Hitting the Snooze Button

Jan Hoffman writes about newly adopted school-start times in the article Hitting the Snooze Button. Hundreds of schools in the U.S. are looking at research of the adolescent body clock, and many have pushed back the start of their school day. Many students are sleep deprived, and would benefit from a little extra sleep time in the morning. There is much scientific evidence that supports that sleep affects learning. Jilly Dos Santos, a student in Rock Bridge High School, lead a movement that brought more sleep to students at her school. Her campaign is inspirational, and a great example of student power in schools.

There is a lot of evidence that sleep is a benefit to education. Sleep experts studied eight high schools that moved to a later time. They found that the students improved in measures like “mental health, car crash rates, attendance, and, in some schools, grades and standardized test scores.” In sleep, the brain is very active, sorting the data from the day and storing the information. Without sleep, “teenagers are losing the ability not only to solidify information but to transform and restructure it, extracting inferences and insights into problems,” said Jessica Payne, an assistant professor at the university of Notre Dame. Teens are losing this valuable sleep because of their sleep hormones that keep them up late and electronic devices.

Hoffman recalled the moving story of Jilly Dos Santos, who got her school board to push back her school’s starting time. At her school, the board was planning on a 7:20 a.m. start to the school day, and she rarely made the old 7:50 a.m. first bell. After encouragement from her teachers, Jilly decided to take action. She set up a Facebook and Twitter page, recruited friends to help with research, got help from teachers in the district, and set up an online petition. Jilly presented her case at a school board meeting, and an earlier school start was rejected. The next day, she campaigned for a later start to the school day, and in a later meeting, the starting time was pushed back 8:55 a.m. It is incredible for one student to change a schools system in a major way, and it expresses the power that students can have if they put in a lot of effort.

I personally think starting the school day later is worth the effort, but we need to account for its affect on the end of the school days. Kids with after schools may end up coming home very late. Sports teams will have to make their games later, and parents would have to change their schedules to pick up their children. I think with enough time, we will be able to overcome the conflicts with a later school day. For me, it won’t be that beneficial due to bad habits of procrastination and electronic use, but for students as a whole it’s a great change to make.

Designer Babies

Modern scientists are finding ways to control genetics in newborns. Scientists say the day when parents can select trait for their kids is not far off. The article “Designer Babies,” by Patricia Smith explains the controversy about whether we should alter the genes of babies. It acknowledges the positive affects of gene manipulation as well as the possible downsides. While the advances in genetic science look promising, they also are quite scary in that we might change the future entirely.

Current scientists are waiting to do a procedure that would combine the traits of three people to create a birth defect-free baby. 12 million people in the United States suffer from genetic affects such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and hemophilia. By isolating the genes that cause these diseases, scientists they could replace these genes with healthy ones, and eventually leave no traces of disease left. “The most exciting part, scientifically, is to be able to prevent or fix an error in the genetic machinery,” says Dr. Alan Copperman, director of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Mount Sinai Medical Center. Diseases can be destroyed by not letting them be passed on, possibly becoming a thing of the past. Perhaps even minor traits can be replaced and everyone could be generally healthier.

But the idea of modifying babies has sparked controversy. Jeremy Gruber, a president of a bioethics advocacy group called the Council for Responsible Genetics, sees potential danger. “He fears such procedures could unintentionally cause new, unforeseen genetic abnormalities or accidently eliminate positive traits,” the author stated. Gruber is worried that scientists could make a mistake, and that mistake would carry on to many more offspring. In fact, many countries such as Canada, Australia, France, and Denmark have banned the altering of human genes. People also think scientists and people will get to carried away. Choosing traits like intelligence or athleticism could change our society. Ethicist Josephine Johnson thinks everyone will be compulsive in giving children desirable traits, which would change our lifestyle. In history, other genetic experiments have gone wrong, such as the eugenics movement, which discouraged people with undesirable traits to reproduce.

I don’t think we should be modifying genetics either. Humans have evolved and prospered very well using natural selection and variation. These processes relied on natural human diversity among offspring, and producing designer babies could make us vulnerable. I learned in science class that lack of diversity could lead to extinction of a species. Although that is unlikely, the changing of genetics is bound to have negative affects. Perhaps it could lead to overpopulation, or reckless competition. Humans have been living for a long time without changing our babies, and its not worth the risk.