"I grew up in Europe" can literally be any one of over 40 different countries, and even more education systems.
I am in Germany, and school starts at 8 in Berlin, 8:05 in Wiesbaden, 7:45 in some small cities in Baden-Württemberg... And those are only the ones that I, personally, experienced. I'm sure Poland and Spain have different times, not lastly owing to timezones etc.
Please don't treat all of Europe as one single country with one set of customs.
Yes Germany is famous for starting too early, it is an outlier.
The 5 countries around where I grew up have starting times between 8:30AM and 9AM. Overall Europe is simply nor as much as a morning culture as the US. Probably because life is more communal and cities have things to do in the evening (in the US, my theory is that car culture killed all energy in the evenings).
Unlike here where my kids need to wake up at 6AM. Absolutely ridiculous