At work at English
Eva Zubevich
Year 8 English
A Speech by Eva Zubevich - Year 8 English 2021.
Stephen Milligan
Teacher - English
Eva demonstrated all of the skills in the criteria for this task and achieved the ‘mastering’ level of proficiency in persuasive writing. Eva chose a unique topic and used evidence particularly well to support the logic of her position on this issue of sleep patterns and incongruous timetables for teenagers.
Eva's speech made me think of my own experience as a sleepy teenager. I finally have an excuse to give my poor old mum for the grief I put her through in getting me to school on time each morning, many moons ago. Thanks Eva!
School Timetables are Detrimental to Students
As the year goes on, school students are repeatedly silently suffering the repercussions of waking up at the crack of dawn. As a student, I for one understand the detrimental effect it can have on your life in and out of the classroom. As a teenager, I can relate to an inadequate sleep schedule. This is why I believe the school day should be pushed back an hour.
Research has clearly stated that teenagers have different sleep needs to adults and missing out on this sleep has ramifications for our mental health. Reputable neurologist Matthew Walker explains that ‘the circadian rhythm of teenagers shifts forward dramatically by one to three hours’1. This is due to their melatonin being released later in the evening causing them to fall asleep at a later time. This means an early 7am wakeup for school would feel closer to a 4am start for adults. 4am is a biologically unreasonable early time to be waking at, especially when it is in preparation to enter a strict environment where your mind has to be put to the test all day. To communicate, behave, and learn while being sleep deprived would be difficult enough for any self-respecting person let alone a teenager. A teenager, who is at ‘the most susceptible phase of life for developing chronic mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and suicidality. Unnecessarily bankrupting the sleep of a teenager could make all the difference in the precarious tipping point between psychological well-ness and a lifelong psychiatric illness’, Walker states. If the school day starts later teenagers will have the opportunity to sleep in, gaining the hour, or three, that they missed in the evening. In the 1960’s scientists performed an experiment on the REM sleep cycle. Rapid Eye Movement sleep is the stage in your sleep cycle where your brain activity increases, speeding up your pulse, breathing and blood pressure. These 90 minutes of REM sleep is when you dream. This test replicated students having to wake up for school and start to learn. It constituted of disturbing the individualsout of REM each time they drifted off to give them math equations to work out while being sleep deprived. After three days of trials the subjects ‘became anxious, moody, and started to hallucinate…they also became paranoid. Only then did scientists realize the rather profound conclusions of the experiment: REM sleep is what stands between rationality and insanity.’ These patients developed what a clinician would best describe as depression, anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia, although days prior they had been healthy individuals that had never faced such conditions. With much information backing the effects lack of sleep has on teenagers, it is obvious that by making such a simple change, the Department of Education could very positively affect the lives of students, teachers, parents and the wider community.
Not only does lack of sleep affect your mental health but it really impacts your ability to learn too. In my previous argument I discussed REM’s influence on our health but not education. Nevertheless, it obviously damages both. Interrupted REM results in a decreased ability to learn and consolidate memory. In the 1980’s a twin study was conducted by Dr Ronald Wilson at Louisville School of Medicine that continues to this day. Hundreds of pairs of twins were routinely assessed from a young age. One twin received much more sleep than the other, and by the age of 10 the impacts were evident. The twin that had continuously obtained more sleep was excelling in their intellectual and educational abilities compared to the other twin2. The twin who had more sleep, achieved higher scores on tests on reading and comprehension, and a more extensive vocabulary then their sibling. By being able to link this to the evidence of sleep improving memory, and memory improving education, the much larger achievements of well slept kids is apparent. Just a children’s education test wouldn’t be sufficient enough evidence to prove that high schools in particular need to push back the day. Fortunately, a high school in Minnesota conducted their own test on the subject. They extended the start of school by an hour and quickly realised the massive impacts on SAT’s in particular (Scholastic Aptitude Tests test students’ general knowledge and critical thinking skills). In the year prior to the later start time, the school’s average SAT score from the top performing students was a 605. The next year the score from the top tier pupils rose to an average of 761. Maths scores also increased from a 683 to 739 in the year after. This small change returned a net SAT profit of a 212 points3. Although this is an American study, it clearly suggests that sleep can impact our education. So, what is the point of holding back students and heavily handicapping and preventing them from success? We are not actually accomplishing anything, and we are failing our kids while neglecting the duty of being an educator after years of effort.
I completely understand that school is setting us up for life. It gives us the knowledge we will need to for time-management and prepares us for going to work at the usual time of 9am. So, would it be counterproductive to let students sleep later in the morning if they won’t be able to get up for work later on? Well to put it simply, when we start working, we will no longer be teenagers! Our circadian rhythms will have clocked back an hour or three, making a 7am wake up, really a 7am wakeup. This means school starting an hour earlier only further prepares us for work. It gives us a better chance to get the education we need to make a living.
In conclusion, there are countless reasons why school starting earlier can be beneficial to everyone. So how to make this dream a reality? Students need to create awareness about how they’re feeling. Parents need to push their schools further. Teachers, whose jobs it is to build student success, need to notify their coordinator about these detrimental effects on childrens’ learning and wellbeing. At the end of the day, everyone can agree to reaching the same goal, so it’s about making the path the simplest it can be, for the best result.
Bibliography
- All quotations in this paragraph from Walker, M. (2017) Why We Sleep. Penguin Books.
- Walker, M. (2017) Why We Sleep. Penguin Books.
- Walker, M. (2017) Why We Sleep. Penguin Books.
All studies are from Walker, M. (2017) Why We Sleep. Penguin Books.