Persuasive+Essay-Katherine+V

Sleep Deprived Katherine VB

The start time for many middle school and high schools should be pushed back by an hour so the students can be fully rested and can be aware of what they are learning in the bright early morning. Research shows that kids should at least be getting 9.2 hours of sleep each night and that waking up to early can lead to mental breakdowns, poor school performance, emotional difficulties, and accidents while driving. Most kids wake up in the early morning, hit their alarm clocks and wallow out of bed. This is a colossal problem for many students because their brains really don’t wake up until about nine in the morning. I think that the time should be pushed back because it allows kids to realize what they are doing and if they don’t get enough sleep; their bodies will be at school while their brains are still sleeping on their pillow.

The most common problem is that kids these days are spending an immense amount of time on electronics instead of going to bed at the right time. Which leads to not being able to concentrate in school and falling asleep in class. Twitter, Facebook, and being on your phone are the top distractions to not being able to fall asleep. Also in my opinion, I think that even if the kids are on their cell phones and don’t get to bed at the right time, then they at least would get an extra forty minutes to rest and concentrate on the important things in life. When kids are not getting enough sleep, research shows that it leads to stress in a certain area which could be vital to their academic performance.

A copious amount of studies have shown that teenagers who started one hour later and obtained fifty more minutes of sleep than teenagers who started earlier, did better academically, socially, and emotionally more stable. The University of Minnesota switched their school time from 7:15 to 8:40 am and reported that the students were getting slightly higher grades and they had less depressive feelings in class and outside of the classroom. Almost half of the students who began at 7:15 were "pathologically sleeping" and none of them could concentrate at the time of day. Some schools argue that adjusting school schedules is way too expensive and complicated. Another survey was taken of 3,000 kids in 1998. They concluded that students getting C's, D's, and F's obtained 25 minutes less of sleep and had gone to bed 40 minutes later then the kids getting A's and B's on their tests. Many people are now trying to educate parents and children on the importance of sleep, just like they are trying to encourage people about nutrition and exercise. The research has spurred further investigations into why middle school and high school students need extra sleep.

Most people say, "Well she woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” when somebody is grumpy or looking like they are excluding the world. But, mainly it is because people aren't getting a good enough sleep to function. On any given school day, teenagers wake up at 5 am or 6 am, just to try and get up to prepare for the day they were either looking forward to or just dreading it. In adults, such meager sleep allowances are known to affect day-to-day functions. Also, Cornell's University psychologist James B. Mass comments, "Once teenagers hit puberty, they are all like walking zombies from not getting enough sleep." The reason why they are like walking zombies is that the child is too busy with everything and ignores the important reason on why they need to sleep. Declining from an average of ten hours a night in elementary school to less than 7.5 hours of sleep by the age sixteen. When the majority of teenagers don’t sleep on the weekdays, they take a couple of hours to sleep in on the weekends. It is an absurd problem that can lead to a poorer quality of sleep, which might affect the people’s skills academically and emotionally when they get older.

That is why I think that the school time for many middle and high schools should be pushed back. Researchers are trying to find a conclusion to the un-controllable issue that could effect many teens on if they might get into college or not. Getting enough sleep is very important to being healthy and having a strong body to handle everything that kids are going through at this age. If schools change their start time from early in the morning to at least a decent start time, their grades should improve by 20%. One possibility that some people believe in is that the brains sensitivity to light changes during adolescence and that causes kids not to sleep. But in my opinion, kids are sleep deprived because of the start time in the school and that is why it should be pushed back.