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Yeah I dunno man. It probably goes without saying, but I'm equally baffled that there are people who genuinely care whether the sun is up when they get up. I believe you, I just can't understand it on a visceral level. Maybe it's the difference between morning people and night owls? I find waking up to be kind of unpleasant no matter what the light is like, so I guess maybe if I didn't feel that way I would notice more of a difference. Not sure though.
It’s not just that it’s dark but also how long it stays dark. Where I live sunrise between dec and Jan is somewhere 7:10-7:30.
My children get up for school at 6:45 and we drop off around 7:40 and school starts at 8. It starts getting light somewhere around 1/2 hr before actual sunrise so this basically means that dawn is just cracking or will be soon when they get up in the winter. If we went dst all year, it would mean school started in the dark. ‘Just start school an hour later’ doesn’t really work since it’s timed to start before the workday, also getting out an hour later means getting home in the dark.
If the argument is to push work hours as well, at this point you are making the argument against dst all year long, since you’re effectively countering it with a shifted schedule.
It’s not really about whether the sun cracks through your window and touches your face as you wake up. It’s about coordinating even the slightest amount of social complexity to maximize both winter and summer differences
You seem, probably unconsciously, to be using arguments as soldiers here.
As things stand, your kids are already getting home in the dark, so that’s not a good argument to oppose any changes to the DST status quo.
In many parts of the country, it’s just not possible to have sunlight both before and after the work/school day. DST and choice of time zone have nothing to do with it.
It's not an argument as a soldier, it's a stupid mistake of math on my part. Shifting both the time and the school day an hour wouldn't change the fact that my kids don't get home in the dark, you are right.
But the broader point stands: pushing both the school day and the time and my work an hour, undermine the argument for DST all year long. as it effectively negates it. My arguments are:
Personally, I find the idea of standard time year round much more palletable
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Right but I don't see why "start school in the dark" is something you put out there like it's an obvious nonstarter. That seems perfectly fine. Ditto for getting home in the dark. The state of the sun when I'm going about my day doesn't matter to me in the slightest, and I fail to understand why it matters to some people here.
Just registering for the sake of completeness that I find sunlight in the morning hugely important. Sunlight is one of the most cheerful and vitalising stimuli we have, tied directly into a bunch of our natural circuits.
I think there may be a genetic or cultural component - it’s much more common in Asia to treat the Sun as an enemy. In my last office there was a running war between the European employees who wanted the blinds open and the Asians who wanted them all shut.
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