Sleep-ins for High School Students

A  A high school in the northeast of England has experienced an astonishing drop in absenteeism following the introduction of a later 10.00 a.m. start time. Appleton High School’s general absence rate has fallen by 8 per cent, while levels of persistent absenteeism have dropped by a massive 27 per cent since the mid-morning start time was brought in. The decision, which has been in place since October for 13--19-year-olds, was introduced following research claims that teenagers were more mentally and physically prepared for school work later in the day, and that the afternoon was the optimum time for memory activity for the age group. While the experiment has resulted in a clear improvement in absenteeism at the school, it remains to be seen whether it will have the same effect on grades in the students’ work.

B  Since 1996, Kyle Strom and his research team at the Center for Educational Improvement (CEI) in the United States have led the way in the study of later start times for high school students. Strom claims that emerging medical research shows adolescents have natural sleep phases that lead to a late-to-bed, late-to-rise cycle. Medical researchers found this cycle is part of the maturation of the endocrine system. From the onset of puberty until late teen years, the brain chemical melatonin, which is responsible for sleepiness, is secreted from approximately 11.00 p.m. until approximately 8.00 a.m., 9 hours later. This secretion is based on human circadian rhythms and is rather fixed. In other words, typical teenagers are not able to fall asleep much before 11.00 p.m. and their brains will remain in sleep mode until about 8.00 a.m., regardless of what time they go to bed.

C  These adolescent sleep patterns can have profound consequences for education. With classes in most high schools in the United States starting at around 7.15 a.m., high school students tend to rise at about 5.00 or 6.00 a.m. in order to get ready and catch the bus. It is no wonder that 20 per cent of students sleep during their first 2 hours of school, when their brains and bodies are still in a biological sleep mode. The loss of adequate sleep each night also results in a "sleep debt" for most teenagers. Those who are sleep-deprived or functioning with a sleep debt are shown to be more likely to experience symptoms such as depression, difficulty relating to peers, school staff and parents, and are more likely to use alcohol and other drugs.

D  Data collected from two high school districts, Johnstone, a suburban district that changed its high school start times from 7.20 to 8.30, and the Highlands, which changed its start times from 7.15 to 8.40, provided Strom and his colleagues with information regarding the work, sleep and school habits of over 7,000 secondary students, over 3,000 teachers, and interview data from over 750 parents about their preferences and beliefs about the starting time of school. The study has laid the groundwork for similar changes in other school districts, supplying concrete results of putting the research into practice. For example, the majority of Johnstone parents were initially opposed to the late-start scheme due to concerns about the effect of later starts on such logistical issues as bus times, athletics and child care for younger students. But at the end of the first year of implementation, 92 per cent of respondents to a survey of Johnstone high school parents indicated that they preferred the later start times. Data also showed that there was a significant reduction in school dropout rates and less depression. Schools also reported students getting higher grades. This research has had a major impact nationally. Strom receives numerous inquiries on a daily basis from teachers, superintendents, parents and school nurses all over the nation requesting more information about the findings of their research and how they can use that research to change policies in their schools.

E  Patricia Brite, programme director for the National Sleep Foundation in the London area, supports the theories. "We like what we have seen in the study and the feedback from schools has backed it up too." Brite goes on to say that she has been contacted by over 50 heads of London schools who are all giving the same message. "What they’re telling me," Brite says, "is that the theory has the support of teachers, students and governors. With support like that, there has to be a lot of sense in the proposals."

F  The School Start Time Study effectively reveals to adult policy-makers that high school students can benefit from later school start times. While the concept that teenagers have a distinctly different sleep pattern was first recognised by medical research findings, it is only through examination of actual cases where these findings were used as a basis to change school policies that educators can understand the ramifications of making such a change. The case studies done by Strom and his colleagues provide research-based information for school districts across countries that are now seeking to make informed decisions for their own communities.

G  Not every school trying the late-start scheme has found it a success, though. In Cape Town, South Africa, the scheme was abandoned after 3 months at a trial school. The school superintendent reports: "While we found the idea of a late start very exciting for our students, in the end the philosophy was too different from the tradition that our students were used to. It messed up their schedules, especially sport times, and, after the short trial, the school student council approached the school board and requested the abandonment of the scheme." Clearly then, the scheme is not for everyone or every school.

Bilingualism

People use the term "bilingualism" in different ways. For some, it means an equal ability to communicate in two languages. For others, it simply means the ability to communicate in two languages, but with greater skills in one. There are three types of bilingualism which have been identified by researchers and which are commonly used to describe bilingual people.

Simultaneous bilingualism can be defined as what occurs when a person learns two languages as his or her first languages. A person who is a simultaneous bilingual goes from speaking no languages at all to directly speaking two languages. This usually happens because a child’s parents have different mother tongues, or because the language their family speaks is not that of the country they are living in. Simultaneous acquisition occurs when a child is raised bilingually from birth, or when the second language is introduced before the age of 3. Children learning two languages simultaneously go through the same developmental stages as children learning one language and, while simultaneously bilingual children may frequently start talking slightly later than monolingual children, they still begin producing speech within the normal range. From the very beginning of language learning, simultaneous bilinguals seem to acquire the two separate languages. Early on, they are able to differentiate between their two languages and have been shown to switch from one to the other according to their conversation partner. However, despite plenty of anecdotal evidence to the contrary, there has been much debate as to whether there really is such a thing as a truly simultaneously bilingual person, since there will always be sociolinguistic pressures that make one of the languages dominant.

Receptive bilingualism describes the situation in which a person is able to understand two languages, but can express themselves in only one. Receptive bilingualism is comparable to, but not the same as, mutual intelligibility. An example of this could be a native Spanish speaker who is able to understand Portuguese and vice versa due to the high lexical and grammatical similarities between Spanish and Portuguese. Receptive bilingualism in children occurs when they have high exposure to a second language throughout their lives, but have little opportunity to use it. Another reason may be that a child realises that the community language is more prestigious than the language spoken within his or her household. In that case, the child might choose to speak to his or her parents in the community language only, thereby not developing the ability to speak the parents’ language in spite of understanding it. Receptive bilinguals may, however, achieve oral fluency rapidly when placed in situations where they are required to speak the heritage language. Receptive bilingualism can lead to humiliation and pressure, when the subject feels he or she should speak the language, but cannot. This can also hinder speaking development.

Finally, sequential bilingualism describes what takes place when a person learns a second language after having already established a first one, which is the situation for people who become bilingual as adults. Although many people never achieve sufficient mastery of another language to be described as bilingual themselves, the process leading to sequential bilingualism is the most familiar, since the majority of educated adults have had second-language classes at school.

There are various advantages claimed for being bilingual. Being proficient in more than one language gives people access to two cultures, making them more tolerant and open to learning about diverse backgrounds, traditions and social behaviours, as well as being a part of them. Studies have also shown that bilingual people have better task-switching capacities at work, because of their acquired ability to change languages quickly. In other words, speaking two languages forces people’s brains to recognise two different language systems. Being bilingual can also promote mental agility and it can help delay neurological disorders like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. According to some studies, monolingual adults tend to show the first signs of dementia at the average age of 71. This is in contrast to bilingual individuals whose first symptoms appear around 76 years of age.

There is sometimes a perception, particularly among monolingual speakers, that bilingualism is a disadvantage in learning. This view is often characterised by the idea of cognitive overload, and studies into this broadly concluded that bilingualism resulted in lower IQ scores. Some of the first research on bilingualism, conducted primarily between 1920 and 1960, appeared to support this view. Indeed, these studies often associated bilingual children with the term "linguistically handicapped". General indications from these early studies were that monolingual children were up to 3 years ahead of bilingual children in various skills relating to verbal and non-verbal intelligence. Since 1960, however, these studies have been widely discredited, as it seems that they were based on an incorrect understanding of how the brain works. Bilingual people exhibit the full range of academic and intellectual abilities of monolingual people without this affecting their ability to be bilingual. This means that any persistent negative views of bilingualism can be explained only by the unfamiliarity many monolingual speakers have with bilingualism and/or by a biased view of bilingualism.