Should There be a National School Starting Time?

Author's Note: I wrote this persuasive piece on why there shouldn't be a national school starting time. My focus is trying to clearly state reasons why we shouldn't and give facts to back them up.

5:45 in the morning...the dreaded time when my mom comes in my room to wake me up for school. Even though waking up early is hard, I see the wisdom behind it. Some parents are protesting that waking up for school at 7:30 is to hard for kids. That said, maybe college will be too hard for students to handle. Future jobs might  be too much to handle as well. Starting school at a certain time shouldn't be a national law because students need to learn discipline to wake up early, in order to prepare them for the future.

Would starting schools later really have a positive effect? It would give kids the satisfaction of knowing they got their way, and they lose discipline. If you always give kids their way when they're growing up, they're going to expect to get their way when they're older. When they get a job, their employer isn't going to let them come into work at 8:15 instead of 7:30 just because they need more sleep.

Is the time really too hard for them to handle? If the national school starting time was 8:00 for middle school students and high school students, it would allow them to stay up later. If they stayed up later, they could cause all kind of trouble, which could even put the rest of the community in potential danger. Also if the student makes it into college -- the classes won't start later. Waking up early teaches us good habits.

If it was a law, what time would we start and end school? The start time would probably be 8:30 and we would probably get out at 3:30. With that being the time for middle school and high school, what would a school district like Pewaukee do? If all four schools start and end at the same time, there would be way to much chaos. There wouldn't be enough room on the buses. Also, with school ending later, sports and clubs will also end later. This gives students less time to do their homework, which could result in bad grades.

So back to the final question: should there be a national school starting time? I see logic behind both sides of the situation. Parents don't want their kids to have to wake up so early. On the other hand, schools are teaching students good habits by forcing them to wake up early. What should we do?

I think that if parents really feel so strongly about their kids waking up early to get school on time, they should home school them. That way, they can have whatever schedule they want for their kids. If a community really feels strongly about it maybe they could have an election. But I think that waking up early is preparing middle school and high school students for later in life. I do not think that it should be a national law.