You're in grade school. It's 11:59 a.m. and you watch the red second hand of the clock slowly tick its way towards recess. Slow, methodical ticks, and just as you start to suspect that your teacher set the clock to prolong the torture of long division by hand for the rest of eternity, the hallway bell exudes its sonorous scream and you tear through the doors toward the playground. But there's been a school policy change: instead of the carefree half-hour spent being chased by cootie-ridden girls and creating novel ways to have fun with a ball, there stands a new "recess coach."
Fortunately for you, this is just hypothetical. But for students around the country from downtown Baltimore to San Francisco this tragic social "invention" is now part of their daily lives. Playworks, a nonprofit that promotes "safe, healthy play," "conflict resolution skills" and "social skills" through the art of recess, is rapidly expanding its programs throughout the United States. According to The New York Times, Playworks currently has 170 Recess Coaches working in low-income schools nationwide.
The organization's founders and partner school administrators believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way children play today claiming that the marginalization, the bullying and the violence in the schoolyard contribute to what might be described as a counterproductive recess. The benefits gained from free play are outweighed by the bloody noses and hurt feelings, the fat lips and marginalized students, they say. Playworks ultimately contends that recess will be more inclusive, more exciting and more educational with the addition of a recess coach. While this may seem appealing, the moment a school hires a recess coach to structure playtime, recess ceases to be recess. I looked forward to recess, as do many children, because it was a break from the adult-structured school day. We didn't have to worry about being graded, conform to the standards and rules implemented by adults or listen to a higher authority dictate what could and could not be done. It was anarchy, yes, but amid the chaos, leadership, creativity and teamwork arose organically, without any adult having to coax it out of us.
Recess was a time when we were forced to improvise with the resources we had. A single ball could turn into class-wide game. A piece of chalk could entertain us for hours. These activities got the creative juices flowing and forced us to do a lot with the little we had, and that taught us an invaluable life-lesson that no recess coach could have instilled in us.
My biggest qualm with the recess coach besides the fact that he or she will pillage recess of all creativity and freedom is that it is being pitched as a panacea for the countless social and physical ills that plague American kids. A recess coach cannot combat childhood obesity in a 15-minute recess period if the child eats hot-fries and sour straws every day at lunchtime. And how can a recess coach truly curtail bullying and school violence when children are raised in abusive households and play Grand Theft Auto seven nights a week?
I am not a Recess Darwinian. I don't believe that the kid in the leather jacket doling out swirlies or robbing foursquare all-stars of their lunch money should rule the playground. And I wholeheartedly agree that children need more physical education now more than ever. But that's what gym and physical education and rec league sports are for. Recess is about free, unstructured play. Children should not be subjected to a developmental straight jacket like the all-inclusive games of the recess coach.
It started when they banned dodge ball in school and is culminating with the recess coach. Elementary school students don't need to be coddled; they need to be given ample opportunities for free play that will encourage the healthy physical and social habits they will need for the rest of their lives. We must not entangle physical education with unstructured playtime. During recess, just let them play.
