Column: Thoughts from Dr. Joe: Research on giving teens more sleep may be solid but is a later school start the magic bullet?
The science supporting a return to later school start times is apparently clear, and last week La Cañada reveled in the school board’s proclamation to initiate a late start time for La Cañada High. Apparently, the statistics show that kids will do better across the board. Have we found the magic bullet?
Before I launch into my opinion, a disclaimer for those who might not be aware of this fact: my wife Kaitzer is a member of the La Cañada Unified School District Governing Board. Her stance on the subject is her own and doesn’t sway me either way. And vice versa.
I’ve been writing “Thoughts from Dr. Joe” for 14 or maybe 15 years; I can’t remember. Perhaps if Mount Saint Michael’s start time had been 8:30 instead of 7:30 a.m., I’d remember. I might even have learned to spell.
Nevertheless, throughout high school, I was typically up at 5 a.m. for five miles of roadwork through the dreary streets of the Bronx prepping for the Golden Gloves. After, I’d go to the deli for chores, then walk to school. Yet the world is different today. I understand that, and we have a duty to relent to progressive thought.
If you’ve read me over the years, you know that I’m Old School and am typically ambivalent about a perspective whose variables do not account for the quintessence of the individual. Socrates told us that our cognition is only part of the equation and yet we are mortals with a spiritual and social side. Educators seem to bask in the sexy variables such as SAT and AP scores and the mean GPA. They are measurable, and of course they are important, but the higher lessons of philosophy tell us that emotional and spiritual development are germane to an encompassing life. OK, let them sleep an extra 45 minutes, but make sure that both juniors and seniors become intimate with Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations.” The test of being in tune with the world is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and realize the connectivity of knowledge.
According to the Academy of Pediatrics, the science supporting a return to later school start times is clear and sending sleep-deprived teenagers onto the streets as early as 5:30 a.m. is unhealthy, unsafe and counterproductive. The academy also explains that in puberty, the body clocks of teens push optimal sleep time forward. Most teenagers simply can’t fall asleep before 11 p.m. When dawn rolls around, they haven’t gotten close to the 8½ to 9½ hours of sleep their still-growing brains and bodies need. Moreover, the academy finds that inadequate sleep negatively impacts important brain functions essential to learning processes. It is also associated with higher rates of obesity and depression, lower levels of motivation and attentiveness, and increased rates of traffic accidents.
I’m skeptical of the antidote of late start times. If we can control all variables and make them consistent across the board, then the antidote is indeed a magic bullet. But when my girls were in high school late-start Tuesdays meant they could stay up at night and binge-watch TV. It was a wash.
I’ve read the research and, for the most part, it is solid. But throughout, I never read one word about the psychological concepts of accommodation and adaptation, initially proposed by Jean Piaget, a cognitive development theorist. Accommodation is the essence of adaptation, as expressed by Desmond Morris’ “Naked Ape.” It necessitates our ability to adapt to circumstance. There’s more than poetics to the mantra of the Marine Corps, “Adapt and overcome.”
Throughout high school, regardless of training each day at dawn and prepping for the ultimate fight during my senior year, I did very well. It was never my GPA or the academic rigor I pursued that provided opportunity. It was the resilience that I developed as a kid: accommodating, adapting and overcoming.
Late start time, let’s do it. But blindly following those who lead with the banner of research is not the magic bullet. The quintessence of an individual is far too complicated for simple solutions.
JOE PUGLIA is a practicing counselor, a retired professor of education and a former officer in the Marines. Reach him at doctorjoe@ymail.com. Visit his website at doctorjoe.us.
