Why Summer Should be Shorter
By the title I bet you’re thinking, “Um, Brianna, why would we want to delimit our time enjoying summer?” and I understand where you’re coming from. I absolutely love summer too; and now in spite of school starting in a few days, I thought it was was a good time to talk about this.
Everyone has gone to school at some point in their life. If you continued your schooling, you would know that school is tiring. Not just because of the mental work, that’s just a part of it, but students just aren’t getting enough sleep in general. The National Sleep Foundation suggests that teens get 8-10 hours of sleep per night. This ensures the best functioning abilities. One study showed that only 15% of students got 8.5 hours of sleep on school nights. What about the other 85%? That’s a lot of people who aren’t getting enough sleep.
When you’re sleep deprived there are many negatives: lower GPA, an impaired ability to learn and comprehend in and outside of the classroom, aggressive behavior, skin problems including acne, an increased number of automotive accidents (due to “drowsy driving”), decreased performance in athletics, depression, and anxiety to name a few.
So why not just go to bed earlier?
Problem solved then, right? Wrong.
Of course the first way to solve the sleep deprivation problem IS to go to bed earlier, but the majority of students cannot. Between managing school work, studying, seasonal/year-round sports, extra curricular activities, and physical hours spent in school, there just isn't enough time in one day to do all that and get 8+ hours of sleep.
Here’s my idea to solve this:
I believe schools should start later in the day (at approximately 9 am) and end at the same times. The end time for school shouldn’t change because most of the time, sports start directly after school--the only available field or rink time. Same with other activities students are enrolled in.
Having schools start later in the day and end at the same time would not give the mandatory number of hours needed for schools; but what if the school year went longer to make up for it?
It is very well possible to do it like that. Also, due to this shorter time in school per day, class periods would be shorter and would have more of the class periods in a year to make up for it.
Then you would have had all the school hours and feel well-rested throughout the school year. I could sacrifice some of my summer to make the school year more pleasant. Could you?
Let me know your opinions below
Would you sacrifice some of your summer for a more pleasant school year?
Or do you love summer too much?
How do you think the school year would be if it was changed to this?
Resources I used on student sleep deprovision:
Picture rights to Michael Appleton for New York Time. See original here:
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Have a nice rest of your day!