Let The Children Play
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20 responses to “Let The Children Play”
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Most importantly, with proper supervision, kids will learn how to get along with others.
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Yes! When kids engage in unstructured play, they learn how to get along and negotiate their differences. They can’t learn that in a classroom. Teachers can’t teach it. They have to learn it by doing.
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I know this may come as a shock, but it’s unstructured interactions where things like bullying and worse can occur.
Teachers have to monitor and intercede when the kids are doing bad stuff and apparently the parents don’t know and/or condone it.
Young kids NEED structure.
It was one of the big complaints when schools went to virtual!
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I hear you Mr. Dick. More recess will benefit some and hurt others. For my own 13-year-old daughter, recess and PE are a God send. They only school awards she has ever won were PE/Sports oriented. She benefited from that time, and I think it helped in the classroom. I would sign off on this if the school day or school year was extended. Way too many instructional hours are lost over the course of a school year. I know. I kept track one year and it was mind blowing how much school time is flushed down the drain.
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That’s an educational reform I could get behind!
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Wait. If there is more recess breaks, and kids will be more attentive during instruction, then when will kids have time to stare out the window and daydream?
Also move the start of HS to 9:00 from 7:00. Too many studies point to improved performance for the 15 to 18 crowd with later start times. Why do we fight the sensible backed by experimental results?
Now, about Daylight Savings Time…
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Moving the high school times failed. I know. We used to start in Loudoun at 7 am. Moved to 9:20 gradually over 25 years. The kids are still late to school, they stay up later into the night because they can, and they repeat both over and over because there are no consequences now for their actions.
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Well, Loudoun… ’nuff said. Sorry James, but there are many positive results, including improved performance (if marginal) and better rested students. The first of these studies I recall was from Minnesota. Maybe latitude plays into it?
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Besides, who knows what a sleep-deprived teenager might do? Especially one with access to a gun…
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If memory serves, the reason for cutting PE and play time out of class schedules was to free up time for more academics. Perhaps if families weren’t so maniacally focused on their kids getting into UVa, Georgetown or an Ivy, there’d be more time for PE in secondary schools.
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I think there’s a difference between PE and recess, more unstructured and loose supervision. In my day, recess was spent in pick up games of kickball, Red Rover, Mother May I, tag, etc.
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yeah, I don’t think “unstructured” is a good thing myself. In 3rd grade, they will call each other butt-holes and steal lunch money and worse.
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What? Didn’t you ever grab your “stick” M-16 and play Vietnam?
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the truly dumb things kids will do if truly left to their own devices…. Most parents EXPECT the schools and teachers to keep their kids safe – including from other kids not well-parented.
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yep. I wonder how much “play time” Asian kids get.
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Yep. I remember arriving at elementary school and being able to stay outside and run around, not go sit in some room waiting for the home room bell, then a real recess with kickball and touch football and jungle Jim’s, etc. And quit drugging little boys to make them act like little girls – they’re not!
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In 1960 our 2nd grade teacher, Miss Woods, met our class on the playground, lined us up, and had us scream like banshees at the top of our lungs for 90 seconds before we went to our classroom to start the school day. She believed that students learned better when they had some of their energy drained at the start of the day.
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I used to enjoy recess periodically in a sometimes perhaps beneficial way at Wm. Fox in the Fan (now a burnt out hulk). A certain unnamed individual and I would follow insults with some fisticuffs. Looking back on it it was probably pretty stupid but we got in some exercise and let off some steam. And as I recall the playground was macadam, not grass. A bit hard when/if you fell.
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If kids are turned loose on a playground – they will still socialize – it’s what humans do. The issue is how will they socialize and unfortunately not all kids do wonderful things to other kids. Some parents are AWOL are teaching their kids how to interact with others and that job falls to teachers who have to teach some kids NOT to hit other kids, not to bully them , not to steal their lunch money or lunch, etc.
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‘If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”
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