Then school should start much later!

That's a great idea - as someone with no kids I can see absolutely no downside to it.

Isn't that just a great way to ensure kids have that precious sunlight for after-school activities... wait, what? Should we do double-DST also?

No it shouldn't. The benefit of forcing the discipline of getting up early on children is greater than any health impact or inconvenience.

That'd be the same benefit that forces sugar and caffeine dependencies on adults so they can maintain unnatural working schedules and has contributed heavily to the obesity epidemic, right?

Rising with the sun is much more natural than getting up when it's dark. Most people need time before work, so we need the sun to rise a few hours before work. I learned some discipline and started getting up early without sugar and caffeine, if the young people today would rather complain than do the same that's not my problem.

> No it shouldn't. The benefit of forcing the discipline of getting up early on children is greater than any health impact or inconvenience.

Since tone can often travel poorly across the wire—that is sarcasm, right?

No. I don't see what I wrote that comes across as sarcastic.

It didn't come across as sarcastic, but I hoped it was. As it stands, though I can imagine arguments for or against the current school set-up, the idea:

> The benefit of forcing the discipline of getting up early on children is greater than any health impact or inconvenience.

that a particular arbitrary method of instilling a particular arbitrary form of discipline is more important than any health impact or any inconvenience is horrifying to me, and I hope it doesn't find many adherents.

Just send them to kid bootcamp and have them do pushups if “forcing discipline” is so important

Also helpful, things like scouts often involve that and help boys become men.

Edit: reply is dead so I can't respond, but 'beeboop, do you really have a problem with scouts? It's helped form a lot of good young men in America.

Boy Scouts: sure.

Getting up early: maybe for some people.

But forcing society to get up at a time that suits almost nobody purely because it is hard: no.

Sure, this is true if you don't believe sleep has anything to do with health...

You might want to read more about the impact for lack of sleep on people's health.

They're fine if they go to bed early. That's the actual discipline part, going to bed early and getting up early is harder than going to bed late and getting up late. But overindulgent parents let kids stay up so they never learned good habits and now they're entering the workforce and whining about it.

> They're fine if they go to bed early.

They're not. This ignores diverging chronotypes. I suggest you read up on the science around sleep before commenting on whether "they're fine".

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/chronotypes-ev...

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/chronotypes

https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501...

Obviously we can't control this, so I see no evidence that "chronotypes" are formed by nature and not by nurture. Lots of other stuff we do is influenced by our social structure and we could probably fix most teenagers and young adults by changing that.

As stated above, I'm a night owl myself and tend to have a pretty off kilter sleeping schedule. A bunch of things have contributed to that - I've got ADD and have been on stimulants for most of my life, I worked as a game dev for a few years which involved months of overtime where we'd often work 12hrs three times a week that played absolute hell with my sleeping schedule and still plagues me to this day - lastly, I'm light sensitive, I can't comfortably see and operate in full daylight.

I can't say for certain where my night-owlish self comes from, but it predates taking stimulants and working at a game dev company - so maybe it's a side effect of light sensitivity or maybe it's a neurological thing... or maybe it's just a natural clock thing.

There is no value in messing up your sleep pattern.

It’s self-discipline theatre.

We used to need early rising when we milked cows and hunted at dawn.

But now we primarily need sharp minds and being awake at dawn has no special benefit.

I say this as an early riser.

> Obviously we can't control this, so I see no evidence that "chronotypes" are formed by nature and not by nurture.

Here’s why: The Hadza are hunter-gatherers whose lifestyle is very similar to that of early humans.

The observations were found in people with lifestyles that represent that of early humans. What part of nurture would affect those people? They have no concept of a clock...