Ben takes on the SLEEP folks in Fairfax and says “stop whining” February 8, 2009
Recently, Fairfax County Schools have been contemplating having the high school kids start later. This is a proposal put for by a group called SLEEP (Start later for excellence in education proposal.)
Kelsey, my junior at Robinson, gets on the bus at 6:35 in the morning. A recent article in the local newspaper quoted some parents who were supportive of the change and said things like “Johnny does want to get out of bed that early” or When I get up with Johnny that early can’t find anything else to do after he leaves for the bus because no one else was up.” You can actually read their comments here.
As you might guess, I thought that this was ridiculous. (So did Kelsey and a bunch of her friends, all of who are involved in after school activities and lead busy, productive lives.)
Here’s the letter I wrote to the editor of the Connection. (The Connection truncated the letter since they had so many to publish. This is the full version.
Editor:
The amount of whining by parents complaining about the “early start” that many students have to their school day was shocking. Since when is it a bad thing that a 13-year-old goes to bed “on her own volition” when she is tired? One mother complained that while she got up “early” with her children and tried to get started on some household business she “couldn’t because no one else was available so early in the morning.” It’s incredible that she could not think of one thing to do at that hour that did not involve other people.
Two quick thoughts:
1. I’ll bet that if we followed these children (and often, their parents) around for just five days, and documented what they are doing with their lives every fifteen minutes we would find a lot of wasted time. Text messaging with friends, updating your Face Book “profile” and watching reruns of American Idol do not a productive society make.
2. I would also bet that if instead of school these children (and again, their parents) were getting up to head to a job which required that they do moderately complex reading, writing and arithmetic and that the show up on time every day in return for a pay scale of $100.00 an hour that they would figure out a way to do it, especially if they only got paid if they showed up on time and did productive work.
Children who see their parents whine about an “early start” in a public newspaper will be some of the same children who are taking mommy and daddy with them along to job interviews later. This is not the kind of self discipline that America was built on.
Posted Under: success thinking
