NYTimes: “Forget Goofing Around: Recess Has a New Boss”
Saturday, March 20, 2010 at 10:06AM At Broadway Elementary School here, there is no more sitting around after lunch. No more goofing off with friends. No more doing nothing. Instead there is Brandi Parker, a $14-an-hour recess coach with a whistle around her neck, corralling children behind bright orange cones to play organized games. There she was the other day, breaking up a renegade game of hopscotch and overruling stragglers’ lame excuses.
The school is one of a growing number across the country that are reining in recess to curb bullying and behavior problems, foster social skills and address concerns over obesity. They also hope to show children that there is good old-fashioned fun to be had without iPods and video games.
In extreme circumstances, I can see a “recess coach” as a good thing — as a temporary measure to achieve the stated goals. But instituting this broadly or in a permanent way is a mistake. Unstructured free play is an essential part of play and children’s development.
Dr. Romina M. Barros, an assistant clinical professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx who was an author of a widely cited study on the benefits of recess, published last year in the journal Pediatrics, says that children still benefit most from recess when they are let alone to daydream, solve problems, use their imagination to invent their own games and “be free to do what they choose to do.”
Structured recess, Dr. Barros said, simply transplants the rules of the classroom to the playground.
Right on, Dr. Barros.
