[mbreese]

It is also bounded in the other end by sports. If your school day goes too late, you won’t have time in the afternoon/evening for sports practices. So, if you still need X hours for classes, you’ll need to start early enough to get over in time for 1-1.5 hour practices.

(It also applies to other extracurricular sports, but I doubt anyone really worries about play practice schedules)

[munchenphile]

Well, even in a world where theater is taken as seriously as sport, at least you can do theater indoors at all hours.

You can’t really play soccer after dusk if the field is outside and you don’t have lights. So lots of outdoor sports have strict daylight constraints.

[NonNefarious]

The school day ending at 3 doesn't preclude sports. A 9 a.m.-to-3 p.m. school day was the norm for generations, and there's no reason it can't be now.

[ProjectArcturis]

You could do sports in the morning instead.

[GoOnThenDoTell]

Remove the sports, can do that on the weekend

[munchenphile]

Delusional. Sports are competitive. They require daily reps. Sports are also meant to keep kids physically active and healthy, and to establish a routine of physical activity into their adulthood (alongside intellectual productivity). You can’t just be physically active and healthy on the weekend.

[cgriswald]

Then have sports be an acceptable substitute to gym classes and a regular part of the day. I doubt anyone can explain to me why the captain of our football team also needed to be in gym class playing flag football with us in order to graduate in a way where the answer isn't bureaucratic.

At some point you have to decide on an optimum between time, sleep, and output.

[munchenphile]

I’m not defending daily gym class. I’m defending daily sports.

I was fortunate enough to go to a high school that did not have a gym period, but required all students to play an organized sport.

Gym in large high schools is a waste of time due to the student to instructor ratio. One frustrated gym teacher to 50+ kids playing dodgeball? Of course you’re going to have theater kids just going through the motions and goth kids behind the bleachers smoking cigarettes. It’s not real exercise.

You need small rosters, organized practices, uniforms, referees, fans (students and parents) and intra-school competition. It creates seriousness and expectations. You can’t hide from your coach when there’s only 14 kids on the roster. You need to do the sprints with everyone else and take the drills seriously.

I don’t think this scales beyond smaller high schools. Not enough facilities, not enough coaches, not enough money.

[danenania]

That sounds great to me as an athlete, but I know there are many kids who would hate being forced to be part of organized sports.

The important thing is that they get exercise of some kind. Maybe just allow them to choose whatever form of exercise they want as long as they do something each day?

The school could offer sports but also allow them to walk, run, lift weights (when old enough), play tag, do yoga, or whatever they prefer.

If a kid truly hates all exercise and refuses to cooperate, I guess there’s only so much you can do, but you could at least remove as much friction as possible and try to meet them where they are. Anything that gets them moving will offer huge physical and mental benefits over just slouching in shitty plastic chairs all day.

[ajmurmann]

As someone not from the US all this is bizarrely moving a health concern into school which should be about education and nothing else. If it's reasonable for school to prescribe exercise for kids why not have them schedule doctor visits for the kids and create meal plans? Where is the line?

[RulerOf]

>The important thing is that they get exercise of some kind. Maybe just allow them to choose whatever form of exercise they want as long as they do something each day?

As someone who only took part in high school sports for the exercise, I was really frustrated that I went through 10+ years of education without really being taught anything about the realities of what's required to achieve and maintain lifelong fitness.

I would have been happy to join a "cardio and weight training team" because I frankly didn't give a fuck about wrestling or football, especially since those programs focused most of their effort on the well-being of the top-performing players anyway.

[galangalalgol]

I agree with the option to do other activities. I didn't like sports much, but I liked lifting in off-season, but when I didn't want to play in any sports (we didn't have power lifting) I got taken out of off-season and put back playing full-contact half court while the PE teacher tried to ignore that almost no one was doing anything physically active.

[ghaff]

It's not just sports. I didn't do sports in high school but I had quite a few other after school activities. And, no, it wouldn't make sense for everyone who wanted to do extracurriculars to come in on Saturday on a regular basis--probably driven by parents.

[mensetmanusman]

We had sports in the morning, starting at 6 AM. It definitely helped to wake you up for the rest of the day.

[Brybry]

High schools already do sports into the night hours anyway.

I don't know that "too late" has much meaning here.