Attack On An American Institution: Recess

Those of us of a certain age might be surprised at just how far education specialists have gone in eradicating American traditions. “Most child development experts believe that kids need some unstructured run-around time during the day,” Lenore Skenazy writes on the Reason.com blog. “The American Academy of Pediatrics has declared that ‘recess is a crucial and necessary component of a child’s development and, as such, it should not be withheld for punitive or academic reasons.'”

“And yet schools aren’t just shrinking the number of recess minutes per day in order to shoehorn in more class time and test prep: Many allow teachers to take away recess as a form of punishment. Long Island’s Patchogue-Medford School District is moving in the opposite direction. It has doubled the amount of lunch and recess time its students get from 40 to 80 minutes a day, with felicitous results: lower absenteeism and fewer disciplinary problems.”

The move to stamp out recess is a worthy companion to an education reform that never took hold, yet–eliminating summer vacations. Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) enthused over this one.

Either one give the state less time to indoctrinate children.

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