All Work, No Play At School
Cutting Recess
Teachers at Berkeley Hall School in Los Angeles, faced with too many fidgety first- and second-graders, decided last fall to buck a global trend: They reinstated recess, which had been replaced with physical education classes.
"Recess is different from PE," notes Vicki Murphy, a second-grade teacher. "The kids need unstructured time where they can make up their own rules."
Many schools in the United States have cancelled the open-the-door-and-run recess, labeling it extraneous to the serious business of learning. In doing so, they have begun to mirror their counterparts in countries known for high-powered education. From Germany to Russia to Japan, students' days are heavy on academics and short on free time. Even in France, where morning recess was once common, the practice may lose out to more class time.
Some educators argue that play is central to learning. But most schools send a different message: When you're on school grounds, the focus is academics. Play may have educational value, but it's not our responsibility.
Pressure from international competition lies at the heart of Americans' shift in attitude on playtime at school.
"It all began with the 'Nation at Risk' report in 1983," says Charles Doyle, assistant dean of the School of Education at Chicago's DePaul University. This federal call to action, highlighting American schoolchildren's poor standing internationally, led to a push for standardized testing. With more emphasis on tests, schools required more time in the school day for test preparation.
"Recess time was the first thing to go," he says.
Beyond that, Doyle adds, many schools, especially private academies, have found themselves under pressure from parents to expand instructional time "to increase the children's chances of going to the first-rate colleges."
There are also the more basic issues such as safety. Many understaffed urban schools, concerned with neighborhood violence, have eliminated free time on the playgrounds altogether.
Some schools such as Maclay Primary Center in Pacoima, Calif., find that well-organized and well-supervised recesses are a good compromise. Students are assigned to different stations on the playground, where they are expected to choose from activities such as kickball, hopscotch, and tetherball. "The purpose is to learn an activity and learn the rules," explains Principal Giovanna Foschetti. "Recess is not a time to run around on free time."
However, the few experts who actually have studied the issue of recess as an educational tool strongly disagree with either eliminating or structuring recess. Anthony Pellegrini, of the University of Georgia in Athens, says that children, especially elementary school students, need a break from instruction to interact with their peers. "This is true across the species," he points out. "Tasks are learned better when there are breaks."
He points out that organized physical education won't do it, either. His research has shown that one of the key values of recess is for children to find things out on their own, without too much direction.
