The start time of classes, best at 10 o'clock in the morning
The school environment is, in many cases, a place of intense debates: do children have many duties? What kind of education is the best, private or public? And of course, the hours at which the classes begin. The return to school has already become a fully established routine, but the debates continue. According to experts from several prestigious universities, classes should start at 10 in the morning.
A schedule almost impossible to think of in countries like Spain, where on average the students of Institutes begin classes at 8 in the morning and, those of Primary, at 9 o'clock. However, there are experts who cry out to change the rhythm: doctors and scientists from the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Nevada make a international appeal so that the institutes begin the day at ten o'clock in the morning.
In an article entitled 'Synchronizing education to adolescent biology' that has been published in the journal 'Learning, Media and Technology', these experts insist that the classes must be adapted to the needs of the students and not those of adults (parents or teachers), as is the case today.
Schedule of the classes
"Almost everyone believes that teenagers should go to bed early to get up early," says Paul Kelley, a scientist at the Institute of Neuroscience at Oxford University and the study's first author. However, in his opinion, it is the adults "who would have to adapt" to changes in the sleep cycle experienced by children of that age, according to the newspaper La Vanguardia, which has echoed the investigation.
In this way, the work of these experts work reviews the latest research in sleep patterns and its consequences on academic performance, and ensures that, with the advent of puberty, the biological clock changes and it becomes slower, something that must be taken into account when classes are scheduled.
Dreaming of teenagers
Researchers say that teenagers fall asleep later for a physiological reason and not habits but, still, they still need to sleep about nine hours a day since his brain is forming. "A teenager who gets up at 7 in the morning is equivalent to an adult who gets up at 4.30 in the morning," says the work.
For this reason, the text indicates that, with the current schedules, if a student of 15 or 16 years old begins classes at 8, he has to wake up between 6 and 7 in the morning. To be well rested to the institute and meet the necessary nine hours of sleep, you should go to bed between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. That's fine, but who knows a teenager who goes to bed at that time? The problem is in his brain, because this "does not allow them to go to sleep soon"Kelley insists.
According to the researcher, the vigil at this age comes after 23 hours, and its natural awakening time is about 8 o'clock in the morning. Therefore, the authors of the article defend that the institutes open their doors after ten in the morning, that is, about two hours after the usual time.
Consequences of lack of sleep
All this is related to a reality that teachers in the Institute see every day: most of the students arrive in the morning with clear signs of having slept little, something that is also observed at home with, for example, the little time with which these young people wake up for breakfast, which makes them omit this important meal.
Also, lack of sleep has important consequences for children and adolescents: several studies have shown undoubted benefits of sleeping in all ages and the dangers of not doing well when you are young: for example, a study ensures that school failure increases among those who sleep little, and also that young people are more likely to suffer mental problems if they rest a few hours at night.
Angela R. Bonachera
