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Should We Get Rid Of Daylight Savings Time?

If someone brings up the topic of Daylight Savings Time (DST), everyone is sure to have their own opinions on the subject, but is it truely time to get rid of it, or should we insulate social changes instead? DST is something that happens every March and November without fail, but often ends up ticking people off, and inhibiting us from functioning correctly. Every March, we set our clocks forward one hour for DST, and sure, some people think it has benefits. Others however, believe that DST is non-beneficial to people’s lives today, especially that of school aged kids. DST should still exist, but during it school should start an hour later because of sleep-deprivation, overall non-functionality for today's society, and conflict between teachers and students.

Schools should start an hour later during DST due to sleep-deprivation. According to the National Sleep Foundation, only 15 percent of teens get the recommended 8-10 hours of sleep, and DST only cuts that number up even smaller. Not sleeping can cause inattentiveness, spacing out, memory loss, hallucinations, injuries caused by all these things, headaches, general pain, and SO much more. When someone is sleep-deprived, they can enter this state that lasts anywhere from five minutes, to the whole day where they are in a sort of sleep-walking trance, but nobody can tell. They act like normal, take notes, actively participate in class, talk to their friends, and all of a sudden will act as though they are waking up after a long nap and have no recollection of what they did at all. It is one of the most confusing things to experience. With this kind of thing happening, it affects the students' education, which is the whole point of the school system. They just don’t remember what they did, even with the physical evidence such as notes and worksheets proving they did the work. The reason kids have to go to school is to learn, and they can’t do that when they do not remember what they are taught. Since we set the clocks back during DST, everyone gets an hour less to sleep, which can increase these incidents by quite a lot. Putting the whole Sleeping-While-Awake thing aside, DST makes it harder for kids to focus, take notes, remember what was said, and even stay awake long enough to hear the lesson.

DST is just not really realistic for school aged kids anymore, and is basically non-functional for them at this point. DST was created during WWII in order conserve energy for the war effort, and was/is used to give workers an extra hour of sunlight. People will argue that because of the extra hour of light, people use less electricity, and this is not saying that is not true. But because this generation was raised in the age of technology, they use electricity anyway, hour of sunlight or not. Since DST is beneficial to some, such as people who work in agriculture and many other jobs, it would be kind of pointless to not use it anymore, especially since crime rates and car crashes drop overall during that time. School aged kids don’t have the jobs or responsibilities full fledged adults do most of the time, and since they are growing, need more sleep than adults do. They don’t really need to use the extra hour of sunlight, especially if that extra hour comes at the price of being coherent for the day. So many teachers yell at kids for falling asleep in class, yet most of the time don’t look past the facts as to why. Mid-classroom naps will only increase during DST.

So why not remove the source of teacher frustration, while not making a country wide impact? Why don’t we just start school an hour later? It would help keep kids productivity where it is expected, while at the same time kids are not paying the price of the longer days with an hour of sleep. Letting kids come to school an hour later is a way to solve a problem many people have been talking about for years, without affecting the whole United States as a consequence. Not getting enough sleep can eventually lead to death in some cases, and certainly painful accidents in others, which only frustrates teachers when kids spill something or drop something. Not getting enough sleep can make kids nap in class, which, again, makes teachers angry when kids are not paying attention to the lesson, and inevitably fail the test. The whole point of getting an education is to learn, right? So why not do one simple thing that will allow kids to learn more effectively?

By simply starting school one hour later during DST, a whole point of conflict can be eliminated, while simultaneously improving both kids and teachers school experiences. So stop for a minute, and think. Maybe, for one second, people can take action to change something that they think is wrong, and have been complaining about for years. People can actually DO something, instead of complaining. So, take a leap, and make a change.