I’m not an afternoon person. When I’m giving my full and complete focus and dedication to my schoolwork in my seven hour school day, there is nothing that fills me with more dread and melancholy than realizing, “I’m gonna have to go home after this!”

Worse still, there will be a massive 17 hour gap between the next school day (and that’s not even counting the weekend!) But you know what manages to get me through that lifeless afternoon with no gray brick walls to stare at or adults to berate me for walking too slow or anxieties about deadlines that could very well determine my whole future? That’s right, knowing I’m gonna be up and at ‘em at 5:30 am the very next day!

I don’t think anyone alive or dead can conceive how much I love the school start times. The joy of a soldier returning from war or a new parent gazing at their child for the first time is not even a fragment of a fraction of how much I adore getting up during the bright and early hours of the day to go to school. But that’s not all. There are also many benefits to the school starting early. Most obviously, it allows students to practice eliminating the need for sleep from their mental palate. Sleep uses around 25-35% of every human’s life. How wasteful! Reducing the average amount students receive will make great strides to getting students to give 110% even when their weak, frail, feeble brains want to recharge. Additionally, it allows students to eliminate the competition of other, fragile scholars who just can’t hack it with the amount of sleep granted by the schedule. Due to students’ statistically lower performance on less sleep, it lets the flimsy, torpid students who will NEVER amount to anything be CULLED from our already overcrowded education system early on, reducing the adversaries our students must trounce on their way to success.

Not only this, students learn street-level skills as well! Allowing new drivers to learn the road during work rush on less than six hours of sleep gives them the opportunity to acquire new driving skills, and test their metal in the way that kills thousands of teenagers every year, giving them the chance to rise above their peers. Additionally, sleep deprivation has been linked to mood swings and angry temperament, even more so in adolescents. This grants students the chance to be more in touch with their emotions, or, failing that, the opportunity to learn self-defense skills courtesy of their fellow classmates. 

There are other, more logistical reasons behind school start times as well. It would be inconvenient for the school systems to make adjustments to the bus scheduling. That’s right, it would require not only telling the bus drivers to go at different times, but it would also require the leadership of school systems who make money controlling the school system to control their school system?? We’d have to reschedule after-school activities! There’d have to be time changes to after school tutoring! Plus, students would surely take advantage of making the school times earlier to stay up past 10! Clearly no students do that now, as evidenced by their wide awake and eager visages at our schools. But who knows what hooliganry they could get up to if they didn’t have a reason to be in bed?! 

All this to say, the weak-willed lazy no-good disrespectful youth of today have it entirely too easy anyway. Increasing the amount of sleep they get each night would simply be a step too far. How could we make a positive change that has been linked to greater mental health and stronger ability to focus?? How can we, in good faith, allow our students to lead lives with less suffering than previous generations? As the adults of today are all, without fail, morally upstanding and compassionate people with great common sense skills bent on nothing but making the world a better place, clearly our school systems are working.

Making a change that could possibly positively impact the lives of millions is unnecessary at this point and also might alienate the people who’ve already paid their dues waking up early. Was their sacrifice for NOTHING?! Have we really been doing this for no practical reason?! No, it’s the sleep deprived children who are wrong! They’re the malefactors! They’re the blight that scorns the earth! When the Casus Belli sounds and this nation is put to fire and sword, how can we count on those that rise past six to lead us?! How can we rely on those lethargic scoundrels who would seek to doom our nation with their incessant hunger for drowsing?! Let any notions of pathetic slumber be dealt with as they would seek, and put them to rest!