Thursday, September 25, 2014
How much are teenagers expected to handle?
Kids these days are getting more and more homework and less and less sleep. The school system is pressuring teenagers so much and pushing them into unnecessarily stressful situations. Since school starts so early, it conflicts with teenagers natural sleep patterns- they need at least 9 and a half hours of sleep every day, which means they would need to go to bed really early to be able to get the right amount of sleep and wake up in time for school. This leads to kids being groggy and exhausted during school, which hinders their capacity for learning and not to mention is bad for their health.
Only 15% of teens reported to get at least 9 hours of sleep on a school night, which is a huge issue. Not only does this negatively impact their mood, making them unhappy and stressed, but it also makes them prone to catching an illness, forgetting important information, driving drowsy, and becoming aggressive or impatient in behavior.
The huge homework load does not help this issue at all. With so many projects, readings, tests, and papers assigned everyday in multiple classes, along with extracurriculars that are expected for every teen to be involved in, this leaves no room for relaxation or leisure, let alone being able to go to sleep at 9 every night. This leads to an accumulation of sleep deprivation, which can only be regained eventually, over the course of several days, which is made impossible by the short weekend. The school system has gotten so competitive in the past couple of decades, it’s very different from when our parents went to school. The kids today are being taught that everything is focused on college, and then the rest of your life is based off of that- which is putting way to much worries and stress on mere kids that don’t need to worry about that. How do you expect to give kids all this responsibility when they still need to ask if they can use the bathroom?
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I agree with you, I think it's stupid to have teens do so much work when this part of their lives is really just as valuable as any other minute of life. What is the point of forcing millions of kids to be stressed out and upset every day??
ReplyDeleteI'm with you Erica, more sleep is better for students, but on the other hand too much sleep isn't good for you. Thanks for sharing your ideas and interesting topic, I have been wondering about this myself. One question I might have is what age does the sleeping revolution start and when does it end? I feel like I'm living my life constantly tired!
ReplyDeleteI wrote my Op-ed on this topic and I agree completely! With all the worry for the future, kids no longer have time to be kids anymore. I think that your last statement was really effective, I didn't even think about that. Something needs to change to let students sleep. Great job, this platform has the perfect audience for this topic!
ReplyDeleteI think that this is a very tricky subject to deal with, but you make a very good point. I think that the main thing to think about here is, in teenager's lives, they don't focus 100% on school 100% of the time. Besides eating, sleeping, and socializing, most teens also have at least one after school activity (in my case I have 5, two on the weekends), and other things they need to do, like chores, jobs, etc. The other thing to think about with homework, is that it isn't always easy for students to have their homework ready to work on. They may not have a working computer, or printer. They may be too focused on something lower down on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like providing food for their family, or helping their younger sibling with their homework first, etc. Though I don't think the system we have now is horrible, it's not great. It's the kind of thing that works really well in theory, but it's not so clean cut in practice.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree, I think that there is something to be said about that fact that when we are finally asked in school to speak up about something that bothers us in either an op ed or a blog post, so many kids found fault in school. We are given way too much work and expectations.
ReplyDeleteI agree. There are all these studies about the impacts of sleep-deprivation. Sleep is really important, and I feel like it is always compromised for homework or other activities.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the pressure that is put on teenagers now is crazy. I think also jumping from sophomore year to junior is a big step too because this year is all about college and tests to get into college. I really liked your post! Keep it up!
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