Sleep Deprivation Lowers School Achievement In Children 272
New submitter josedu writes:"Sleep deprivation is a great, hidden problem that afflicts a great percentage of children in affluent countries. About 73% of 9- and 10-year-old children in the U.S. are sleep deprived, as are 80% of 13- and 14-year-olds. The new study thinks this is linked to the increased access to devices such as mobile phones and laptops late at night. One of the researchers put it very simply: 'Our data show that across countries internationally, on average, children who have more sleep achieve higher in maths, science and reading.' This disruption is also causing schools to dumb-down their instruction to accomodate the reduced capacity of these kids. Thus, even the kids who are getting enough sleep will suffer. The long-term impact of sleep deprivation on nationwide education levels is enormous."
Ambient noise (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd wager ambient urban noise levels have increased tremendously over the last while as well. Given increasingly shoddy construction, antisocial behaviour from the party set and general vehicular activity you'd have to be living in a rural area to get a decent night's sleep in most places. It's a very serious business with major health implications for children and adults.
Re:So? Public schools are garbage. (Score:2, Interesting)
Did you even read the summary? Kids are getting dumber because of social/cultural/technological/material reasons. The schools are getting dumber to accommodate the kids who are getting dumber, and the problem is a downward self-propagating spiral.
Re: Let me be the first to say... (Score:1, Interesting)
"Go to sleep earlier"
And... Look at that, zero sleep-deprived children helped by your shitty judgmental non-advice.
God forbid the overgrown children pretending to be authority figures do anything to actually help the actual children in their care who are trying to learn.
Learn to deal with problems by dwalin
Start School Later (Score:5, Interesting)
The book 'the end of homework' explained this pretty well. Research has found that school starts an hour before children are typically awake. School starts so early so that there can be long afternoons of sports practice. Prioritizing learning over sports would thus lead to improved learning.
I recall Junior year of high school. Biology and Geometry were my first two classes, and I would fall asleep during the latter due to late nights exploring the nascent Interweb. Late at night there are no parents nagging you, you can go to sleep whenever you want, it's quiet and you can think or do whatever you want. And, ya know, less sleep means more free time, of which high schoolers feel quickly slipping away as their homework load increases.
Re:duh research (Score:2, Interesting)
There are many other "duh" topics, but no one ever bothers to actually study it. And for the ones who do, regular folks aren't surprised at the answer and wonder why the govt. is funding such "obvious" research.
What *I* wonder is why the gov't doesn't err on the side of "duh, this probably is true, let's account for that in our planning".
If you want to actually fix this situation, wrest control away from the morning-people who set the school schedules. Not everyone actually wants to get up shortly after dawn, for many people this is simply unnatural and goes against their own sleep rhythm, but everyone is forced to do this by various schools and employers.
When you are not naturally a morning person, you have great difficulty going to bed early enough to get adequate sleep because you simply don't feel tired at all early in the evening. It would be like asking an early riser to be awake and alert at 2 in the morning. They could make themselves do that, but it will predictably hurt their performance. Speaking of "duh", I got one for you: when you force people by authority to do something that is quite unnatural for them, they won't perform as well as when you work *with* their nature instead of against it.
You could address the problem from the other end of the candle by taking a hard look at the amount of homework assigned to students, which is sometimes hours a day, and eliminating any of it that is not strictly necessary. The default standpoint should be that a lot of homework means the teachers failed to transmit the information during the 7-8 hours per day the students were with them, unless there is good reason to believe otherwise.