Bunch.
Even my son while in high school was a part of the generation that got homework dumped on them. sometimes he'd be up until 11 or 12 at night doing it. In your world we made him do that homework because4 we didn't "give a fuck".
Kind sir, you are a person who only knows one answer and spouts it as if it is from God's lips to your ears, You are not anywhere near as smart as you think you are, you have a very narrow, and I suspect politically influnced viewpoint - although I doubt that you "give a fuck".
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
while it might be "duh", government agencies, et al, won't respond to anecdotal stories about the effects of sleep deprivation. They need data to back it.
There is plenty of data. This not even close to the first study that has reached the same conclusion. More sleep means more learning. Kids' sleep patterns are determined by daylight, so "going to bed early" doesn't work. What does work is shifting the school hours later in the day. The kids go to bed at the same time, but sleep extra in the morning. Schools that have done this not only have better test scores, but also have fewer pregnancies, less drug use, and fewer accidents. Kids are most likely to smoke pot and screw right after school, while their parents are still at work and the house is empty. When the school day is shifted later in the day, they don't have as much time for that. Citation (sorry about the pdf): Sleep, Safety, Drugs, Teen Pregnancy and other reasons to change school times
Citation (sorry about the pdf)
Here is the same citation, but html: Early Morning Classes, Sleepy Students, and Risky Behavior.
More citations are listed at the bottom of the article.
Quick summary: Starting and ending the school day early is really dumb.