This past weekend everyone got an extra hour of sleep and relaxation thanks to daylight savings time. Every year on the second Sunday of March the clocks move forward an hour for the sun to be out later in the summer. Then, on the first Saturday of November, the clocks move back an hour, making the sun set earlier but giving everyone in America (besides people in Arizona and Hawaii) a much-needed extra hour of sleep. Colin Enright described, “That extra hour of sleep helped me catch up on some much-needed rest and made me feel one billion times more relaxed.” 

Many people believe that daylight savings time was started so that farmers could have extra daylight while working, but they actually opposed it the most. Farmers and other blue-collar workers felt that daylight savings only benefited office workers and the leisure class as they would be asleep. In contrast, farmers did their job just so the leisure class could enjoy a daylight motor ride in the evening. Daylight savings time was first proposed by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 thinking that waking up earlier would make candle usage more economical and save people money. Although the government did not act on this idea at the time, daylight savings time became official on March 18, 1918, by Woodrow Wilson through the Standard Time Act. This was established during World War 1 to extend daylight hours and save energy across the globe. Along with this, the Standard Time Act introduced the time zones in America we know today. This was observed by every state at the time besides Hawaii, and Arizona stopped observing it in 1968. 

Today, there is proposed legislation sitting in Congress to get rid of daylight savings time permanently and keep the same clock all year round. According to a poll done by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, the country is divided 50/50 on whether daylight saving time should stay or should get kicked to the curb. Throughout Hingham High School many people also share an opinion on the topic. One student, Stefan Mikhaylov, feels, “I think daylight saving time should stay because that extra hour of sleep can really get me juiced up for the week following.”