Why School Should Start Later

Have you ever felt like if you just had one extra hour of sleep you would be able to function better in school? Lack of sleep to our teenage brain is a big deal; less sleep can limit our brain development. Our bodies naturally wake up later, we are more alert then. We should delay our first hour to get that extra hour of sleep. The government is starting to notice that teens need more sleep to concentrate in school, so they are working on making laws and bills to get us that extra hour of needed sleep. We teenagers should be allowed an extra hour of sleep. Research has shown that even with an extra hour of sleep our performance is better throughout the school day!

Teens need as much sleep as young children need; teenagers have different brain biology than children and adults. Sleep deprived teenagers display lower brain activity while working than they do rested. More activity comes from the prefrontal cortex, which helps coordinate attention and memory, and the temporal cortex, which contributes to listening and reading comprehension, when well rested. Sleep deprivation also reduces the supply of cortisone and growth hormone that regulate appetite. It is a proven fact that fatigue causes more than one-hundred thousand traffic accidents each year. Adequate sleep contributes to brain development, memory circuit growth, and replenishing the neurotransmitters and endorphins, needed to maximize healthy emotions, mood, attention, memory and thinking. Such sleep defects may interfere with brain development and increase the chance that a teen will develop attention defect disorder and other cognitive problems. Sleep deprivation may also lead to risky decision making and behavior, higher levels of stress, anxiety and depres...

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...month long break to keep us healthy so we can go learn more the next year.

Teenagers need more sleep to function in school; many studies have proven that more sleep helps us learn better and that our teen brain works significantly different than adults. Studies have shown that the teen’s brain biology is different; these studies conclude that if schools want ready students, they need to be well rested. With not enough sleep, teens are in danger of mental and physical health problems. Teens are more likely to drop out of school because they are not motivated to do their best because they are so sleep deprived to focus on school work. If our public school allows us even at least thirty minutes of extra sleep, we will be able to keep up with our biological internal clock thus being able to concentrate more, making an obvious change in our test scores.