Rise and Shine
Our society is structured as if we are still an agrarian economy, and I'm really tired of it, or maybe just really tired. For most of us, there are no cows to milk at dawn, and electricity has been invented and is widely utilized. Then why must work, school, and so many things start/happen so early?Yes, there are "morning people" (so I've heard- could be just a rumor), but not that many of them, thankfully. They say things like "Oh, but it's so peaceful in the morning, I can get so much done." It's peaceful because the rest of us are trying to get some sleep, but you are disturbing that by trying to get things done- and then being unproductive millstones about our necks when the afternoon arrives. And then at night we have to go home early because they're so tired.
The data is clear about worker and especially student productivity in the morning, yet we continue to structure our work and school days as though we are all farmers. Even the calendar- summer vacation!- is structured for the benefit of farming. It turns out that most of don't have to tend the crops in the summer, and instead the 14+ weeks off result in bored kids who have forgotten a great deal of the previous year's learning when they arrive back in school around Labor Day.
Please free us from the tyranny of the morning people, or at least keep them and their cheery chirping away from us.
posted by Dead Man Blogging at
10:29 PM
3 Comments:
I still find the 14 week summer vacation to be absolutely ludicrous. The typical grade school year in the United States is 180 days, or roughly 1440 hours of instruction assuming an eight hour day. I think it's pretty much a fact that no high school student learns anything following lunch, so it seems like a few weeks of summer vacation could easily be siphoned into shortening the average school day by an hour or two.
I find it ridiculous that high school students- kids, essentially- are stuck at a 40 hour a week job where they're generally made to feel alienated and miserable in the hands of overworked and out of touch faculty. This is accompanied by another 40 hours of required homework assignments, a built in expectation that students should participate in extracurricular activities, participate in community service, and required layers upon layers of standardized tests to take outside of school hours. This leaves approximately seventeen minutes a month for the poor saps to take up a hobby, much less discover themselves or figure out what they want to actually do for the rest of their lives. God help them if they're not socially acclimated either.
Don't get me started on the absolutely backwards way the public schools were scheduled in Attleboro either- elementary school starts at 9:30 and high school starts at about 7. Is there anyone less awake at 6 in the morning than a high school student, and is there anyone more awake at 6 in the morning than a 7 year old kid?
Great points, though I never thought that a high school student could learn anything before noon. Also, I wonder whether keeping kids busy is mostly just to keep them out of trouble. Love the last paragraph.
Also, I wonder whether keeping kids busy is mostly just to keep them out of trouble.
This is probably the intent, though I gotta wonder if it has the intended results. I don't think I can count the number of people I know who turned to drugs or alcohol in their high school years, and I wouldn't be shocked if it's because it was a fast and convenient way to deal with the stress of classes.
I just remember the bureaucracy of high school, where even if you were really learning something you wanted to learn and you were being productive, it was also IMPERATIVE THAT YOU LEARN CALCULUS RIGHT NOW. I dislike the notion that a devoted student should have to divert themselves from something they want to learn for the sake of meeting some arbitrary standard for Mathematics or English. I was pretty good at being a generalist in high school, and I really felt for the people who busted themselves up trying to pass math, English, history, or science classes while neglecting classes that catered to their talents. I had a few truly talented friends who had a knack for film making and 3D animation who just barely squeezed out a diploma because of math requirements- which, pardon my french, is crap and a fast way to dampen any enthusiasm for education. Maybe I'm naive for thinking that many high school students really do want to learn things that interest them.
At least when this kind of thing comes up at the college level, you're only taking classes for maybe 2-4 hours a day for three or four days a week, instead of 8 hours for five days a week. That certainly takes the sting out of being condescended to by a German professor for having the gall to not magically understand Biology as a fourth year CIS major.
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