In 1974 the US basically had DST the entire year to save energy. Being on year round DST would save us the most energy, because most people use energy at night for artificial lighting.
The main argument against it is that "kids have to go to school in the dark." Well you know what? Look at these maps. How many kids already have to go to school in the dark? Why does it matter? Even the kids would rather have more light after school so they can play.
And if you ask a farmer about it, they'll tell you "the animals don't read clocks". To them it doesn't really matter, they get up with the sun regardless of what the clock says.
Tangentially related, there are also studies showing that schools that force kids to get up at 6:30 also produce lower performing students because kids stay up late everywhere and then never get enough sleep.
If you want to keep the public school work week, it would make significantly more sense being 9-5 or even 10-6 Monday to Thursday rather than 8-3 Monday to Friday.
We aren't going home to work the farm, and we aren't setting insanely early sleep schedules to get up with the sun to till the fields. These ancient time systems cause legitimate harm for the sake of posterity.
Note that those studies apply to High Schools. Young kids are notoriously early risers.
Here in Ottawa, Canada, they've stumbled on a good solution. To save money on busing, they've staggered the school start times to allow bus sharing. In my area, that means the buses drop elementary kids off for an 8 o'clock start and then pick up high school kids for a 9 o'clock start.
As far as your suggestion of running four 8 hour school days instead of five 6 hour days, I certainly hope you're talking about high school. 6 hours is already too long for my 6 year old, I can't imagine 8 hours.
The justification I was given is that high school students need to be home first, as they might be responsible for watching their younger siblings once middle/elementary school lets out.
I'm wondering what the potential for savings is given that only 2.5% of the whole US energy consumption is lighting of commercial and residential buildings. Could anyone estimate the savings?
When I was a kid I went to a country school and lessons didn't start until 9:30, to accommodate dark mornings. If it's better for children, only children need necessarily adjust, provided school is also serving its industrial daycare function.
I get up around 8 and sleep between 1 and 2. So naturally I'm in favour of DST all year round.
Except that in large swaths of the U.S., we spend far more energy on air conditioning than lighting. (Which wasn't the case 40 years ago, when home A/C was much more rare.)
Getting home after dark would mean we'd spend less energy on cooling our homes (and though we still have to air condition workplaces during the daylight hours, we're cooling less cubic footage per person in most workplaces, plus larger A/C systems tend to have economies of scale and be more energy efficient overall).
Right. Extending daylight savings to extend leisure time makes some sense (although it wouldn't accomplish much in places where the sun sets before 4:30 in winter anyway). But extending daylight savings "to save energy" is counterproductive.
> And if you ask a farmer about it, they'll tell you "the animals don't read clocks". To them it doesn't really matter, they get up with the sun regardless of what the clock says.
Dairy truck drivers do.
They'll want to pick up the day's milk at ~6am.
Daylight savings change makes dairy farmers wake up before they otherwise would have to.
DST is what makes them have to get up earlier. Dairy farmers (or any other kind of farmer) are/were generally against DST, despite the common myth it was created for them[1].
The main argument against it is that "kids have to go to school in the dark." Well you know what? Look at these maps. How many kids already have to go to school in the dark? Why does it matter? Even the kids would rather have more light after school so they can play.
And if you ask a farmer about it, they'll tell you "the animals don't read clocks". To them it doesn't really matter, they get up with the sun regardless of what the clock says.