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Alyssa Ajiz

Roxanne S. Dewey

English 101

12/1/2022

The Early Bird Does Not Get the Worm

In a study done in "The impact of school daily schedule on adolescent sleep," high school

students were asked to keep journals recording their sleep and wake times. At a certain point the

students started to lose up to 120 minutes of sleep, but when did this shift occur? The students

first began to lose sleep in August when school started up again. Teenagers across the United

States miss out on adequate sleep every year due to high schools starting too early. Although

some people believe that schools starting early makes the most sense for parents, schools

beginning before 8:30 a.m. only take into account parents' work schedules and actively work

against their students by causing sleep deprivation, poor academic performance, and increased

risks for mental illnesses.

The first reason why high schools starting as early as they do is unreasonable is that it

causes sleep deprivation its start times contradicts teenage students' circadian rhythms. In the

article, “Rise and Shine: The Effect of School Start Times on Academic Performance from

Childhood through Puberty,” Heissel, Jennifer finds that as children go through puberty and their

body changes, so does their inner sleep schedule. They start to stay up later at night than they did

when they were younger. This is caused by a delay in their nocturnal melatonin secretions.

Though teens are going through a natural part of puberty, the U.S. school system does not

account for this and works against it. The schools choose to work around parent work times and
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after-school activities. This sleep deprivation causes a decrease in attention and alertness levels

which then affects academic performance (Heissel). As shown, changes in teenagers' circadian

rhythms are no fault of their own, yet high schools continue to start early, ignoring this fact,

causing students to get less than the recommended 8 hours of sleep needed to function.

On the other hand, opponents to the idea of high schools starting before 8:30 a.m. would

argue that it is the student's responsibility to sleep earlier to avoid sleep deprivation since they

are coming into adulthood and that the start and end times should work for parents since they

transport the students. This position forgets the fact that due to puberty delaying their nocturnal

melatonin secretions, adolescents naturally start to sleep later when they become teens. Adults

and younger children have an easier time waking up earlier since they do not experience this

delay. The argument also ignores that high schools provide transportation, in the form of buses,

for the exact reason of parents not being able to take their children to and from school and that

many high school students drive themselves. The schools must work around their students, not

around the parents of those students since school is mandatory for all U.S. adolescents. Yet,

American high schools refuse this fact which causes sleep deprivation and its consequences.

When students are sleep deprived, the precision of their cognitive abilities is skewed. In

the article, “New insights into the cognitive effects of sleep deprivation by decomposition of a

cognitive throughput task,” Honn finds that subjects with TSD, or Total-Sleep-Deprivation,

performed worse than the control group on the cognitive tests given, it was not due to being

slower, but rather being unstable. This happened because sleep deprivation affects 3 underlying

processes instead of the predicted one. The drop in cognitive ability caused by sleep deprivation

translates to poor academic performance in school. Mental illnesses are also linked with sleep

deprivation like unstable cognitive behaviors. In the article, “Effects of sleep deprivation on
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serum cortisol level and mental health in servicemen,” Hong-tao finds that between the military,

control, and sleep-deprived groups they tested, the sleep-deprived group had higher levels of

mania and personality disorders while there were not much of a difference between the military

and control groups. Comparably, the military and deprivation groups had similar levels of mental

illnesses such as psychosis and depression, with the control group having the least (Hong-Tao).

The sleep deprivation caused by school leads to not only low test scores but also potential mental

illnesses.

The results show that American high schools starting early in the morning negatively

affect teenage students. From natural bodily processes that come with puberty being unaccounted

for school start times, to sleep deprivation as a result of this ignorance. The consequences of the

loss of sleep are unstable cognitive behaviors, leading to poor academic performance, and an

increased risk of mental illnesses such as psychosis, depression, and mania. As it stands, high

schools across the United States are working against their students with their start times,

therefore schools should start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. to allow students to have adequate sleep

to accommodate their circadian rhythms, improve their grades, and lower their potential for

mental illnesses.
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Works Cited

Hansen, Martha, et al. "The impact of school daily schedule on adolescent sleep." Pediatrics, vol.

115, no. 6, June 2005, pp. 1555+. Gale Academic OneFile,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/A133080599/AONE?

u=mcc_glendale&sid=summon&xid=cc0d71bc. Accessed 1 Dec. 2022.

HEISSEL, J. A.; NORRIS, S. Rise and Shine: The Effect of School Start Times on Academic

Performance from Childhood through Puberty. Journal of Human Resources, [s. l.], v. 53,

n. 4, p. 957–992, 2018. DOI 10.3368/jhr.53.4.0815-7346R1. Disponível em:

https://search-ebscohost-com.libproxy.gc.maricopa.edu/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=buh&AN=132629225&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Acesso em: 10 nov.

2022.

Hong-tao Song, Xin-yang Sun, Ting-shu Yang, Li-yi Zhang, Jia-lin Yang, Jing Bai,

Effects of sleep deprivation on serum cortisol level and mental health in servicemen,

International Journal of Psychophysiology,

Volume 96, Issue 3, 2015, Pages 169-175, ISSN 0167-8760,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.04.008.

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167876015001567)

Honn, Kimberly A., et al. "New insights into the cognitive effects of sleep deprivation by

decomposition of a cognitive throughput task." SLEEP, vol. 43, no. 7, July 2020, pp.

1S+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A655103927/AONE?

u=mcc_glendale&sid=summon&xid=ddc482cc.