Sleepy head born too soon for coddling
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
Sixty years ago I enlisted in the Marine Corps as a sleepy head teenager. I recall sleeping on the train enroute to Parris Island, S.C. for boot camp. That wasn’t a comfortable sleep sitting up on those hard seats in the passenger cars of trains in that era.
It became a lot more uncomfortable when the train backed into antebellum Beaufort, S.C. just as dawn began shedding its first light and Marine drill instructors stormed the train yelling commands in words I had never heard before.
I am a quick learner and I knew immediately that this was no Boy Scout camp. We were loaded onto trucks that I would describe today as cattle cars to be driven to Parris Island. Symbolically, Marine boot camp begins when one crosses the Archer’s Creek causeway into Marine Corps territory — a place where the recruits would live until they graduated as Marines — or be washed out and sent home as civilians.
Regardless of my age at that time when I crossed that bridge, I was no longer a teenager. Suddenly, I was jolted awake every morning at 4:30 a.m. ready of not.
I want to know where Mary Carskadon was then. As a Brown University professor who teaches human behavior and is director of sleep research at E.P. Bradley Hospital in Rhode Island, she led a team of researchers, according to a story by Valerie Strauss in The Washington Post, to prove that — biologically speaking — teenagers are really out of it early in the morning.
The researchers took saliva of teenagers at different times of the day to measure the sleep promoting hormone melatonin. The results, according to Strauss’ story, was that melatonin levels in teenagers rise later at night than they do in children and adults and remain at a high level later in the morning.
Carskadon and her research team hope that the results of this study will cause schools to change their schedule to accommodate this sleep clock rhythm of students in their teens. Most high schools start classes at 7 a.m.
She said there is a tendency to blame the sleepy eyed teens habits of procrastination in doing homework, or nightly marathon phone sessions, or playing computer games late at night. In truth it is their biological clock that is keeping them awake.
The story quotes Stephen Sheldon, chief of sleep medicine at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, that sleep deprivation can affect mood, performance, attention, learning, and biological functions.
Efforts to change school starting times has met opposition — strangely from parents — who said schools were mollycoddling teenagers. In truth, it was found that the objection was from parents who had to be at work at their own jobs by 8 a.m. and wanted their children safely in school. Others said it would interfere with after school activities, such as sports and jobs.
Some schools have changed the starting hours. In 1996, the Edina, Minn. school system moved class starting time from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. The program was so successful that two years later Minneapolis followed suit.
The results, according to Kyla Wahlstrom of the University of Minnesota, was that students were more alert and less depressed, however, she said, student grades didn’t rise significantly.
I honestly don’t think Carskadon’s research will cause the Marines Corps to allow its boots five more hours of sleep each morning.
The lights at Parris Island — and at the San Diego Marine Corps Recruiting Station — will be snapped on at 4:30 a.m. and someone in a commanding voice will yell "hit the deck."
Results, a platoon of teenagers will be on the deck bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready for any challenge — or else.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470. Semper Fi.)