It’s time to leverage our vast daylight stores for a cause we can all get behind: morning sunlight for zero period students.
The sad fact of the matter is that for much of the winter months, students with zero periods not only must suffer the burden of waking early, but they must do it in darkness, with no sun to draw them out of bed and guide their weary feet outside.
To remedy this injustice among injustices, I propose a daylight spending time, which would draw on the vast funds of sunlight that we store away every year to sit unspent and unenjoyed, probably in an underground vault somewhere in Nebraska.
What should we do with all this unspent sunlight? I’ll tell you: on the last week of August, when the precious summer light wanes and kids are trying to kick their summer sleeping habits, we roll the clocks back two hours (that’s one hour behind standard time) to preserve morning daylight for those unlucky souls with a zero period.
The rollback would last until the middle of February, at which point we could again sustain ourselves on naturally timed sunlight.
Think about it for a second. How glorious would it be if every student, no matter their class schedule, workload or start time, could wake in the morning to the sounds of birds chirping and the sight of warm sunbeams gently poking through their window? We’d probably see a massive drop in tardiness, improved test scores and sweatpants around campus.
I have a zero period, and there’s not much I hate more than having to wake up at 6:30 four days a week to make it on time to algebra. Oh wait, how about having to do that in the pitch dark from November to February because our school starts early enough for me to see the Big Dipper before I stumble onto campus? Yeah, like I wanted to go to school anyway. I’ll just sleep in until after break.
The only solution is to set the clocks back an hour past standard time, nationwide. Students will finally get the sunlight and extra sleep that they need, and we can stimulate our solar economy to boot.
It’s time to stop being stingy with our Smaug-like stores of daylight. Remember, it was greed that led to the downfall of Tolkien’s dwarven kingdoms. Don’t let us follow them into the metaphorical and literal darkness. Stop hoarding. Start spending.