The Pros And Cons Of School Start Times

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Students, everyday, focus on the way to improve their schoolwork and to an extent, get better grades. Some try the hardest they can to focus, studying and showing the effort, while others just give up, waiting for this “dreadful and tiring” fifteen years to be over. They might seem like opposites but they both have another disadvantage to their school years, the start times. The obvious schedule of a schooled kid is to wake up and go to school, but when they have to do this at as early as 5 in the morning, it becomes a more challenging and problematic start for the rest of the day. There are other factors, but without proper sleep, problems, both with school and health, start to occur. It is when one’s health and future is on the line, that we …show more content…

Kristen Knutson, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, says, “On school days adolescents are obtaining less sleep than they are thought to need, and the factor with the biggest impact is school start times.” Starting school at least an hour later would enable most teens to get at least an extra half hour of sleep each night, leading to an additional two and a half hours of sleep per week. Students would then be healthier and less sleep deprived, yet many think of why the students can’t just go to bed earlier. The answer is not that simple though. Adolescent bodies are in stage in their life where a different sleep phase takes place. This means that teen bodies are designed to both go to sleep and wake up later. When schools starts so early, it is hard for them to push themselves through the day. They need to get about 9.5 hours of sleep nightly, but based on the study taken in Western Middle School, the average teen gets only seven