I had to take bus at 6:00 in high school...
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
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I was an incredibly angsty teenager, mad at the world and hostile to just about everyone by default. Apathetic, grumpy, and uninterested in physical activity or the things I liked as a preteen.
After having a baby and getting very little sleep for 6 months I recognized some of my old patterns. Turns out, it wasn't just part of being a teen, I was chronically sleep deprived. I was up at 6am most days back then, when I would sleep until 1pm on weekends. I think a lot of teens are unfairly characterized as angry and defiant when they're operating on half or a quarter of the sleep they need.
Ah yes, I remember those accusations of grumpiness. It’s the classic “MY issues are because of the circumstances around me. YOUR issues are because that’s just who you are.” The lack of empathy so many adults express is truly concerning.
The way I see it, you're probably freest from the ages one to four Around the age of five you're shipped away for your body to be stored They promise education, but really they give you tests and scores And they predictin' prison population by who scoring the lowest
So much of the education system is centered on child abuse and grooming children to accept abuse as adults
Also it's affordable daycare for kids so parents can work.
That's the real reason it starts early: so two working parents can get the kids out the door and then still have time to get to work themselves
So it's a cycle of abuse then
I'd describe it more as systemic.
https://genius.com/Run-the-jewels-walking-in-the-snow-lyrics
Knew I'd heard this somewhere. RTJ is just 💋 🤌
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My mental health radically improved my senior year when I was ahead on credits and could skip the first block of classes each morning.
the timings for school and its length were not dictated by health needs nor education needs.
it was chosen to match parents work schedule, and to aclimatize children to factory work.
so its not out of ignorance of the childs well-being, but indifference to it
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You can't cause delinquency if you're too busy getting 8 hours of sleep.
And god forbid your circadian rhythm doesn't align and you fall asleep in class.
You can get referred for a drug test because only high people fall asleep during the day.
I have always struggled with sleep onset insomnia. In an ideal world, I'd probably sleep from around 5 am until noon, and my best working hours are from 7pm until 11pm, without fail. Even when I am exhausted from forcing myself to get up early for an extended period, I'll still perk up in the late evening, and struggle to sleep before 3am. This combined awfully with school.
I remember once that I was so exhausted, I literally fell asleep while walking, and I didn't wake up when I hit the floor. What's striking in hindsight is how little sympathy there was. I wasn't accused of being a drug user, but there were plenty of comments about laziness, which is absurd given that I was obviously severely exhausted.
A friend was the primary carer for a disabled relative, and this required her to get up at 5am each day, and to get up during the night to administer medication. She would often fall asleep in class, and she frequently got detention for this (which she would then often need to skip, to ensure she could get home in time to pick up siblings from school). Speaking with her years later, she lamented that if teachers had been more sympathetic and actually tried to understand what was going on here, it might've led to there being formal support to care for her relative. The amount of work she was doing was absurd for anyone, let alone a 13 year old, but she didn't know this, let alone that there were support channels to help young carers like her.
You can get referred for a drug test because only high people fall asleep during the day.
Let me guess: Murica’ ?
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We've known this for decades, but almost no districts will make the changes necessary. The youngest grades (K-4 or 5) should be the first schools to start in the morning, and the HS the last.
What happens when that is suggested is people balk at either sports programs needing to be cut or the argument that the older siblings need to be out of school to babysit the younger siblings.
Yep, exactly.
Almost 30 years now we've known that shifting around the school schedule by roughly a max of 2 hours would result in significantly improved learning across the board, for basically 0 cost... and we don't do it.
America is a scam.
School is conditioning for work. They need you sleep-deprived because if you have any extra energy you might use it to analyze your situation and attempt to improve it.
well modern public schools are basically glorified daycares.
awful start time policies being the norm never changes despite the massive mountain of evidence it should because parents typically need to go into work in the morning. society collectively decided shafting kids’ sleep schedules by starting school before the already absurdly early 9-5 was the best we could do on that compromise.
and to an extent, that’s true, because we’d have to reform a lot more than just schools to effectively implement this change. there just isn’t the will in the public sphere to push this.
In my 30s and I'm still mad about it.
Especially considering how much time at school was an absolute waste.
The real reason is to accomodate for parents' routines. You need the kid in a place where someone can watch them for you by the time you leave for work (or not long after). Plus yeah they gotta learn to follow schedules and have responsibilities and such. Not saying I think it's a perfect system, I too hated getting off bed early in the morning.
i disagree. my elementary school started later and thats the age when parents really need to be more present. and as a kid i had no issue getting up early vs as a teen. they should just flip it. teens on a bus route, or hell even witj friends with a car, are way more capable of getting themselves to school
"Should" is doing some heavy lifting here.
Sleep patterns start changing around puberty. Young kids tend to get up earlier, naturally; teenage biorhythms are tuned to stay up later, and sleep late.
But we don't have a society where it's safe to let teens run around by themselves, except for some rural communities, so schedules are based - as GP says - around parent's schedules. And because of workplace demands, whether it's a reasonable requirement because the job demands an in-person presence like the service sector, or because of idiotic, arbitrary in-office policies, that usually means parents need to have their kids in school before 8, or 8:30 if they're lucky, so they can be at their desks by the standard 9am.
Little kids, this is less of an issue, but it really fucks with teenager's biorhythms, because they're designed to be sleeping until 10 and going to sleep at midnight at that age.
There's a ton of studies about this, and there's been a lot of work by K-12 to figure out how to accommodate a balance; and some companies even have policies allowing for flex time to help, but on average - as usual - Corporate America fucks it up.
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One reason for the early starts for high schools is that by staggering the start times for high school, middle school, and elementary school, school districts can use fewer buses and fewer drivers. If all the schools started at the same (more reasonable) time, you'd need three times as many buses and drivers and each driver would only get one or two hours a day (and thus would find something else to do, making the existing shortage of drivers even worse). The district I drive for has a transportation budget of about $3 million a year - we would not be able to afford $9 million a year and still afford our administrators' enormous salaries.
If you just started all schools later by an hour, the elementary school kids would start at 9:30 AM which would not work out very well, either.
If I remember correctly most of the suggestions to account for that actually has elementary and middle schoolers start before high schoolers since high schoolers are the ones that need the most sleep while also struggling the most to go to sleep early
East Asian countries solve this by having the kids take public transit; just run a few extra buses and trains on the routes kids take, then you don't need dedicated vehicles that sit idle all day.
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It's nuts to me that American schools start so early. Ours had first bell around 8:30. By high school is was closer to nine.
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Yea that only happens because capitalism needs your parents to slave their ass off which can only happen if their kids go to school earlier than their already early starting job
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High school teacher here. Obviously, I don't speak for everyone, but many of us wish school would start at a more reasonable time for students. We don't enjoy trying to teach first (and second, and third) period classes where many students are either absent or asleep. And of course, we care about the students and know it would be much healthier for them to sleep in. School can start around 10:00, thanks. But, as others have pointed out, the schedule is not dictated by what is best for the students.
Edit: some of the students in the schools I work at have to get up around 5:00. The often wait for 30+ minutes for buses to come (but that is a "the district doesn't care about the students" issue, not a start time issue).
for years my mom forced us to go.to bed at 8pm ( I only.rebel.when I was about 12). All my childhood. Mind you we didn't had phones so we would be there on the bed in the dark THINKING. And that's why I have anxiety.
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Nothing lowkey about it. Shit's fucked up.
I was in my late 20s when I realised just how much stress morning stuff is causing me, and had caused me for two decades.
(my solution was just to come to the office at 11 most days & now I also sleep more hours on average, but that's is a separate issue for me)
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41582-025-01106-6
Abstract: "Aspects of modern society, such as artificial lighting and rigid schedules, create ‘social jetlag’ — a mismatch between biological chronotypes and societal demands. This circadian misalignment particularly affects evening chronotypes, leading to sleep deprivation, mental health issues and physical disorders. Flexible schedules and environmental modifications could restore natural sleep patterns and improve well-being."
Every year I tell timetabling "don't inflict 9am classes on my students, it provably punishes poorer students (commute costs) and drives poor engagement", every year they ignore me.
Many of your teachers hated morning classes too.
In middle school, I took what we called 0 period PE so that I could do a double band period (symphonic and jazz) and that shit started at 640. Thankfully that was only 2 years, and these days I hate waking up before 730.
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I remember in high school we had before school weight lifting which started so early. So start with that, do a full day of class, after school sports and then homework before doing it again. Pretty crazy how many things were crammed in a day.
Yep. Ours went from 0730 or so to 3:30. But it was a somewhat rural area, so if you took the bus you’d have to be on the bus by 0640-45, which means getting up at 0600 or so, and not getting home until after 4 pm. Then there was homework…
E: just looked at my former school’s sked. Started at 07:25AM.
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Just abuse in general. Descartes died because he had to wake up early.
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