So the problem with that is school also serves as a safe daycare for children/teenagers while parents work. Everyone wants to blame the puritanical "if you aren't present 8 hours, it's not real work/school" attitude, but it's not that.

It's economics. People can't work if they have to stay home with their kids.

Right, wrong, or indifferent, that's 99% of the reason for the standard school day/hours. To fix the school problem, we have to fix our out-of-date 8-5 mindset toward work, first.

Which brings us back to why we should adopt permanent standard time instead of DST!

Timezones are an illusion. All you're actually changing when you change the clocks are people's cultural expectations, namely around when it's appropriate to arrive at work and school. Ergo, we should adopt the standard that has people start work and school later, not even earlier than they already do!

This was really highlighted by COVID. Families having to suddenly deal with childcare threw a big wrench in corporate America.

It has nothing to do about the children. Its 100% because public school has become glorified daycare and kids need to go in early for their parents to work.

It's not that simple. Alot of highschool aged kids need to work to save for college or just to feed their families.

Starting school later sound good if you live a very privileged life, but makes life impossible if you need to leave a 3 to work.

Make the last class optional to attend. It’s not like people learn anything of worth in classes.

If a high school class was optional to attend, that class would not be attended. Your solution instantly becomes "cancel the last class of the day."

Say you're a parent working for Walmart or Amazon. You have to get to work at 8.30AM so the store can open at 9AM. Your kid starts school at 9AM. How are you going to get your kid to school?

Given the context was explicitly "teenagers", getting to school is generally something kids can be expected to handle on their own. Admittedly having to arrive to early sucks for the few that truly rely on their parents to get there, but at least it only sucks for a few. (My school did start first at 8.30 (I think) and then 9, this is completely normal in many countries)

Of course teenagers can get themselves to school. The problem is with younger kids. They will basically have to go to daycare before school, making their day even longer.

I love that in this scenario, school is literally daycare and we're completely limiting our entire children's growth around the imagined concerns of billion dollar mega corporations. Instead of forcing them to give leeway to the humans they employee, we just legit ruin kids carcadian rhythm

School being daycare or not has nothing to do with this issue. If your child needs to be somewhere at time T, you as a parent typically need to take them there at time T, so you can only arrive at work at some time T + delta.

Now, while companies often have absurd requirements of their employees' time, I specifically chose the Wal-Mart example to illustrate a non-absurd requirement: a site needs its store clerks present at opening time to be able to open at opening time.

> a site needs its store clerks present at opening time to be able to open at opening time.

Surely not every employee has to do school drop-off in the morning though?

> How are you going to get your kid to school?

They walk there, use a bus, etc.

So if we change the school times to be better adjusted to sleep schedules blah blah blah.

Why can't we also adjust work hours?

And if we can adjust those as well, why can't we just be on Standard Time?

The problem isn't the clock. It never was the clock.