Hicks 1 William Leon Hicks, II Professor Bruner English 120A 001 19 February 2014 How the School System

Affects Our Childrens Beauty Sleep Screeeech! That's your high school son's alarm clock, and it is currently 6am on a chilly Thursday morning. He got up at that same time yesterday and went to school until three in the afternoon. After almost eight straight hours of learning, he went to basketball practice from four until six, and then once he got home he had to study for his AP U.S. History test, eat dinner, and then finish the rest of his homework before finally going to bed at around midnight. This leaves him with only six hours of sleep to recover from all that physical and mental exhaustion he accumulated, and that is if he can fall asleep immediately and not be interrupted. Many might wonder how he can keep his grades up with all that stress on him the entire year, but the scary thing is that it could be getting worse. According to CNN's Rachel Streitfield, the head of the U.S. Education Department, Arne Duncan, is in favor of a longer school day along with President Barack Obama (Streitfield). The only question is, will that benefit America's children? There are many different opinions on how we should handle our nations' education system, and most agree we should definitely change something because it is no secret that our children are falling behind other countries. Duncan argues, "Where students have longer days, longer weeks, longer years that's making a difference," (Duncan QTB CNN) however many psychologists are afraid how much that will affect children's' sleep cycles. Siri Carpenter from the American Psychological Association says that many people believe teens need less sleep than young children, but he wants people to know that teens are at risk of developing ADHD and

Hicks 2 depression if they do not get 9.2 hours of sleep every night (Carpenter). Carpenter would definitely be against Duncan's proposal for the longer school days because they would cut into our students average time spent in sleep, which is now at 6.5 hours per night (Carpenter). Lastly, a third solution offered to help fix our country's education problem is to offer year round school, which is different from Duncan's proposal because we are not going to add onto the number of school days but shorten summer break and given longer breaks throughout the year in order to make school more consistent. Education Bug, a website devoted to informing people about education issues says that year round school helps students not lose knowledge due to lazy summers ("Year Round School"). While each argument to solve our education problem has its benefits and disadvantages, I believe that right now we are doing more harm than good in that we should be more focused on the quality education, and not the quantity. First, let us look at Duncan's proposal for extended number of hours during the school day and also more days of school. His argument is that other countries spend more time in school than Americans, and that is why they are passing us on the international scale. It definitely makes sense that the more time you spend learning, then the smarter you will become, but do the benefits outweigh the negative consequences? Are we focused enough on the quality of our education, and do we realize how longer school days will affect our children's mental, physical, and emotional health? I am glad that someone is trying to improve our country's education system, but if Duncan's plan is implemented than children will have less time for extracurricular activities, less time to develop over the summer, and less time to recover from stress. Americans value extracurricular activities more than most nations and I do not believe that Duncan realizes that is something that is not going to change anytime soon. So many critical life skills are learned through extracurricular activities like sports, and if we cut into the time

Hicks 3 children have for them while increasing mental stress by adding on time that they are in school, than we could see a change in our nation's character, values, and physical health. Education is critical, but if our children are not awake and focused enough to learn anything than we our just wasting their time. Secondly, we have a proposal for year round school. The benefits of this are that year round school would help students retain knowledge, and also it would reduce stress because there are more consistent breaks throughout the year ("Year Round School"). Year round school has been implemented in several places throughout the United States, and it has been relatively successful. However, there are a few issues that go along with having school year round and they include, hurting family activities, summer employment, and development ("Year Round School"). I am not in favor of year round school for the reason that they hurt summer extracurricular activities, and they also take away the chances for high school students to have a summer job. Some families depend on their childrens income and it would be to devastating if that opportunity was taken away. I do however want to acknowledge that year round school would help students retain information, so teachers would not have to start off re-teaching material that students forgot. Finally, we have the argument to shorten the school day. Many educators are up in arms about this one because most countries go to school for longer than the U.S., but the American Psychological Association supports bills like the Zzzzzzs to As bill, which would prohibit schools in Connecticut from starting before 8:30am (Carpenter). The reason they support these types of bills is because they believe that our nations children are sleep deprived and the consequences outweigh the possible gains that a longer school days offer (Carpenter). I am in favor of starting the school days later because they would greatly help improve childrens mental

Hicks 4 health, which I believe is far more important than memorizing a few more history facts. Children would be better prepared to start each day and would not be as stressed out by the time they get home from their extracurricular activities. Homeschool children typically get there school day finished quicker than traditionally educated children, and I believe that our school system could manage to do the same. I am not sure where our nations education system is headed exactly but one thing is for sure is that the head of the U.S. Department of Education is going to push for a longer school days and years. I hope that my children are not sleep deprived when they enter school, but I have a terrible feeling the same will happen. I want them to have opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities without being overly stressed. There are definitely many different ways that it could go though, however, it is more likely that the option that is more economically friendly will prevail. It always does.

Hicks 5 Works Cited Carpenter, Siri. "Sleep Deprivation May Be Undermining Teen Health." Http://www.apa.org. American Psychological Association, Oct. 2001. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. Streitfeld, Rachel. "Education Chief Favors Longer School Year." CNN. Cable News Network, 27 Feb. 2009. Web. 18 Feb. 2014. "Year Round School Debate." Education Bug. Education Bug, 2014. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.