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Learning Through Play
--Education does not stop when recess begins.
By EMILY DERUY
Google the definition of play and the first thing that pops up is this: “[To] engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.”
Jack Shonkoff, the director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, finds that language supremely frustrating. “It’s not taking a break from learning when we talk about play,” he told me, rattling off a litany of cognitive, physical, mental, and social-emotional benefits. “Play is one of the most important ways in which children learn.”
But in the mid-2000s, the federal No Child Left Behind education law—which emphasized test scores—prompted some schools to scale back recess (along with art and music) to spend more time on math and reading. Other schools eliminated recess because it was the source of a disproportionate number of discipline issues and a headache for administrators. The rollback wasn’t quite as extreme as some of the headlines seemed to indicate (After all, what better way for opponents of the law to push back than to put out the word that recess was on the chopping block?), but it did leave hundreds, even thousands, of kids without time during the school day to play outside. Some studies suggested that as many as 40 percent of school districts across the country reduced or cut recess. Even today, only a handful of states actually require recess. And many of the students affected by recess cuts were low-income children, disproportionately black and Latino, who didn’t always have a safe space to play outside at home.
Yet while that was going on, the science showing the benefits of play was also growing increasingly robust. Galvanized by both the rollback of recess in some places and the stronger science backing play, and bolstered by a relatively new focus in education on social-emotional learning, preventing bullying, and reducing childhood obesity, recess has made something of a comeback. According to a report put together by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 95 percent of kindergartners have recess. But that figure drops to 91 percent for 5th grade, and only about 35 percent of the elementary schools that offer 6th grade give those students a recess period.
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