Persuasive Essay: Should Later School Start Time?

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Recommended: Pros and cons of later school start times

Everyone knows it's going to a be a long day when they're running low on sleep. One night of inadequate sleep can be easily overcome, but many teenagers are dealing with tiredness daily. Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers: the Story of Success, states "Children, we like to believe, should have time to play and dream and sleep" (530). Gladwell presents the idea that adolescents need more time allotted into their schedules for plenty of sleep as well as some fun. However, most teens have an abundance of schoolwork and extracurricular activities making this is impossible. Even though it may not be easy, delaying school start times would be a tremendous step to help America's teens. Today's high school students in the United States are facing exhaustion, low grades, and poor health due to early school start times.
The majority of teenage students do not get the recommended amount of sleep suggested. Ironically, this hectic time in life filled with both school and social demands is when a person needs the most sleep. Students age 13-18 need at least 9 hours of sleep to avoid daytime sleepiness and feel awake at school. However, an article of the National Sleep Foundation, Backgrounder: Later School Start Times, shares the statistic that by the end of high school, students average 7 hours of sleep or less per night. The teen sleep cycle naturally lasts from around 11:00 pm to 8:00 am, and it is difficult to break. With activities and family obligations, many students cannot get to bed that early. Even the ones who make it by that time are unable to fall asleep until 11:00 pm because that is when their body becomes sleepy. Many teens have to get up around 6:30-7:00 am to get ready for school cutting their cycle short. This problem cou...

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...of sleep for a while can lead some to have a horrible outlook on life and cause them to look at everything pessimistically. In the article Backgrounder: Later School Start Times, for the National Sleep Foundation, Mary Carskadon states "Given that the primary focus of education is to maximize human potential, then a new task is before us to ensure that the conditions in which learning take place address the very biology of our learners." Carskadon is absolutely correct. School is designed for students to become the best that they can be and at this time they are unable to do that due to early school start times. High school students need the extra sleep time to be able to build themselves into who they want to be. Therefore, school districts in America need to rethink their school hours and realize that many of them are not doing what is best for today's students.

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