New crusade: No recess for poor kids
Recess is a time for kids to blow off steam, get fit, learn to play cooperatively, and use their imagination and creativity to invent games and enact stories. Or is it a time for bullies to prey on the weak, belligerent kids to get in fights, accident-prone kids to hurt themselves and everyone to lose track of the day’s lesson with a distracting burst of chaos, all with minimal supervision from the self-absorbed adults?
Recess could be the new battleground in education. A couple of years ago, with schools perceived as cutting recess time due to tight budgets and pressure to increase test prep, the National PTA and the Cartoon Network teamed up to launch a “Rescuing Recess” campaign.
But the Washington Post’s Jay Mathews writes this week about the dissenting view. In Mathews’ mild-spoken way, he portrays the fight to save recess as elitist, promoted by clueless advocates who have no idea what inner-city playgrounds are like. “Most people don't know how poisonous recess can be for urban schools with severe academic needs,” Mathews writes, quoting an anonymous speaker who says: “Recess is when all the trouble starts: the teasing, the fights, the bullying, the injuries, the referrals."
The widely hailed KIPP schools are apparently leaders in eliminating recess; they replace it with supervised, structured P.E. (something they can afford to do — traditional public schools can only look on wistfully as the multimillion-dollar checks rain down on KIPP from private philanthropists).
But KIPP isn’t the only one. A program called Eat, Exercise, Excel, exported from Leavenworth, Kan., started up at San Francisco’s Tenderloin Community Elementary for a while, but was scrapped because the “eat” part violated a multitude of National School Lunch Program regulations, jeopardizing federal reimbursement for low-income students’ lunches for the entire San Francisco Unified School District. The program’s point seems to be eliminating all unstructured time — including recess — while providing supervised, structured exercise. Students eat lunch in the classroom under the teacher’s supervision. This gushing “it’s a miracle!” clip from Fox News gives an idea, though it doesn’t focus much on the recess part. (Any “it’s a miracle!” news coverage – let alone from Fox News – sends me “fad,” “hype” and “hustle” warning signals, but I guess you never know.)
As a seasoned urban public-school parent, I can see the point when people like Mathews indicate that ninnies who view recess as a happy, active, imagination-nurturing playtime are in fantasyland. At the same time, I’m never that comfortable with the idea that “THOSE” kids need strict regimentation at all times, while “OUR” middle-class kids should have their creativity nurtured with free play. I guess I’ll say the jury is out, but I’m glad my kids had recess in their elementary school days.
I did find KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg’s dig at teachers uncomfortable: Mathews quotes Feinberg as saying that recess can mean "opening up the door and letting the kids run into the school yard while the teachers gather in the shade and talk about how much they hate the principal." With notoriously high teacher turnover at KIPP schools, I suspect that jab hints at some management-teacher antipathy within KIPP that goes unmentioned in the adoring press coverage.
Labor and cost issues are a hurdle for a school program that keeps students under structured supervision the entire day. Either the teachers get zero break time or there have to be enough qualified adult bodies to cover those breaks.
My husband says, “You can’t hide a miracle,” meaning those conspiracy theories that the government is suppressing the cure for cancer. On that principle, if eliminating recess – and all unstructured school time — is the key, the success will eventually reveal itself and win over not just Fox News reporters but also skeptics like me. One point that does make me leap up and call out “I believe!” is that whatever the solutions for challenged schools are, they won’t be cheap, and we as a society have to be willing to pay for them.
Recess could be the new battleground in education. A couple of years ago, with schools perceived as cutting recess time due to tight budgets and pressure to increase test prep, the National PTA and the Cartoon Network teamed up to launch a “Rescuing Recess” campaign.
But the Washington Post’s Jay Mathews writes this week about the dissenting view. In Mathews’ mild-spoken way, he portrays the fight to save recess as elitist, promoted by clueless advocates who have no idea what inner-city playgrounds are like. “Most people don't know how poisonous recess can be for urban schools with severe academic needs,” Mathews writes, quoting an anonymous speaker who says: “Recess is when all the trouble starts: the teasing, the fights, the bullying, the injuries, the referrals."
The widely hailed KIPP schools are apparently leaders in eliminating recess; they replace it with supervised, structured P.E. (something they can afford to do — traditional public schools can only look on wistfully as the multimillion-dollar checks rain down on KIPP from private philanthropists).
But KIPP isn’t the only one. A program called Eat, Exercise, Excel, exported from Leavenworth, Kan., started up at San Francisco’s Tenderloin Community Elementary for a while, but was scrapped because the “eat” part violated a multitude of National School Lunch Program regulations, jeopardizing federal reimbursement for low-income students’ lunches for the entire San Francisco Unified School District. The program’s point seems to be eliminating all unstructured time — including recess — while providing supervised, structured exercise. Students eat lunch in the classroom under the teacher’s supervision. This gushing “it’s a miracle!” clip from Fox News gives an idea, though it doesn’t focus much on the recess part. (Any “it’s a miracle!” news coverage – let alone from Fox News – sends me “fad,” “hype” and “hustle” warning signals, but I guess you never know.)
As a seasoned urban public-school parent, I can see the point when people like Mathews indicate that ninnies who view recess as a happy, active, imagination-nurturing playtime are in fantasyland. At the same time, I’m never that comfortable with the idea that “THOSE” kids need strict regimentation at all times, while “OUR” middle-class kids should have their creativity nurtured with free play. I guess I’ll say the jury is out, but I’m glad my kids had recess in their elementary school days.
I did find KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg’s dig at teachers uncomfortable: Mathews quotes Feinberg as saying that recess can mean "opening up the door and letting the kids run into the school yard while the teachers gather in the shade and talk about how much they hate the principal." With notoriously high teacher turnover at KIPP schools, I suspect that jab hints at some management-teacher antipathy within KIPP that goes unmentioned in the adoring press coverage.
Labor and cost issues are a hurdle for a school program that keeps students under structured supervision the entire day. Either the teachers get zero break time or there have to be enough qualified adult bodies to cover those breaks.
My husband says, “You can’t hide a miracle,” meaning those conspiracy theories that the government is suppressing the cure for cancer. On that principle, if eliminating recess – and all unstructured school time — is the key, the success will eventually reveal itself and win over not just Fox News reporters but also skeptics like me. One point that does make me leap up and call out “I believe!” is that whatever the solutions for challenged schools are, they won’t be cheap, and we as a society have to be willing to pay for them.
