Grab Bag Analysis

Assumptions: Following assumptions have been made by the author as per my assessment and analysis of the article:

• As noted earlier, we assume there are no confounding factor affecting the correlation identified in the article and the studies citied between mental health and sleeplessness.

• The students would sleep during the morning, granted the delayed school time.

• The students would not stay awake longer the previous night to compensate for this time shift the next morning.

• The unmeasured mental illnesses such as anxiety, bipolar disorder, etc. do not lead to suicide/suicidal thoughts.

• This wouldn’t hurt the academic life of a student with decreased time in school.

• The school won’t last longer as opposed to the usual, to give students time for extracurricular and after school activities.

• Since the data was self-reported by the students, we assume that the level of discomfort felt is not an exaggeration or the usual workload but something that has a potential to manifest as a clinical diagnosis.

Fisher’s Assertibility Question: In order to accept the conclusion, I would want to know whether the students would use the time allotted to sleep in the morning or not. Without this question answers, I cannot accept the conclusion.

Implications: The author provides with some implications at the end

of the article after the final conclusion. The author makes a request to the parents (the target audience) to appeal the lawmakers and the district board as well as vote for the ones that are in favor of this intervention. He predicts an active participation on by the community as an implication. If the proposition is approved, the district could start a pilot program in one of the schools and look for its efficacy. If proved effective, the times of schooling could change permanently. Successful propositions see domino effect and the times could change throughout the state or the nation. During the implementation, our educational system could learn new aspects to how to better tackle sleeplessness and mental illnesses among the teenagers. Due to the limitation of space and time, the author doesn’t go into too deep but his assertive hope to see such system running directs us to these implications.
Apart from the mentioned implications, the author doesn’t cover the downside of the program implementation, such as students abusing the hour gained in the morning by staying up too late. This will make the change ineffective. In order for this to be successful, cooperation is the key between the administration and the students. According to my intuition, I don’t believe the students will go to bed at t their regular time and end up not gaining anything out of it. Furthermore, losing half an hour early in the morning might not be made up during the school hours if the school decides to not change its classes schedule and/or dismiss school later. If they do decide to dismiss school early, there is a possibility of the students losing hour or so later in the evening, which is usually allocated to homework, after class and extracurricular activities.
Despite the absence of alternative implications, the author does pursue depth with systematically giving instructions on what should be done with its results. The author doesn’t talk about other (mostly negative) implications of the change, making the article biased and narrow focused. When talking about the implications, he only presents the one that agree with his reasons and conclusions.
Point of view: Throughout the article, the author’s main point of view is the physiological needs that should be met in order to be mentally healthy. He is particularly interested in sleep and its effects on the incidence of mental illness symptoms. He further magnifies this point of view through the “what can our educational system do?” lens. The points of view that are ignored or possibly should have been added are of perception of stress by the students, stressors in the environment, behavioral intervention, access to therapy, promotion of self-help strategy, group therapies, etc. to deal with the growing incidence of suicides and prevalence of depression.
Grab Bag: The author uses the words “sleep” and “rest” as synonyms in one of the reasons where Dr.

Kayla Wahlstrom’s study is presented. The word “sleep” refers to an altered state of consciousness that occurs naturally. On the other hand. The word “rest” refers to a brief period of inactivity, not necessarily the same as the word “sleep”. Hence, when the author uses these two words interchangeably, one can question the accuracy of the research and the relevance of the study. Above alternate explanations and most specifically the connection between later school hours to depression/suicide is omitted. The link itself is very poor and should be claimed

carefully.
Overall, the author is systematic in presenting his reasons for us to accept the conclusion and provides the implications of the change at the end. He also begins and ends with emotional testimonies by the people who are either directly affected or the one who can affect the system. His main setback is the deceiving link that he implying to be a causational one. We cannot accept the author’s conclusion. First, the correlational link needs to be proven concretely and the author would have to answer the Fisher Assertibillity Question for me to accept his conclusion.