Assignment II (Counter Argument)
"If you want to get ahead, have a lie-in"
By Tom Hodgkinson
October 9, 2014
An experiment that allows some lucky teenagers to start school an hour later than
usual will prove what we idlers have long suspected – the key to success is plenty of
sleep
‘Researchers are giving teenagers an extra hour in bed not because they think
the teenagers will enjoy it, but because they reckon it will make them do
better in their exams.’
The news that lucky teenagers at 100 British schools are to be given a lie-in
as part of a scientific experiment will cause jubilation among those concerned,
both the children and their parents. I know from bitter experience that getting
a grumpy, monosyllabic, growling 14-year-old out of bed in the morning is
extraordinarily painful.
I blame social conditioning. Somewhere in the recesses of our mind we still
harbour a fantasy that our children will leap out of bed at 6.30 every morning,
full of good cheer, ready to tackle the challenges of the day with selfconfidence. Early rising, or “scraping the ice off the windscreen on a winter’s
morning”, as David Cameron put it in his uninspiring speech about hard work
at the Tory party conference last week, is meant to be a good thing.
This fantasy of being up with the lark is precisely that though: a fantasy. As
Jerome K Jerome wondered back in 1889, towards the end of the supposedly
hard-working Victorian era: “Is there any human being, I wonder, besides the
hero of a Sunday-school ‘tale for boys’, who ever gets up willingly?”
No, we are all slumberers. But the utilitarians out there have generally tried to
make the snoozers feel bad. The great thing, though, about this new
experiment is that it’s all in aid of science and a booming economy. The
reason the researchers are giving teenagers an extra hour in bed is not
because they think the teenagers will enjoy it, but because they reckon it will
make them do better in their exams. Yes, it is as simple as that. Recent
studies in the field of neuroscience – ie brain scans – suggest that sleep
improves brain power.
More sleep equals economic growth: that is the extraordinary equation that
we’re nearing which is great. If we can somehow convince the authorities,
with the help of science, that sleep is good for productivity, then we’re on to
a win-win situation.
And it really is happening. In June this year a report in the journal Science
linked braininess and sleep. Researchers compared two groups of mice. One
group of mice was deprived of sleep, while another was allowed to doze as
long as they wanted. The sleep-deprived mice appeared to be considerably
more stupid than their well-rested fellows. “Sleep helps neurons form very
specific connections on dendritic branches [ie brain cell connectors] that may
facilitate long-term memory,” concluded the researchers. “Different types of
learning form synapses on different branches of the same neurons,
suggesting that learning causes very specific structural changes in the brain.”
And a recent study of African sparrows showed that the hard workers died
earlier, or as researcher Dr. Andrew Young put it: “Our findings suggest that
the unequal sharing of workloads may leave the hardest-working individuals
at risk of oxidative stress, which could lead to poor health and accelerated
ageing.”
You might argue that the Oxford scientists behind the new sleep project are
stating the bleeding obvious: “Recent advances in our understanding of the
neuroscience of sleep have shown that the body clock of teenagers is
delayed,” said Prof Russell Foster.
But we should surely welcome a bit of hard science to prove what we idlers
have always suspected: sleep makes you clever. Says Foster: “Our project will
be the first … to explore whether a later start to the school day, along with
educational programmes regarding the importance of sleep, will have a
positive impact upon both academic performance and overall health in the
teenage population.”
It’s a bit like that scene in the Woody Allen film Sleeper. Woody’s health-nut
character wakes up in the future and is given a cigarette to smoke by a
white-coated doctor. “We now know that smoking is good for you,” says the
doc. So it will go with the new sleep science: “Previously it was thought that
early rising was the key to health, wealth and happiness. We now know that
an extra hour in bed in the morning will give you the competitive edge you
need in today’s global race.”Which is, as they say, a result.
The thing is, it’s not just teenagers who need a lot of sleep. It’s adults too.
But they want to sleep after lunch. I recently interviewed Jeremy Paxman and
was surprised when he concluded, “every office should have a nap room.” It
turns out that brain scientists are in agreement with this: “If we want people
to be more creative we need people to be able to do less,” said Vincent
Walsh, professor of human brain research at University College, London
earlier this year. “Companies should allow naps in the afternoon. They should
get rid of the habit of clocking in and clocking out.” So there we have it: a
recipe for success according to the latest science. Start work at 10am and
sleep after lunch. If you want to get ahead, take a nap.