Do you know why the school day is structured as it is? I always assumed it started when Socrates was teaching Plato in his AP Government and Philosophy class at Athens University (then known as Athens Teachers College) in the Grecian year 400 BC.
Not to be confused with Grecian Formula 16, which is a whole different year and a welcome antidote to the dark ages, if you catch my drift. You’ll also remember Plato (serving as Socrates’ TA) taught Aristotle at roughly the same time.
They were all known to hang around the AU Student Union and, in between games of wine pong, hold passionate debates pitting Plato’s devotion to spiritual truth against Aristotle’s more materialist vibe. Fun fact — Plato and Aristotle co-wrote and recorded the original version of “We Are Spirits in the Material World.”
Then Aristotle, (the kind of show-off who gets a 4.8 GPA) went on to tutor Alexander the Great who, before he studied with Aristotle, was known as Alexander the Pretty Good Who is Squandering His Great Potential and Will End Up Working at a Chariot Wash.
But I digress.
Back to school day structure. One prominent theory is that, during the Industrial Age, schools were modeled to mimic the factory life most of students would enter — repeated tasks, working indoors, bells regulating breaks, etc. Alas, as you may be aware, we are not really in the factory training business any more.
So, why do we insist on retaining a model that lost relevance at least 50 years ago? The answer, as is the case with so many archaic and outdated things (daylight savings time, the Electoral College, Larry King) is, hey that’s the way it’s always been done.
Yet, perhaps the way school days are set up is not the best way to support our students, especially those of the high school ilk. I hate to resort to pesky things like science, research and facts, but there is a great deal of data out there that supports the notion that teenagers simply are not geared to learn much of anything before 10 a.m.
From Time.com: “An article published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, asserts that if middle and high school students are allowed to wake up later in the morning, they’ll be more focused during the day, more alert behind the wheel and less likely to be late to (or absent from) school.”
Pause here for your son and/or daughter to scream, “I told you so!”
“The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that teenagers should sleep 8 to 10 hours a night. But according to the CDC, almost 70 percent of high school students report sleeping 7 hours or less on a regular basis.
That’s partially because, as children approach and go through puberty, their brains begin producing the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin on a delayed schedule, making it difficult for them to feel tired before 11 p.m. The researchers wrote, A teenager who goes to bed at 11 p.m. would need to sleep until 7:30 a.m. or later in order to obtain sufficient sleep.”
So it makes sense to start school day later, yes?
It would seem so, but apparently not easy to do. Governor Brown vetoed a bill that would have mandated school days not start before 8:30 a.m. His reasoning was that it is not the government’s job to decide that, but rather it should be up to schools and school districts.
Could we get school districts to agree on something this simple, yet this important? Of course. Right about the same time Rosanne Barr and Oprah Winfrey have a girls’ night out, Mitch McConnell registers a pulse, and Bill Cosby does another Jell-O ad.
Want to improve classroom performance? Perhaps the key is a little reverse psychology. Institute a strict pajamas-only dress code. Insist students show up at least 12 minutes late to first period. Encourage random (and loud) snacking and absolute focus on one’s phone, and sharply rebuke any student who has the audacity to make a salient point about the required reading or homework assignment.
And why stop there? Teachers could demonstrate their hipness (that’s still a thing, right?) by encouraging students to consider what would happen if Shakespeare had to use Instagram instead of that crazy English language thing; if Beethoven had to sample works by Mozart in his symphonies, if Cezanne was limited to using Bitmojis, if the president could only communicate using 140 characters at a time and was required to misspell at least half the words; wait, that reminds me of something …
Let’s get on this people — time to wake up and smell the coffee! But not before 8 a.m. please.
Steven welcomes your comments. You can reach him at [email protected].
