The early bird is unhealthy

Of the many things that annoy me about school, the worst is that it starts so early in the morning. Algebra, relative pronouns, subjonctives - it's all difficult, but with practice you can master it. Early school days, on the other hand, are more gruelling than any war of position. You don't even have to have your own schoolchildren to understand this, you just have to remember: as a child or teenager, was there anything worse than the alarm clock ringing during the week? Deep darkness outside, in my heart and in my head too. For me, school started at 7.40am. That was relentlessly early. My children's school starts at 7.25 a.m. and 7.35 a.m. In 30 years, school has moved back by around fifteen minutes. Everything is becoming more user-friendly - except school!

Maybe it's not just school that starts too early, but our whole life.

Psychologists, educationalists and politicians have restructured, reformed and optimised every area of school life in the hope of making learning less stressful and more meaningful. Curricula have been decluttered, subjects merged or abolished altogether (hello, Ancient Greek!). Schools on the move, project teaching and even intergenerational classrooms have been considered, but practically never a later start to lessons. The Swiss education delegations who visited Finnish schools during the PISA frenzy obviously didn't realise that Finnish schools differ from Swiss schools in one respect in particular: the start time of lessons. In Finland, almost nothing happens before 8.30am or even 9am. Of course, pupils can come earlier, do their homework or get bored until school starts.
Interestingly, there is hardly anyone who would disagree on this point. No child is happy to come to school early. No parent experiences a deep sense of satisfaction when pulling children out of bed in the pitch dark. No teacher is motivated by the sight of yawning pupils. Countless studies are published every year, all of which prove roughly what experience teaches us anyway: those who sleep longer are better off. Some brain and sleep researchers even argue in favour of starting lessons at 10 o'clock. The arguments on the other side are so weak that it is almost impossible to list them: it has always been like this. If you start early, you finish early. The early bird catches the worm. And then there is the zero argument of all Mandlian cultural circles: School is part of society, so the start of lessons must fit in with parents' working hours. This brings us to the heart of the problem: perhaps it's not just school that starts too early, but our whole lives. In any case, I can't think of a single person who wouldn't benefit immensely from an extra hour's sleep.

To the author:

Mikael Krogerus is an author and journalist. The Finn is the father of a daughter and a son, lives in Biel and writes regularly for the Swiss parents' magazine Fritz+Fränzi and other Swiss media.