Critiques, Challenges, and Societal Interplay

It is difficult to speak with a great deal of certainty about what recess provides to students. The research, while existent, is not extensive. From personal experience and anecdotal evidence you can gather that recess is vitally important. Students, especially in younger grades, consistently refer to recess as their favorite class (Mulrine, 2000). But how do you effectively measure the full impact of recess, or the absence of recess? Experimental designs are limited and generally ethical considerations protect students from total lack of recess for the sake of scientific studies. We don’t know all that we might lose if schools eliminated recess, but evidence does suggest that we would have very little to gain.(Pellegrini, 1995, and Basch, 2011). Additionally, a challenge I faced was that the focus of my paper changed when I started reading about the history of recess in Chicago because I decided that I would no longer focus on structured play versus unstructured play. As a result, I eliminated the interviews that I had planned with Playworks Chicago staff, because they were going to provide an angle on structured recess time, which I no longer was investigating. That may be an avenue for future research.

Personally it was difficult for me to synthesize the research on recess into a clear picture of what recess has meant for the Chicago Public School child over the decades. Evidence is scarce and many assumptions had to be made on my part as well as by other researchers who have studied the same topic (Wurzburger). The picture is not as clear as I would like it to be, but reason and intuition tell me that recess is essential. I support recess because I think recess supports the academic achievement of students, which I value. But even if academics were not improved by recess, even if students were able to achieve slightly less academically than they would without taking a recess, I would still support recess. And that is because I believe recess develops individuals. I believe recess supports creativity and character. And those are things that society cannot do without.

It is my personal opinion that recess helps develop scholars, intellectuals, high-achievers. But it is also my opinions that the world is not in desperate need of intellectuals. It is in desperate need of thoughtful, compassionate, creative thinkers. We teach students very well to follow directions and do tasks in the classroom but recess is the ideal place for student-centered, self-directed exploration, problem solving, creativity, and socializing. Recess is important because it, much more than the average classroom, mirrors the societal challenges that children will face. Matters of entitlement, friendship, diplomacy, and exploration meet at the playground. These are invaluable learning experiences that I would not deprive any person of because that individual would suffer, and our communities would suffer. As a society we need to commit to valuing the inherent creativity of our nation’s youth. We need to honor their right to express, invent, and explore how, where and what they may.