This guy's an idiot

I would love to have the sun come up at 5 AM. That sounds nice.

I mean, I would sleep through most of it, but it means I could just have the sun slowly wake me up in the morning, and be ready for the work day. Instead of feeling rushed in the morning.

As I said, DLS should be completely eradicated.

Though, I will concede that even permanent DLS is better then what we have currently.

The way federal law works, I believe you can opt out of DST, but not make perm DST

changing time zone or going perm DST requires Congressional approval.

It must first win approval from the House Committee on Temporal Matters, pictured here:

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We shifted our class schedule a year or so ago because many 8AM classes were under-enrolled, which was a reasonable reason, and because someone read some stuff about high school students getting more sleep if classes were pushed back in the morning, which was not a good reason. High school kids often have parents kicking them out of bed and enforcing bed times. College students? Not so much. Many of us said if you push the start of classes back the students will simply stay up later in the evening. And yep, pretty much that’s what happened. Admittedly, at my school they are just as likely to be up late working on projects or other class work as they are playing games or whatever, but they still aren’t getting enough sleep.

The obvious solution is to split the difference. Eastern Split-Difference Time, GMT-4.5

The bill says that local and state authorities cannot enforce federal bans on guns, ammunition and magazines

Unfortunately he probably does understand. The feds rely on state officers for federal law enforcement. This is similar to how states “legalize” marijuana or set up “sanctuaries” for immigrants.

I wonder if they can make Daylight Savings Time sundials?

I can almost picture that guy outside the office. He wears cowboy boots, wears a puffy jacket and gets into his $100K custom SUV as he contemplates running over libs on his 5 minute commute back to the mansion.

I think I passed into Armando-level thinking about, “all GOP,” before the election and nothing since has change my mind that he’s wrong. The entire mindset is psycho. The longer we let the GOP think they are a valid, thinking party of like-minded people, the longer we delay the purge of the ignorant, racist assholes they truly are.

That’s a bit of correlation = causation isn’t? The nature sleep schedule of teenagers (which, lets face, really is anyone under 21, when it comes the development) does shift to later in the evens. The fact that kids are staying up later maybe fitting their schedule better than the 8 AM start time.

I would be curious to see if the grades have improved over that time period. Who cases what they do in the evening, as long as they are learning the stuff that professors are putting in front of them and retaining it after all.

As always, I do try to provide some sort of link.

Sadly, we could move the entire Republican Party into this thread.

The shifting of classes by a half hour wasn’t really the issue, as well it was a half hour, from 8 to 8:30. The problem was the way the shift was done. No one presented evidence really about college students, who yes are generally in the same developmental zone as high school students but are not in anywhere near the same day to day environment, physically or psychologically, in many cases. People were acting as if the only variable was the start time of classes, and that if the class time was changed the only likely result would be more sleep. No accounting was made for the idea that students might figure they could stay up a half hour later than usual, because classes got pushed pack, etc.

The 8:30 sections are still under-enrolled, at about the same rate. You are of course correct that young folks tend to stay up later. From my (anecdotal, though over a lot of years) experience, though, the majority of students are not really “up” and awake until 10-11AM anyhow. I have many in my 1PM classes who are just getting up. So pushing back classes a half hour was never going to do anything but make some folks feel good about addressing a problem as they saw it… That was why many of us were skeptical. Personally, it doesn’t bother me much, other than I don’t like teaching in the afternoons as I’m a morning person.

I’d argue there’s a drawback, is at might be harder om the students who have to work afternoons

I took a single class in college in a morning slot (8 or 9am). It was a required lab and the only slot, and I dropped it and switched back to Computer engineering from EE. That was my EE summer, which was educational.

Yeah, there is no perfect solution. The usual compromise has been to rationalize the schedule as something akin to a “normal” work day schedule. That of course is of questionable relevance today. Mostly it comes down to the fact that for face to face or most synchronous instruction of any sort, the faculty are most likely going to be acclimated to and expect a predictable workday type timeframe. Faculty typically have less flexibility and more obligations than most (not all, certainly) traditional type students.

With flex-hybrid and increased use of virtual synchronous times, things may change. I am teaching a summer course that runs like 3-5:30 twice a week, purely virtual but synchronous. Normally I would loathe going in to campus in the summer in the evening like that, but from home? No sweat.

That’s very fair. 30 minutes seem like no difference at all.

When I was teaching, I always asked for 8am slots, because if my students showed up at all, they wanted to be there. Made the classes more productive.

When I was a grad student TA, I didn’t mind leading Friday discussion sections because there were usually fewer students enrolled, which sometimes meant better discussions but always meant fewer papers to grade.

Half my 8 AM astrophysics course used to show up half conscious. Several of them who were otherwise engaged students would fall asleep at random.

In short, 8 AM classes are bad.

I had to teach myself differential equations because they only offered that course at 8am, and the professor was crazy boring, and it was impossible for me to stay awake.

I ended up going to the actual class 4 times. 2 times before I realized that I was going to fall asleep every day I went, and then the midterm and the final.

Personally, I like early classes, as I get up at 5AM most days, even weekends. But I realize that one, I’m old, and two, that’s not the case for my students.

There’s a real tension between meeting the students where they are (good) and pandering to them (bad). The line is not the same for everyone, or every institution, either.

My school is a professionally focused small private college with a strong interdisciplinary humanities-based general education core in tandem with some pretty cutting-edge technical and creative majors. One of the courses I teach is a first-year class about higher education in general, where students learn about global higher ed, the history of higher ed, and just as importantly, get to figure out exactly why they are in college and how to navigate school to get to their goals. Pretty much all of them are in college because they believe, have been told, or realize that a degree in a particular field is necessary for the job they want.

For these students, the idea of classes start more or less around the time their desired jobs will start is a relatively easy sell, and even then the early classes can be a crapshoot. Like @BennyProfane I often have students who are really really with it in my early classes, but like @vinraith says, it’s just as likely that the class will be horrible.

Though I have to say the absolute nadir of class times is summer, 5-8PM in the evenings, in-person, on-campus. Students show up after work, sometimes still dressed in often uncomfortable business attire, beat to hell and wanting to be anywhere but in that room. That takes some creative teaching to make it work, I can tell you. Luckily, while my classes may not be the pinnacle of intellectual experience, they usually aren’t boring from what my students say.