Mormon propaganda websites promote and boast that mormon teens who attend early morning seminary are high achievers and benefit from the attendance in the early morning.If you go to the news section at www.lds.org.au ,then you will see an article boasting that 3 teens who attended seminary have all achieved successfully at high school.

It did not work out that way for me.

Teens need their sleep, especially in the morning. I can't imagine it being healthy or beneficial in any way. It doesn't even keep the kids in church. The only reason for early morning seminary is to sustain the CES bureacracy.

Nah. My sis went to seminary. She was also on the honor roll.

Time spent in seminary is subtracted from the time available to teens. This can and does stunt their academic potential.

Wouldn't it make sense that an extra hour a day in high school for calculus, chemistry, or physics could actually increase the odds of a teen one day becoming a scientist rather than the typical business, psychology, or communications major?

Of course it does.

I think it is a mixed bag. But surely sleep deprivation would hurt some. Where I live there is an early morn. class or two that the LDS kids could NOT be in because seminary interfered. It was for high achievers in Math.

In Utah, seminary is incorporated into the school program so students can take the class as an "elective" any period. Yet another complete disregard for separation of Church and State.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2011 10:21AM by christieja.

I lived there for a time and never understood how they get away with that during school hrs. Utah is in a different world. Wish the nonmormons would file a lawsuit on that.

They do it in AZ and in some places in NM as well.

It certainly does screw things up for the kids. I found out first hand when I was 16 and going to meet my mom at her office on Kirtland AFB. I was exhausted from early morning seminary and after school activities. I fell asleep behind the wheel and crashed into the perimiter fence of sandia labs. Luckily the MPs were forgiving and let me off with a citation that acrried no fine and stayed on base. After that I didn't have to go to seminary again.

Research has shown that teens need between 8.5 and 9.25 hours of sleep each night. Some will need more than that. In addition, teens' circadian rhythms undergo adjustments that give teens a preference for going to bed and waking up later than usual.

Research has also shown that children cannot learn well without proper sleep. Knowledge that is acquired during the day is processed at night.

Sleep deprivation also results in disfunction of the prefrontal cortex, which may affect creativity, goal-seeking, and control of disruptive and potentially violent behaviors.

In light of this research, school systems nationwide have been moving to later school start times for teens whenever they are able to do so.

My bet is that the LDS church has not conducted a scientific study regarding the effects of early morning seminary.

As a teacher, there is no way that I would allow a child of mine to lose an hour of sleep in the morning in order to attend religious indoctrination.

actually, to adjust to the natural sleep patterns of teenagers, jr. high and high schools should start later rather than earlier.

the reason why teenagers are not killed by their parents is because the parents roll down around 10. Giving the teenagers that extra couple of hours of down time.

the fact that marment teenagers get up earlier, and without a wake-me-up is, in fact, a triple whammy.

Maybe, because kids who are motivated to get up early might be motivated in other things.

Maybe, kids who have parents who make sure their kids get up to go also make sure their kids attend to their other studies.

As they say, correlation does not imply causation.

I did 4 years early morning. Was a C student in HS. Got to college and had straight A's in two masters programs. Did it hurt me.....you can see the answer.....

get her done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I did 4 years early morning. Was a C student in
> HS. Got to college and had straight A's in two
> masters programs. Did it hurt me.....you can see
> the answer.....

I knew someone at school who was convinced smoking did not harm him, because he was one of the fastest runners in the school.

they don't cut back on the other things they are doing. They just get less sleep. Looking back on it, I'm sure the health of my children suffered...except for the two who slept through most of seminary every morning.

for high achieving students.
Looking back on it, I'm sure that it was detrimental to the health of my children---except for the two who slept all the way through seminary most mornings.

I graduated with ~3.45GPA, and I feel seminary didn't really hurt my studies that much. But mostly because I literally never studied. I did 80% of my homework in class, and the remaining 20% were mostly essays and whatnot. When I got home from school it was all fun and games (well, 2 hours of piano practice, but that was my own choice as my parents didn't force me).

However, I did fall asleep in one of my math classes due to lack of sleep pretty much 3/5 days, but I still got a B in that class.

Seminary for me started at 5:15AM. I'd wake up at 4:45, eat breakfast, then get driven to the church. Seminary got out at 6:15, then we would carpool with some parents to get to school at around 6:30, then hang out until classes started at 7:10. Soooooooooo dumb.

Well, I was a workaholic, so I made up for it. But seminary made me depressed. I had serious doubts even back then, and whenever somebody would call on me to say something, I would barely be able to get a few words out. Not because of shyness but because I didn't know if I believed what I was expected to say. I'm not one to lie in front of a whole bunch of people. So there from the start, I never really felt accepted.

I did early morning seminary for my first year of HS before I quit going. It was really hard because I was in marching band, we had practice until 8 3 days a week and football games on Fridays. Typically on week nights I had been gone for 14 hours by the time I got home, and I still had homework to do. On Friday night, I usually didnt get home until almost midnight. It didnt really have an impact on my grades, but during that first football season I was a complete zombie. The next year was not so bad because I was able to sleep an extra 2 hours in the morning. I made all the difference in my life and my mood.

At the HS open house (band booth) this year a kid and dad came up and asked if he could join the concert band after marching band season. He could not attend because of a "religious class" in the morning. Ah, I thought the old garmie smile showed it's teeth through pop's shirt, and I answered, "sure." But all of the State preparation happens during marching season and jazz band fills in the zero hour slot the semester after marching band. The kid looked up at dad, with obvious disappointment. But with a firm hand on his shoulder, and that certain look, the one I used to give when one of the kids was asked to a birthday party on Sunday. I am sure he will do the right thing. Poor kid.

later in the day in regular classes tend to be things like..."Hill Camorah"..."Joseph Smith"... caffine.

I'm a high school teacher, and I see lots of teens suffering from too little sleep; I don't notice it drastically affecting their school performance --achievers are determined to achieve, not matter the cost, whereas when kids underperform it is most often attributable to their home situation in general rather than to their sleep hours --so much as that I really see lack of sufficient sleep affect kids by dramatically increasing their stress levels. So you have unhappy, stressed out teens achieving (or not) in school. Add to that the fact that, in our area, we have two seminary teachers, one who is intelligent and trying to help kids think, but she knows little about classroom management, so any kid who wants to actually pay attention has to listen over all the chatting and goofing off; the other teacher is a real 'sweet spirit,' constantly telling the kids how much he loves them and loves the gospel and then he puts on a video, while all but two of the class members either have their heads down, are texting the whole time, or are doing homework. -What's the point? Neither teacher wants to 'discipline' class members because they are just glad they showed up! It's the repeated lesson: obediently attend this church sponsored class/activity/meeting, be bored, turn your brain off, don't admit it.

There are SO many good things for teens to be involved in: sports, dance, music, jobs, clubs, etc. etc., that even in my TBM days I felt that conflict between 'oh, I must encourage my children to attend seminary, YMYW, the next youth baptism, presidency meeting' -when their non-church activities frequently had more worth.

lurking Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mormon propaganda websites promote and boast that
> mormon teens who attend early morning seminary are
> high achievers and benefit from the attendance in
> the early morning.If you go to the news section at
> www.lds.org.au ,then you will see an article
> boasting that 3 teens who attended seminary have
> all achieved successfully at high school.
>
> It did not work out that way for me.


This statement on LDS.org is a generalization. It is not fact. There are kids that do fine in school even though they go to early morning seminary and kids that have problems. There is every shade in between.

It's just another attempt by the morg to persuade you to do and support something. Your leaders have spoken (go to seminary) so the thinking is done! Umm, not quite.

In other words--its a load of crap.

People should attend seminary because they get something out of it. If not, don't go. I personally don't feel that school at 5AM helps you learn better than school during the day or night. Why the church has to make people miserable getting up so early is because they can. Its about control and people fall for it. If they want better, more alert seminary attendees, try having it during a more reasonable time of the day.

Early morning seminary is a unnecessary hardship on so many mormons. If its so frickin important, why not remove Sunday School for kids 14 and up and replace it with Seminary? Then it won't be so darn early in the morning and require people to go through transportation gymnastics.

Its all about power folks and supporting that power base.

Nothing, absolutely nothing holy whatsoever, unless you worship $.

I remember putting my head down on my desk and falling asleep every day in my high school afternoon classes. I'm pretty sure my teachers thought I did drugs during lunch time.

No, they complain about being tired just like most of my other high school students. Teenagers = sleep deprived.

Most mormons would say whats better? a teen up at five in the morning and tired or a teen out till midnight and tired?

Persnaly if thats the way they put it then it seems like structured play for teens. Completely un nessery.

As there are many more than just those two options for teens. In particular, there's the option where teens get to bed at a decent hour, sleep until a reasonable time in the morning and go to school rested and alert.

:)

I think of the poor quality of sleep and how it effected my motivation, emotions and clarity of thought.

I think it depends on involvement outside of seminary and school. I'm heavily active in theatre, which can keep me at rehearsals until 10, 11, sometimes 12 at night. In addition to that I'm in a couple AP classes, so the workload is very heavy. So yes, when I was waking up at 4:30 am for seminary, my grades and health suffered a lot. I suppose if I were a 'good Mormon' I would have sacrificed everything else I do for seminary....but uh, that was not an option hahaha. So I stopped going to seminary.

To someone who just does seminary/school/maybe a job, it probably wouldn't have much more of an affect than making them a little crabbier in the morning haha.

(By the way, I do still wake up just a little later than that because I go to the gym before school, but when I'm very busy (like during a show) I rearrange my schedule so I don't wake up early. I think the worst part of seminary is that you're almost required to go and you don't really get anything out of it.)

Mormon God loves to humiliate and torture his flock with dawn seminaries, funky temple clothings, 2 years 'forced' mission, church courts, tickets to heaven only for tithes payers, boring black and white uniforms.

What the heck for? Afterall, there is no guarantee by the GAs of a celestial kingdom -

because they dont have even a single solid proof it exists.

My buddy in Memphis (Bartlett) has his son in early morning seminary that starts a 530a and the family of a few seminary classmates get up earlier than that for family scripture study!

My buddy's son does pretty well in school, but I would love to see how the kids from the other family crash in the afternoon.

"So THAT'S why you're always tired!"