It worked fine 46 years ago. People bitched then "about the children" while insisting that schools couldn't start later. That's just crazy. What is different this time? It wasn't bad before, that's what.
Schools can't really start later. Parents need to drop kids off before they start work. I guess we could have everyone start work an hour later too, but I don't see that happening.
This is far from universal, and is a problem we should address wherever it is the case. It's bad for plenty of reasons, with one of the largest being that it prevents us from having schools operate during times that work well for children and teens.
I'm not sure how you plan to solve this. Even if a school bus came to every kids front door the parent would still need to be there to ensure the kid gets on. If both parents need to be somewhere for work the bus needs to show up early enough to give them time to commute.
Uh - no. You don’t have to be there to ensure the kid gets on. You teach your kid how to be responsible and a good person so that they get on without you having to helicopter over them for everything.
That's how my parents did it... it's changed in the past 20 years. Stupid suburban wine moms raised this past generation to be coddled at every opportunity. I hear about parents getting in trouble for letting their children walk a mile or 2 to a park and back... or bike a few miles to a friend... ridiculous. Lots of parts of America (outside big cities) we still don't care.
Uh - no. You don’t have to be there to ensure the kid gets on. You teach your kid how to be responsible and a good person so that they get on without you having to helicopter over them for everything.
Maybe I'm just a terrible parent, but I wouldn't trust my 5 year old to walk to her stop and get on the bus at a specific time every morning without a parent around to push her to do it.
That doesn't say its "normal" by 6-7. It just says that some kids are able to do it as young as that age. And the specific child in the article didn't start until 9.
Plus, I would argue that there is a difference between sending a kid off to school at a given time and leaving them home alone with a specific schedule of "At 8:45 you need to walk to the bus stop and wait for the bus". Which again, I'm not sure I would trust to my 5 year old to do on her own every morning. Not because she can't walk alone, but because I don't think punctuality is something she's mastered yet.
And even the article admits that young kids can do that more because of "social trust than self-reliance". And I don't know how many parents are willing to rely on other adults to help out their kid if something goes wrong.
I would wake up after my dad was gone for work, grab a pop-tart or cereal, take a ~1/4 mile walk outside to the bus stop, no longer able to see my house from the suburban sprawl, and hang out with the rest of the kids at my stop for 5-15 minutes before the bus showed up. Then I eventually got a car.
Don't get me wrong, if I was offered a ride (my parents, friends parents, friends with cars) I'd often take it. But ensuring I got on the bus? When the alternative was that my parents would get a phone call about me being missing? Trust that the lessons I'd get at school were far preferable to the lectures I'd get at home if I skipped class.
> Parents need to drop kids off before they start work.
I see a comment like this in all of these discussions and I'm always confused: did something change in the past ~15 years since I graduated from high school and school buses stopped being a thing? Where I grew up (Texas, which is generally not the most politically enthusiastic place when it comes to school funding) it was required that a school bus be available within a few minutes' walk of every student's home in the school zone. I thought this was a pretty universal part of American life based on every movie/TV show ever.
I suspect HN skews Californian, and as a Californian with 4 kids, none of them have ever ridden a school bus.
In theory the secondary school kids can take the city bus, however to use my junior high kid as an example, that changes a sub 10-minute drive into a 20 minute walk that crosses a state highway plus a 20 minute bus ride, so what actually happens is the school parking lots all back up onto the local streets every morning as each parent drops their kid off at school.
Every other state has figured out how to have school buses. maybe California should figure out how to rise to the standard of everywhere else instead of insisting that the whole country manipulate their clocks so you can take the extreme inefficiency of driving your kids to school.
Could also be more of an urban/rural divide? I grew up in part of California without a "city bus" for hundreds of miles, and school bus usage was pretty widespread. Parents who dropped their kids off usually just did so because it happened to line up with their schedule.
Also your post was a weird reminder of how laisse-faire my own upbringing was, because I was biking to school across and along a state highway in fifth grade.
Huh, interesting -- why doesn't California have school buses? I could imagine it might be hard/unsafe in dense urban areas like SF, but otherwise, why?
I don't know the full reasons, but after some reading: The really short answer is that it's not required by law, but it costs money.
Note that in California the overwhelming majority of schools have a budget that is essentially dictated by the state (the state makes up any shortfall in local taxes up to a certain amount adjusted per-student-day, and most schools are in districts that have such a shortfall). This means that there are only two ways to provide buses: charge students who ride buses (done in some districts) or take money out of the classrooms (not popular with parents nor teachers' unions).
Where I grew up there was a time when they needed to upgrade the bus fleet, so they passed a bond specifically for that purpose. If I understand the law correctly, this wouldn't be feasible in California outside of basic-aid districts (basic-aid districts are those that do not have a shortfall in their general funds, so they only get the "basic aid" for that is earmarked for special-ed &c.).
> Where I grew up there was a time when they needed to upgrade the bus fleet, so they passed a bond specifically for that purpose. If I understand the law correctly, this wouldn't be feasible in California outside of basic-aid districts
You misunderstand the law, all school districts in California can submit bonds to the voters of the district, and this is a routine method of addressing capital needs.
That's one of the things we get right because so many people around the state live in rural areas where school is a very long way from where they live. Many of them live on farms or ranches where their parents need those early hours to work and can't take their kids to school that far away easily.
Many parents don't trust their 5 year to get on the bus everyday. High school can surely be moved back for areas with 100% bus availability (my district has not had buses since covid), but elementary school would be a much tougher sell.
That's a fair point for kindergarteners, but by 1st or 2nd grade kids in my district walked to the bus stop on the corner all by themselves just fine. Also, my district had elementary school start the earliest (and middle/high school would start later) which for some reason is uncommon but makes a lot of sense for a whole bunch of reasons and would seem to mostly solve this problem for parents who need to walk their kindergartener to the bus stop before work.
Do you finish work before 5:45pm? The sun would set earlier than that until mid January in NY, and until mid February in SF. And end-of-work would be the time you start outdoor activity, not finish it, so in practice it would be practical to do outdoor activity in the afternoon for 1 month or less.
In Boston (Northernmost major metro on East Coast) the new latest sunrise would be at 8:13am, with a substantial period of twilight before then. Night will officially end at 6:32am, then astronomical twilight ends at 7:06, then officially sunrise at 8:13am. Point is you’re waking up during the dawn even if you’re waking up at 6:30 to get the kids to school.
Lots of people wake up well before then to go lift/exercise. And looking at obesity rates in America, we could stand to change time to better suit that habit. Some of us also like sitting on our porch with a newspaper and a cup of coffee and some eggs to watch the sun come up.
I mean I had to wake up in the dark anyway during childhood even with this time. The sun would be rising as I got into school and would be set when I got through with my extracurriculars which pretty much took place indoors during the winter. This shift would actually have granted me some sunlight during the week in the winter as a child.
$10 is a lot for a light bulb. If working on computers has taught me anything, it's to not trust fancy new gadgets. I don't want some stupid box to glitch so my light doesn't work. Given what moving away from a natural "rise with the sun" schedule has done, maybe we should go back to that instead of trying to substitute.
Wifi light bulbs aren't fancy new gadgets. The Phillips Hue, for example, first hit the market nearly a decade ago. I'm sure there has been much development of the concept since and $10 is, for most people, very affordable. Especially the HN crowd.
I can't speak to their efficacy personally, can you? Do you know for a fact that they are error prone? All makes and models? Or did you shallowly dismiss the other person's suggestion?
While he was snarky, expressing disdain for technology solutions to every day life problems on a website called... hacker news... is sort of counter-culture here. I get that you have some strong traditionalist views based on this and your other recent commenting, but it's also important to know your audience and that some of those views aren't going to be well received here.
When daylight savings time is implemented, SCHOOLS, EMPLOYERS AND ALL OTHER COMMERCE times are changed. Thus, When it is removed, all places will change time accordingly.
Are we really doing this because it'll be light at 7:35pm?
Sorry, but that's not even close to a compelling reason to do this.
See how easy it is? I can dismiss others' preferences just as easy. Waking up when it's dark out isn't good for people. We should rise with the sun, more or less, and "time" should change to accommodate that.
It absolutely is. And the Sun won't come up until 8:30AM. No one wants their first couple hours of the day to be darkness. Secondly, it's more dangerous for kids walking to school. And lastly we use more energy since a larger part of our day is lived in the darkness for most people.
> No one wants their first couple hours of the day to be darkness.
Why? What are you using the first couple hours of your day for except to get ready for work? Complete waste to do that in the daylight.
> Secondly, it's more dangerous for kids walking to school.
We should be pushing back school starting times anyway. If they're old enough to walk to school, then they don't need their parents to wait for them to leave before going to work, so that typical argument goes out the window.
> And lastly we use more energy since a larger part of our day is lived in the darkness for most people.
A weak argument IMO. Studies are not conclusive on the actual savings, and most of the ones that are out there say they save minimal energy. Besides, I think the mental health benefits of having more useful hours in the evening are worth the extra 0.5-1% energy usage.
You have to understand that most people start work at 8 and many start earlier. For this majority that means they are on the road by 7:30 - which is rush hour. This means they are probably awake by 6:30 or earlier in some cases. So they already begin in the dark. Now imagine that going for even more time, until 8:30?
At least this way you get some Sunlight before you're at work and some when you're done.
The jobs I've worked outside we started the day in the dark often times (construction, landscaping). What jobs have you worked that required perfect natural lighting the entire time? I'm assuming it's a decent minority of jobs.
You're going to work or at work, so it's irrelevant whether it's sunny outside or not. That hour of sun sitting in morning traffic is completely wasted.
Much better to have the hour of sun after work to do things outside.
So you’re saying you’re fine with them leaving work in the evening in the dark, because that’s the trade-off. Not to mention your post-work leisure time will be in darkness.
I'd rather have all my sunlight at the tail end of the day where the time is all mine, vs having to waste some of it when I'm hustling to get breakfast together and get out of the house. Better for vitamin D deficiencies since I can now do something like an after work walk in the last hour of sunlight of the day vs coming home and it being dark already.
> What are you using the first couple hours of your day for except to get ready for work?
Here's 1 day from last week, before DST:
5:00 AM: wake up
5:15 - 6:30: lift
6:30: breakfast, coffee, and paper on the porch, watch the sun rise.
7:15: go shower, dress, pack lunch, get ready for work
7:30: leave for work
7:50: arrive at work
2 things I enjoy, a few hours of "free time", before work. And by the way, showing up at work around 8 is more common than arriving at 9 for most corporate jobs. The tech bubble is real on this site. Guess why? Because we like having some light left in the evening/ending our day earlier, among other reasons.
> We should be pushing back school starting times anyway.
No, learning to get up early forces kids to learn to go to bed on time, that's a valuable skill that teaches discipline. If a kid has to suffer through getting up on 5 hours sleep they probably won't make that mistake again.
> A weak argument
Living a larger part of the day in darkness isn't good for most people's happiness, energy use aside.
> No, learning to get up early forces kids to learn to go to bed on time, that's a valuable skill that teaches discipline. If a kid has to suffer through getting up on 5 hours sleep they probably won't make that mistake again.
You are arguing against many well-documented studies about what school hours work best for kids to learn. "on time" is entirely based on what time you need to get up. The whole point of moving school later is for "on time" to be compatible with the hours that kids are more functional. This is not a matter of discipline; deciding you're going to be up and functional earlier does not change your body or the sun's position in the sky to be compatible with that. (If you want to argue otherwise, argue in published studies refuting the ones that exist, not in replies to this comment.)
Move school hours to start several hours later than they currently do, and then by all means encourage the discipline of getting up in time for school.
You wake up 2 hours earlier than the average American (which apparently is about 7:09am). Things aren't and shouldn't be optimized for your abnormal sleep pattern.
> If a kid has to suffer through getting up on 5 hours sleep they probably won't make that mistake again.
... I don't think you've met kids before. The vast majority absolutely won't learn.
> Living a larger part of the day in darkness isn't good for most people's happiness, energy use aside.
Standard time moves sunlight to the morning, when people are sleeping. Permanent DST should give people the same or more sunlight during their waking hours. You'd have the same amount, waking up at 5am and assuming you don't sleep until at least 8:30pm.
We should try to move sunrise closer to when people wake up. This does the opposite for most people, not just me.
Also, we should teach more people to get up early and go lift/exercise. We have too many fatties in this country. Making it a national habit would be a great thing.
I don't see the raw numbers, but the chart seems to indicate Americans waking up slightly before 7, maybe 6:50am? Not too far off from the source I found of 7:09am, and is still approximately 2 hours after you wake up.
And congrats at being disciplined. The vast vast vast majority of Americans aren't. And changing the habits of hundreds of millions of people is a pipe dream and really irrelevant to this conversation.
From what I can tell most people do not do anything other than get ready for work in the morning. Yes, there are outliers like yourself who actually utilize that daylight, but that's the minority. Most people want a later sunset.
I would also note that in the northern states, children go to school in the dark (and often also come home in the dark) regardless of DST/ST, because we hold school over winter, and we get about 8-9 hours of sunlight a day in the winter.
Better to come home in the sunlight. Even if you have indoor sports after school now you have some time to potentially absorb vitamin D. Not much absorbing you are doing in the morning shuffling to get ready for school.
It's unsafe. A child is more likely to be hit by a car when it is dark. With the current system they can leave for school and come home when there is light.
Shouldn't they just go to school later when it's darker? They could come up with a policy to start school later and get out later in the winter or something. Why does the entire country have to modify their clocks for a few minority use cases?
Is it society's time-keeping system that is at fault, or the school system's start time? Cuz I kinda think organized school systems with rigid start times are a later development.
I have a feeling quite a few people commenting don't live in northern states and thinks there's plenty of light to go around if it were just aligned right.
Basically because of the Gulf Stream influence on climate, I suspect a lot of Americans would be surprised how far north Europe is compared to the US. (And therefore that you deal with darkness in the morning and the evening for a decent chunk of the year.)
Because our politics are in many ways a clown show. It probably polls well when you ask regular people who haven't considered why we do this. That they feel sad because the Sun goes down at 5:00AM when it's cold but don't consider that without this then the Sun won't come up until 8:30AM.
"In a Roper poll conducted in February and March, just 30 percent remained in favor of year-round daylight saving time, while a majority favored switching times again. Louis Harris polling in March showed just 19 percent of people said it had been a good idea, while about twice as many — 43 percent — said it was a bad one."
A poll conducted during the first winter of the first year where the status quo was different, and where institutions hadn't yet made changes to their procedures and schedules to prepare for it is not a true poll of the issue.
Nah, it's an emotional thing for a lot of people who haven't considered it - they just hate that it gets dark early and it makes them sad. I've had this conversation with a lot of people and almost all of them agree it's a good system when they understand why we do it. Especially for people in the Northern parts of the country.
Hmm, I live in the northern part of the country and that isn't my experience at all. But I'm sure you have surveyed a statistically significant amount of the population, not just your little bubble.
I've considered it. I live in the northern parts of the country (WI). I have children that walk to school. Anything other than permanent DST is absolutely asinine to me. Most people do things in the evening. Very few people do things in the morning other than get ready for and go to work/school. Why would anybody choose to have light during that time and not later in the day?
Around the world perhaps, but time zones in the US have been quite static for a long time right? I wonder how many US based systems aren’t well tested/prepared for a possible change.
You’d have to be over 60 years old to have any memory of that, and even then you would have been a kid at the time. Plus your memory gets worse as you age. So why would anyone here have a memory of that experience? The only memories we have are of DST messing up our sleep schedules twice a year for no apparent benefit to us.
But more to the point, the article doesn’t really talk about why it went badly. In fact, the only thing it mentions (kids getting up too early for school) is a very solvable problem and one which should be solved regardless of DST.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/30/the-year-daylight-sav...
Why do we have such short memories?