In the UK, there is an ongoing conversation about the need to change school timings so that schools start later in the morning than they do currently. Apparently starting school early makes kids tired and about 1,80,000 people signed a petition to start a parliamentary debate on the issue of changing school timings.
Students feel that they would be less rushed if classes began at 10AM in the morning instead of earlier. They would be less tired and better prepared for exams if they could have a later start in the day.
Short of sleep? Tired when you wake up in the morning? A lot of people had this simple solution to offer.
Most tweets were not very sympathetic of kids who wanted to sleep in longer. Commentators such as this one feel that kids would do well to make do with less sleep; life ahead is going to be much tougher.
Kids wanting to sleep more received little sympathy and a lot of forthright advice to keep away gadgets and not get ‘bladdered” (a quaint British colloquialism for getting extremely drunk it would seem).
If kids cannot get up at a reasonable time in the morning, how would they be able to adjust to shift work and late hours at the office, wonders this commentator tweeting with the unflattering #snowflake hashtag. Many expressed the view that coddling kids this way would make them unfit for professional life later.
A lot of commentators including people who had recently finished their education; felt that starting classes later would be an unnecessary waste of resources. Some felt that the BBC shouldn’t be endorsing such a stand by students. Instead, the BBC should tell kids about the requisite number of hours they need to sleep and let them do the math.
A few commentators pointed out that kids needed more sleep than adults. While people agreed with that, they didn’t think that starting school late was the solution to the problem. Most people thought that the problem was easily solved by kids going to bed early and waking up early.
Very few had sympathy for kids asking for later timings. Most people are of the view that this is a bunch of spoiled and entitled kids making excuses for what is essentially laziness!
Parents who have to leave for work cannot wait around the house for their children to leave for school, pointed out this commentator.
Some pointed out that delaying school timings would mean that kids finished their day later, went to bed later and still had a problem waking up the next day. So pushing back the timings would ultimately be pointless!
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