We live in a world made for morning people. The early birds, early risers and go-getters. 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. school day. Nine to five jobs. Our society has functioned from early morning to afternoon or evening for decades, ever since the eight hour workday was introduced by Henry Ford in the 1920s, according to CNN. It has been this way for a long time. Too long, perhaps?

The reality is that these early morning starts are outdated, especially in the wake of research demonstrating that this simply does not work for everyone. If you’re a night owl, early starts are particularly difficult. According to a BBC article, each person’s circadian rhythm is unique, written in our genes and unchangeable. By asking employees who are night owls to start work at eight or nine, before they are ready to wake up, there are unintended consequences. Night owls, whose work schedules are likely not aligned with their sleep schedule, produce lower-quality work and can even behave “unethically in the morning.” The same is true for early birds, but at night, according to the BBC article. 

Getting sufficient sleep—nine to 10 hours for teenagers and at least seven hours for adults, according to News in Health — has proven benefits to the brain: encouraging attention, memory and analytical thought. On the other hand, sleep deprivation can harm academic performance, according to the Sleep Foundation. This is a particularly prevalent topic for teenagers, who routinely do not get enough sleep. The Sleep Foundation even states that seven out of 10 high schoolers do not get enough sleep, and the downsides to that fact are indisputable. Like adults, teenagers will struggle to produce high quality work and do well on tests. About 40% of 16 year olds are night owls; to compound this, teenagers’ circadian rhythms become longer, meaning it takes longer for teens to fall asleep, according to an article by ScienceNorway, which interviewed Dr. Ingvild West Saxvig, Ph.D., who works at the Norwegian Sleep Competence Center for Sleep Disorders. In addition to this, the hormone melatonin, which induces sleep, is released 90 minutes later for teenagers than it does for children or adults, according to the Maryland Foundation for Psychiatry. 

The Sleep Foundation, among other organizations and experts, preaches the value of building up better sleep hygiene and a consistent sleep routine, and while these strategies are valid to an extent, something about society has to change. Since students are required to be in school for many years, we should consider changing the whole way we educate students. In an effort to combat the sleep deprivation issue in teenagers, many states, California included, have passed laws that prohibit schools from starting before 8:30 a.m. 

But as a student myself, this has not been effective. To prove this, let us go through the day of a typical student athlete. School ends at 3:25 p.m., and then they would go to practice from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. By the time the student is home, eats and showers, it is 8:00 p.m. Then, for a driven upperclassman, there is two to three hours of homework to complete. This means a student is not ready to sleep until 10 p.m. at the earliest—and that is not even taking into account early morning practices and late night game days. While in theory being finished at 10 p.m. would allow the student to obtain nine or more hours of sleep, it is not quite this simple. In this day and age, much of a student’s homework is done online, utilizing a device. Sleep experts discourage the use of screens an hour before bedtime which, with this schedule, is simply impossible. Screens have a direct, negative impact on the amount of sleep a student obtains, according to an article by the National Institute of Health. In fact, students participating in the NIH study who had a computer or phone in their room before bed slept on average 17-26 minutes less than they did without the device. 

However, not all high school students face a sleep schedule that contradicts their  school schedule. In the NIH study, the amount of sleep public and private school students obtain was compared to the amount that homeschool students get. It was apparent that homeschooled students were able to align their school and sleep schedules better than public and private school students. The 2014 article (written before school start times were pushed back) found that homeschool students, on average, obtained 49 minutes more sleep than public and private school students. As homeschool students were just waking up, public and private school students  were already out the door, on the way to school. Although both groups of students were awake at a relatively early hour, it is vastly different to wake up early than to be ready and out the door  at that time. Additionally, while many students try to “catch up” on sleep over the weekend, this is detrimental to their circadian rhythms, dysregulating them further and making it harder for them to obtain sleep during the week. Public and private school students oversleep by 88 minutes as opposed to 32 minutes for homeschool students, according to the NIH study, demonstrating the dysregulation in circadian rhythms that public and private school students predominantly face. 

This being said, a change is needed. Pushing school start times back 30 minutes to an hour simply is not effective considering the number of teenagers who identify as night owls or are not naturally morning people. According to John Hopkins Medicine, sleep is imperative to teenagers in order to repair the body and help the brain work better. Early start times is cited as one of the problems that stands in the way of teenagers getting enough sleep. 

Our whole education system needs reshaping to work better for students—the ones being taught, yet not being prioritized in the current school structure. In college, students have more freedom to choose what times to take classes—times that work for them—so they are able to work around their sleep schedule. In high school, this is out of a student’s control. It is time to adapt the way we think about schools to cater more towards what teenagers need. 

One potential option that is appealing to night owls is night school. Night school, according to the Professional Skills Institute, an organization that helps prepare graduate students for their various pathways, is advantageous because it allows people to study during the day. This rids of unproductive habits such as caffeine and sleep deprivation, as well as the need to “pull an all-nighter.” According to Science Daily, all-nighters cause the brain to lose its efficiency and promote short-term memory as opposed to long-term memory that allows a student to actually retain the information they have learned. 

While high schools can not make the full transition to  a night school routine, a compromise between starting early in the morning and starting late at night can be struck. During the pandemic, many schools implemented a cohort system, where groups of students would go to school on different days. Something like this could be implemented at high schools, having groups of students arrive at and finish school at different times, based on what is best for their sleep schedule. Although this may result in shorter school days, sleep is so vitally important for teenagers that certain things must be compromised in order to create a functional education system for teenage students. 

As we look into the future, a change is needed in high school education systems so that students can achieve optimal amounts of sleep, something that is especially important for  adolescents. The later start time simply does not work in practice for many high school students and a more drastic alternative is needed. By combining elements of a cohort system and night school routine, a practical change can be implemented to benefit the learning and sleep patterns of high schoolers.