ShutterstockA new study has confirmed that there’s a reason we all hated those 9am classes – school starts way too early in the morning, and stops kids from getting all the sleep they need.
The study, published in the American Academy of Pediatrics, found that the average school in the U.S. starts at 8:03am, and that doesn’t allow for the recommended 8 hours and 30 minutes of sleep per night.
You see, kids and teenagers actually require more than the 8 hours of sleep an adult needs – an excuse which we’ve found parents buy less and less once you hit your twenties.
As a result of the findings, the AAP are urging schools to start no earlier than 8:30am in order to allow teens, who are biologically programmed to stay up later at night than adults, to get the recommended amount of forty winks each night.
Getty83% of U.S. schools start classes before 8:30am at the moment, and school systems have debated whether to delay start times for years, with many parents pointing out that their teens have trouble waking up early enough to get to school by 7:30am, let alone be awake enough to learn.
Speaking to USA Today, physician M. Safwan Badr, a past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, said:
It makes absolutely no sense. You’re asking kids to learn math at a time their brains are not even awake.
However, don’t expect things to change any time soon – school officials argue that starting classes later would be a “logistical nightmare”, as it’d make it more difficult to schedule after-school activities, especially when travel is required for sporting events.
