What type of kid were you on the playground? Were you the kid that flew on the swings? The kid that ran around freely? Regardless, most students enjoyed that sweet freedom that schools allotted them during the day to give them a break from the classroom. Though after elementary school, kids will have to say goodbye to their free time and take enjoyment from inside the classroom.
It is a very big adjustment the students must make, and students take a while to settle to being primarily stuck in classrooms, so it really begs the question; why did schools abolish recess after elementary school?
“Once they enter middle school, we are preparing them for the real world, and the real world does not have recess. We need to keep our students content since they are now approaching a harder curriculum, and recess does not help with that,” said Dean Shazier
With that said, schools remove recess to allow time and accountability to teach students on a more challenging curriculum and help prepare them for the real world more efficiently.
Schools already do their best to try and let their students wind down from primarily being in the classroom. Lunch is already a free period where students are free to socialize with their friends, eat their hearts out, read books. Besides, even with this new Florida phone ban, administration is lenient with us about our phones during lunch, allowing us to do what we want. Like texting our friends, playing games, consuming content on social.
But even with all this freedom, lunch still fails to provide a key component of student health; movement. Movement is crucial to keeping a student’s physical health in tip top shape, especially in the long run.
Students are not very active already as is due to the overwhelming amount of work that they are burdened with. They mostly stay confined inside working hard on their work to achieve success. But occasionally, it is beneficial for students to step back and loosen up a bit, rigor mortis does not sound very enticing some would say.
If we took a moment to take this debate into the administration’s perspective, seeing as they are responsible for our education, security, and safety, we can realize why they might be reluctant to give us the privilege of recess.
No matter how many assemblies are held, bullying remains a problem in school, and recess opens many opportunities for students to get bullied, whether it be verbal or physical. Teachers want to avoid as many open doors for incidents as possible. It can be very easy for students to end up stressed out instead of relieved due to this reason.
