Task II Essay: Why School should start later?

Essay by therelstnigah23Junior High, 9th gradeA+, November 2006

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It has come to my attention that you have been considering starting school earlier. Recent studies have been conducted that prove whether this is a good idea or not. Scientists have confirmed that earlier class schedules will not help students. It is also a known fact by students that they are already asked to wake up early enough, but waking up even earlier is just ridiculous. Starting school earlier in the day to accommodate an expanded schedule does make sense, but this will yield only negative effects.

Brown University studied the way adolescent brains function, one researcher said that it is not smart to start classes so early in the morning. "It is not the student that is lazy or the fact that his or her parent did not enforce a bedtime. It is just that their sleepyhead students cannot handle the early hour." It has been verified that adolescent sleep patterns change during puberty, most adolescents prefer to stay up late and wake up late.

It is not their fault that their bodies are constantly changing. Researchers call this the "delayed phase preference" It may not even be this preference that make students so sleepy, Amy R. Wolfson an assistant professor, said that the study showed that most students weren't staying up later they were going to sleep around the same time as before. The sleep deficit is caused because they have to wake up earlier, which puts them at a significant risk of school time sleepiness. On average it only took tenth graders eight point four minutes to fall asleep. The sleepier students took from five minutes to one minute to enter REM sleep. REM sleep is the last stage of sleep, for students to fall asleep this quickly is astonishing. This proves that starting school earlier...