Are You Bored?

Don't have time to read the whole thing? Read the edited, condensed version here.

Time to Monkey Around

Over the past decade, researchers and policymakers have raised concerns about reduced time for recess in schools. Do kids have time to be kids today? The big fear is that instructional time is overtaking playtime—much to the detriment of children’s health. Current trends, such as increased rates of childhood obesity and greater expectations for academic performance as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act, have led many to take a hard look at school recess policies and the importance of play.

Research on Play

Everyone—children and adults alike—can benefit from a rest. It’s no surprise that many different studies show improved cognitive functions and memory after a break from mentally challenging tasks. Additionally, the research suggests that play is an essential part of healthy mental and physical development in children. Some studies on play have made the news recently:

Cultural historian Howard Chudacoff contends that it is uninhibited imaginative play that aids in a child’s cognitive and emotional development, and there is a decrease in the imaginative games today’s children play compared to those of their parents and grandparents. As a result, children are not as cognitively or emotionally developed as their elders. One study helps to demonstrate these generational differences.

In the pre-Mickey Mouse 1940s, a self-regulation study was conducted where the researchers asked three-, five-, and seven-year olds to perform a series of tasks. One task required the children to stand perfectly still. The three-year olds were unable to complete this task, the five-year olds were able to stand still for several minutes, and the seven-year olds were able to stand still for as long as was required.

Fast-forward to 2001, when the Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning psychologist Elena Bodrova repeated the experiment, and the results were quite different. Neither the three-year olds nor the five-year olds could stand still at all, and the seven-year olds were barely able to remain still for even a few minutes. This self-regulation study validates the argument that children of the new millennium are not as cognitively or emotionally developed as their grandparents.

Laura Berk, a professor of psychology at Illinois State University, says “self-regulation predicts effective development in virtually every domain.” Self-regulation, along with executive function, is an extremely important tool in retaining focus during a long and grueling school day. Alix Spiegel of NPR harps on the importance of executive function when she writes, “executive function — and its self-regulation element — is important. Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ.”

Legislating Recess or Mandatory Minimums (for Recess)

Some states have enacted policies to ensure children have time for recess during the school day. In Illinois, for example, legislators amended their school code related to recess. The amendment provides students from kindergarten to eighth grade with a minimum of 10 minutes of recess each day. South Carolina, a state that has struggled with high childhood obesity rates, passed a law in 2005 that requires elementary school students to be given a minimum of 150 minutes of play in one week of school. Last month, legislation was introduced to increase recess from 12 to 20 minutes per day.

Although some states are trying to ensure minimum time for recess, new evidence suggests that recess time has decreased since NCLB. The Center on Education Policy recently released a study that found that time allotted for recess decreased 28% under NCLB. In a nationally-representative sample of 349 school districts, an average of 184 minutes was spent on recess in 2001-2002, but in 2006-2007 only 144 minutes per week was spent on recess. Only reading and math instructional time were increased.

Playground Talk / What People Are Saying

Vicky Schippers, a Brooklyn tutor and education writer says recess is an essential break in a day filled with preparation for standardized tests:

“Today, our kids’ lives are organized to the hilt. For that reason, what is most important about recess is that it is the only unstructured time in a long day for most children, who find themselves in classrooms where the No Child Left Behind Act requires a rigorous schedule of standardized-test preparation.”

Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute on Play tries to imagine life without play:

“Look at life without play, and it's not much of a life. If you think of all the things we do that are play related and erase those, it's pretty hard to keep going. [Without play], there's a sense of dullness, lassitude and pessimism, which doesn't work well in the world we live in.'”

Professor Charles H. Hillman of the University of Illinois argues that physical activity is a basic necessity NCLB founders omitted:

“Had the creators of No Child Left Behind looked at the data, they would’ve realized that physical activity is good for the brain.”

Fitness guru Richard Simmons suggests adding physical education to NCLB in order to combat the staggering childhood obesity rates in the U.S.:

“I think we all have to join hands together and say, ‘Hey, put physical education in a fun way in the schools and the test scores will go up!’ Why not even try it? Give it a year, and I promise you the test scores will go up.”

What do you think?

Should more time be dedicated to play during the school day? Should educators try to incorporate more playtime into the core subjects? Are we creating a less creative generation?