Tuesday, September 09, 2014

More on lazy teenagers and whether schools should coddle them

When I ran some of columnist John Rosemond's remarks on schools who think they have to change their schedules to accommodate teenagers who don't like to get up early, I got some interesting responses.

Of course, I agree with Rosemond: The reason teenagers don't like to get up early in the morning is because they like to stay up late at night, an observation that doesn't take a great deal of research to justify the inferemce and does not involve any particularly complex chain of reasoning. I've been a teenager, raised four children, each of whom went through a mercifully short phase of teenagerism, and know many people who have them or have had them.

They would all testify to this phenomenon: teenagers like to stay up late.

There are a number of reasons for this. Rosemond gives one: the ease of electronic communication, which teenagers take full advantage of through computers and texting. I would only add that they are also lazy, non-compliant, and rebellious, which may have something to do with it too.

But these common sense observations are in plain sight of most everybody with a teenager are just not enough for some people. Instead, we have to resort to "science," so-called. An explanation is just not considered legitimate unless it has the backing of someone who wears a laboratory smock.

The expression "research shows" has to be the most abused expression in the English language. Everyone uses it almost like a magical incantation. Few people actually read the research. If they do anything at all, they read the executive summary. Even fewer people look at the studies that may militate against the conclusion of the study that supports their view.

Not only that, but what continues to amaze me is how much modern research doesn't follow basic rules of research. I'm not talking about anything fancy, mind you, just basic stuff. When you do try to scratch below the surface, what you usually find is that the "research" isn't quite as telling as it seemed at first. It either is just not representative, hasn't been replicated, is mostly anecdotal, is without adequate controls, etc., etc.

This is particularly bad in education research. I recently studied up on the research comparing phonics with whole word methodologies of teaching reading. The biggest meta-study done on the subject was by the National Reading Panel. They went and found something over 1000 studies (using several databases, so the overlap was not known). Then they weeded out all the studies that didn't meet basic research criteria (not the "basic" in that description). You know how many they were left with? Something above fifty.

Fifty. Out of about a thousand studies. This should tell us something about "research".

But most people don't think about this. They just know that if they can find a study that supports their position, they can say that their belief is "research-based." They turn their computer on, Google the term "sleep research," and find a study that concludes that teenagers are simply incapable of going to bed early. Presto. If it's on the Internet, it must be true.

It reminds me of what Andrew Lang once said about statistics: that they are used by some people like a drunk uses a lampost, "for support rather than illumination."

I have addressed before the tendency in modern thought to scientize all things. We think everything has a scientific explanation, a fact that helps us tremendously in shirking responsibility for what we do. If there is a biological explanation for our behavior, then we cannot be held responsible for the bad things we do. Our good deeds? Well, we can take credit for those, of course.

This is not to say that science is itself illegitimate, only that there is a lot of bogus science out there that gets passed around and believed by a lot of people. A real scientist should be bothered by this, although it seems as if not many of them are. But maybe I just don't get out much.

So the most interesting response to the post on Rosemond's column was this: That "research shows" that teenagers had a "biological preference" for going to bed late. One commenter cited a study showing that that the "biological preference" for teenagers going to sleep was 11:00 p.m. Not 10:53, not 11:04, but 11:00 p.m.

Funny how nature cooperates so closely with arbitrary, man-made measurement thresholds.

All this so-called "science" is employed in the effort to show that teenagers don't just want to stay up late (an easily observable phenomenon). No: They need to stay up late (an observation requiring live scientists with sophisticated measuring instruments and a degree in sleepology).

Now I haven't had the time to closely review this "research." My experience is that when I do that, I usually find numerous weaknesses that render the study advisory at best, but certainly not conclusive. I notice for example, that the study cited involved 25 teenagers. So my initial reaction is to ask whether we are really justified in changing school policies across the country on the basis of a study of 25 teenagers.

But I'm not sure that it is even necessary to further investigate the study.

I find this whole idea that people (teenagers or anyone else) have a "biological preference" for going to sleep at a certain time very suspicious. The quality of the study aside, so far no one has answered a much more obvious question I have asked here and several other places. I'll restate it:

The claim is that research has found that teenagers have a "biological preference" of going to bed [I'm going to assume Singring's figure, since he's a scientist] at 11:00 p.m. The question is, 11:00 p.m. of what time zone? Greenwich Mean Time? Eastern Standard? Pacific Standard Time? Central European Time? Irish Standard Time? Kuybyshev Time? Kyrgyzstan Time? Azores Summer Time?

Let's assume the study quoted on sleep was conducted on the east coast of the United States. Does that mean that if the same study was conducted in eastern Kazakhstan that it would have found that the optimal time for teenagers to go to sleep was 5:00 a.m. Alma-Ata Time? If so, has anyone informed the inhabitants, whose teenage children are probably trying to go to bed 7 or 8 hours earlier than their "biological preference," or that they really need to start school there at 3:30 in the afternoon?

Should school times change to match the seasons?

If this "biological preference" changes from place to place, then wouldn't it have to be tied to some environmental factors, say sunlight? And if it's tied to sunlight, then would it make a difference if you spent most of your time outside or inside? If you left lights on in your house until late? Would seasonal changes in sunset times affect your "biological preference" so that you needed to go to bed earlier in winter (at least in the northern hemisphere) and later in the summer? And would that mean that the optimal school start time should vary with the seasons--say, 9:30 in September when the sun still sets relatively late, and 7:30 in the December, when the sun sets relatively early, and then back to 9:30 or 10:00 when daylight gets a head of steam in the late spring?

And how come all this talk about "circadian rhythms" (I personally have never been to Circadia, but I'm thinking it must be a happnin' place, what with everyone staying up into all hours of the night and all) and their relation to sunlight concentrates solely on the time the sun sets, biologically forcing people to go to bed late because the sun sets late, and seems to ignore the countervailing consideration that when the sun is setting late, it is also rising early, and should therefore have the opposite effect of biologically forcing people to get up early?

In short, I'm not only interested about exactly how "biological" this sleep time preference is, but with the assumptions employed in these studies and in the discussion about them.

There's just something very squirrely about the whole way this is being thought about.

12 comments:

Singring said...

So here we have another long diatribe that studiously avoids engaging with even a single piece of research that has been cited, instead telling us why it's OK to disregard that research because of 'common sense' and because it conflicts with what you already know to be the answer.

I've never seen a more sorry excuse for intellectual laziness.

I take the time to answer your (incredibly ignorant) question about why people in Kazakhstan don;t go to sleep at 5 a.m. and you proceed to ridicule something you clearly don't understand in the slightest.

I have never encountered someone who is this desperate to be taken seriously but then proceeds to embarrass themselves so horrifically on exactly the topics they want to be taken seriously on. It really is a site to behold when a grown, educated man dismisses science with the sophomoric snide attitude of the kind of teenagers he is accusing of being lazy louts.

Well, at least something good will come out of this - I can use this and the previous post very effectively in my own teaching next term. It will be a wonderful case study of cognitive bias, rampant non-sequiturs, strawmen, changing the subject, the trouble with intuition and the consequences of willful ignorance and relying on 'common sense observations' with a sample size of n = 1.

So I guess I should be grateful.

Martin Cothran said...

Should I take this as a defense of bogus science and the willingness to believe it (which were the only targets in this post)?

Martin Cothran said...

I hadn't read your comment on the other post when I wrote this, but I just did.

Was I supposed to be impressed?

I don't see anything in your comment that addresses anything fundamental on this issue. You say that there are "circadian rhythms" which I discuss in this post, but don't address the problem I pointed out about them in relation to this issue: if later sunsets push us to stay up later, why don't earlier sunrises push us to wake up earlier?

This seems to me an important question if you're tying theses rhythms to closely to the length of days.

Martin Cothran said...

Also, my observations of students over 20 years of teaching is almost universally this: that the students who are more self-disciplined go to bed earlier and are less sleepy in school (and fresher in the morning) than the students who are generally unself-disciplined. And this observation is true regardless of the length of the day.

Am I supposed to disregard my direct observations over the years of hundreds of students in deference to a study of 25 people whom I have never met who were studied by other people whom I have no experience of by an organization I have no familiarity with?

I'd love to see your definition of "empirical observation."

Anonymous said...

Sleeping through Singring's class should be considered a defensive mechanism.

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't a more useful study be to compare the bedtimes of teens throughout the ages. My hypothesis (I am not a scientist but my rudimentary recollection of the scientific method says I should have one of these) is that the bedtimes of teens (and thus the "wake up" times) are directly tied to the level of activity necessary for survival (think agrarian society vs. industrial society vs. Information Age society) and the level of stimulation routinely possible to engage one's mind at a late hour. Put more simply, before gaslights, electricity, air conditioning, radio, television, the internal combustion engine, video games, the Internet, etc., were teens circadian rhythms different than adults? And, since childhood (as we think of it) and adolescence in its current forms are recent inventions, is there something about the culture that is causing different sleep patterns for teens rather than something inherent in the homo sapien which requires it between the ages of 13-19 to stay up later and then sleep later. My guess is no. However, until a study (or studies) actually control for these variables, it would seem my guess is as good as any other.

Anonymous said...

If Singring is a teacher, then he/she/it is committing educational malpractice. Wouldn't want my kids learning ANY subject in his/her/its class.

Singring said...

Dear Anonymous:

'If Singring is a teacher, then he/she/it is committing educational malpractice.'

Is that so?

Could you elaborate and point out what I have said here that leads you to believe I am 'committing educational malpractice.'?

Singring said...

Martin:

'Should I take this as a defense of bogus science and the willingness to believe it (which were the only targets in this post)?'

How exactly does your post constitute a critique of 'bogus science' in this context when you don;t give a single specific example of a 'bogus study'? You don't engage with science at all in this post, particularly not the science that stimulated this post - on sleeping patterns in teens and the specific instance of Rosemond misrepresenting tyhat science.

In fact you seem to pride yourself (once again) on your ability to instantaneously decide - without investigation or critique - the quality of any scientific study:

'But I'm not sure that it is even necessary to further investigate the study.'

The reason? Well, the reason you give is that you find the idea 'suspicious'. Well, I guess that settles it then.

Good thing Einstein didn't pursue his ideas of relativity, which, I can assure you, made lots of people 'suspicious'.

Oh boy, I wish we lived in a world where every scientist just ignored stuff that 'made them suspicious'. To quote Sam Cooke: 'What a wonderful world that would be'.

Singring said...

Martin:

'You say that there are "circadian rhythms" which I discuss in this post, but don't address the problem I pointed out about them in relation to this issue: if later sunsets push us to stay up later, why don't earlier sunrises push us to wake up earlier?'

You have completely misunderstoof not only the point of circadian rhythms, but also the point of why I was explaining it to you.

The reason I brought them up is because you didn't understand why a 'biological clock' wouldn't make everyone around the world wake up at the exact same moment. The reason is that this inner clock is 'entrained' by daylight periods.

This is where your second misunderstanding occurs: This does not mean that our sleeping period dramatically changes and aligns perfectly with sunrise and sunset every day. This should be pretty obvious, because most people fall asleep at roughly the same time in summer and winter. Office workers who sit in lit offices on winter evenings don;t stay up while people out on the street spontaneously snooze at sundown. People in Alaska don;t sleep 15 hours a day in winter and stay up 15 hours a day in summer. Likewise, when someone flies to Japan from the US, they don't get off the plane in Japan and suddenly collapse into sleep. The entire season jet-lag is such an issue is that it can take days and even weeks for the inner clock to slowly recalibrate according to the new daylight cycle at the destination.

There is a difference between an inner clock being calibrated against external stimuli and it being slavishly turned on and off at sun-up and sun-down.

If you cannot wrap your head around that, I really can't help you. But in that case it doesn't surprise me that you dismiss science so casually - it's hard sometimes and you seem to prefer pat, simple aneight year old might understand.

'Also, my observations of students over 20 years of teaching is almost universally this: that the students who are more self-disciplined go to bed earlier and are less sleepy in school (and fresher in the morning) than the students who are generally unself-disciplined. And this observation is true regardless of the length of the day.'

First of all, this is anecdotal evidence from a highly biased source, no less. You are welcome to get together with 'The Parent Guru' and devise a study to test your hypothesis that it is discipline, not general sleeping patterns, that is responsible for sleepy teens. Then you can publish it and show everyone how the data supports your hypothesis.

But you don't do that. You just brandish this observation as if in itself it was enough to dismiss any and all contrary data gathered from thousands of students. This is precisely why people don't take you seriously in education debates like the one on science teaching on the government level. You don't even know how to engage in and evaluate science, so how on earth would you know anything about teaching it?

But even if I were to take your 'observation' on face value, can you tell me how it negates the finding that - in general - later school days benefit all students in general and - apparently - make the average student go to bed earlier instead of later, according to the study in question?

Both factors could be at play.

But again, that might be getting a bit too complicated for your liking...

Singring said...

'Am I supposed to disregard my direct observations over the years of hundreds of students in deference to a study of 25 people whom I have never met who were studied by other people whom I have no experience of by an organization I have no familiarity with?'

What is this 'study of 25 people' you refer to?

This is a complete straw man.

And are you seriously suggesting you only accept evidence (and judge its value) based on people or organisations 'you are familiar with'?

I guess that explains it...

Anonymous said...

90 per cent of scientists believe that Singring is a PC Comandante.