Should schools delay their schedules because students stay up too late?

John Rosemond

If you pay attention to school news, you know that a number of schools are now delaying the school schedule for some of the upper grades on the grounds that many teenagers don't get enough sleep.

Well, I was going to say it, but here comes columnist John Rosemond to point out the obvious:

The problem, it seems to me, is not when the school day begins. The problem is teens whose parents let them stay up until all hours of the night playing video games, texting, talking on their cell phones, watching television, surfing the 'net, and listening to music on headphones.

Now, you're thinking, why won't parents do anything about this (which they should do for reasons other than school anyway)?

And there's the rub of course. I refer to parents who will not set limits of any meaningful sort on their children's use of electronics because, get this, it will upset them.
And we must not, in American have upset children.

Thus it is in America, under what Joseph Epstein has called the "Kindergarchy": the regime under which children rule over their compliant parents.

And once they change the school schedule to try to accommodate the poor potentially upset things?

Let me assure the reader that if a school decides to push its start time from 8:00 to 9:00, the teens who attend said school will simply use that as an excuse to stay up playing, texting, talking, watching, surfing, and listening for another hour.

Of course, don't count on the school system to have the intelligence to take this into account.