Psych

“Later School Start Time Benefit Supported by More Evidence” Emily Nosek

After just learning about the sleep cycle in class I wanted to read more into it. I came across an article on changing school times to later to let kids get extra sleep and instantly became interested in it. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan suggested that having kids start school later might have an impact on improving their grades. A radio station in Washington D.C. discussed his suggestion and a journalist contacted Duncan and wanted to know more about his idea. Eventually this topic led on to ABC news for everyone to hear about it. Duncan researched sleep duration, sleep quality and cognitive and academic performance. In the article Duncan also mentioned a study performed by Chinese researchers. In their study they took 20,778 students in 5th and 6th grade then they selected 818 students to study their sleep schedule for two years. They wanted to see if it related to their academic performance. Children in urban areas got less sleep than those who live in rural areas. Higher family income and higher educational level of parents was related to shorter sleep duration. The outcome was that children who had more daytime sleepiness had lower attention, learning motivation, and academic achievement. Moreover, children who slept fewer than 9 hours a night had poorer academic achievement. Children with lower sleep had poorer academic progress. Researchers were also saying that students would just stay up later if they started school later. This goes into the REM sleep and whether or not kids can actually fall into a deep sleep and it depends if they have sleep apnea or narcolepsy. I agree with this article that school times should change and students should be getting more sleep. Also, I do see the point where kids would stay up later if they knew they could sleep in. However in high school I would have been all for this but now that I am in college, I still feel exhausted even though I’m...