I do think that it’s important to give young kids a break to move around and get some fresh air. I have a 7th grader and another a junior in high school. Recess stopped after elementary, but they still get a break at some point in the day. For my older kid it comes in the form of a free period. He uses that time to do homework, or just chill. We, as working adults take breaks, don’t we? I work at a public library and believe me we all love our breaks. It is a time when we get away for a moment. I usually walk around the block.
On a lighter side - in 1973 when I was in 5th grade, my friend and I would run behind the school to a wet grassy area to catch tiny green frogs. I also kissed that boy during recess. I quick peck on his cheek while we were both standing looking at each other holding frogs in our hands. Then I talked him into sneaking a frog back to class for me. Those are recess memories. I am almost 50 now.
If kids are allowed to just leave class whenever they want, they’ll leave when something they don’t want to do comes up. In groups. And they won’t come back until someone goes and tells them to come back. Plus if kids can just walk out whenever, they’ll likely miss important things, which then need to be repeated when they come back in.
We still had a 15 minute morning break, and an hour to eat lunch and do whatever until the age of 18. No (or only a few optional extra) classes were held during lunch break, regardless of what school year we were in, though we did have a few lunch clubs running- including school choir and some sports clubs.
Gave the kids a break, gave the teachers a break. .
I’d like to see a cite that someone’s trying to take away kids’ recess, just so we’re not arguing against a strawman.
But I’ll provide an instance of my own: the Firebug is now in kindergarten at the local elementary school, and their recess isn’t until early afternoon. To me, that seems odd: I’d think they need a chance to let some of their excess energy out well before that time of day, and certainly the Firebug is having more than his share of behavioral problems. Correlation isn’t causation, but it’s hard not to draw a connection.
When I was in elementary school, recess was in mid-morning, and that seemed to work pretty well. I’d been under the impression that that was pretty much standard, but I may have been wrong.
I agree that the educational system is flawed. Mainly because in the late-grade-school, early-middle-school years of grades 4-7 the math and science curriculum moves at a snail’s pace in my opinion. There’s a wholesale aversion to rote memorization when training the mind to think in terms of math on math’s terms is crucial for building the foundation of good math skills.
That aside, this thread isn’t advocating for more recess - just to keep what they already have.
And it’s really not just learning. It’s a culmination of giving students (and their attention spans) a break, a chance to socialize, and to an extent the teachers a break - especially teachers of 5-8 year olds.
Why should these be the priorties? I’ll leave aside the impossibilty of predicting the most important skill/knowledge set for a future time. Why shouldn’t the goal of education be strong grasp of basic skills like the 3Rs, common general knowledge, critical thinking, and the skill of learning? Aren’t these the things that really end up missing in our system?
I teach third grade, and both of these points are pretty profoundly flawed.
First, learning is about a lot more than how to do basic math. In an ideal world, all my students would learn at home how to socialize effectively, both with their families and in playdates with other kids. In the real world, I’ve got students living in abject poverty who share a room with a mentally ill parent and eight siblings; I’ve got kids who have televisions in their bedrooms that comprise their main social interaction at home; I’ve got kids who tell me wistfully how much they like school because there aren’t so many sirens as at home; I’ve got kids who tell me they’ve done nothing over the summer and I have cause to believe them (inasmuch as “nothing” means “nothing except sitting inside all day every day watching television”).
Public schools don’t choose our students. We take everyone. Some kids come to us knowing how to socialize effectively. Others need explicit instruction in this skill.
And every one of our kids benefits from unstructured play time. Some of them choose to build fairy houses out of twigs, and they practice imaginative skills, while negotiating with their friends on how to merge their visions. Some of them choose to play kickball, and they practice sportsmanship, as well as figuring out how to deal fairly and effectively with rules disputes and how to communicate a single set of clear rules. Some of them practice songs from the school play, or make up their own cheerleader routines. Some of them jump rope, practice hand-eye coordination as well as all sorts of embedded social skills. And some just walk with me and shoot the breeze about whatever subject is interesting to them, until I finally shoo them away so they’ll go play.
There is plenty of learning that happens at recess. My goal as a teacher for recess is to supervise them, and when I’m seeing a problem (e.g., a dispute arises during the game of tag football as to whether a particular player was tagged), I facilitate their problem solving while explicitly pointing out the appropriate steps for solving the problem (e.g, pointing out that in a game, we need to have unambiguous rules, and suggesting the “tagger’s rule” that sides with the tagger in any dispute).
As for bathroom breaks: children are not little adults. They are different. I try to give my students a lot of autonomy about bathroom breaks, but I also need to teach them appropriate behavior. If your boss was talking to you, or opening a meeting, would you get up to go get a drink of water during his opening of the meeting? Of course not (I hope), but kids often don’t know any better, and when I open the math lesson, some kids think it’s a great time to go take a bathroom break. Similarly, there are kids who know that writing workshop is about twenty minutes of writing every day, and if they don’t want to write, they’ll go for a fifteen minute bathroom break every day.
So I set up rules. Bathroom and water breaks happen only during times that students are doing small-group or independent work, never when I’m doing a whole-class lesson. (I balance that by ensuring that whole-class lessons are no more than 10-15 minutes long before there’s time for independent work). And if I find a kid taking a ridiculous number of breaks, we’ll set up some limits for that kid, so that they can spend most of their time learning, or else I call home to find out if there’s a medical reason.
I would have said that rote memorization is the opposite of “training the mind to think in terms of math on math’s terms”. Rote memorization doesn’t require comprehension.
The first time I had a demo (the solution of quadratic equations), I asked the teacher “how can I tell what the next step is? I don’t know what the logic is” I didn’t want to memorize the demo, I wanted to understand it to the point of being able to re-create it. Her response: “don’t bother with logic. There’s no logic in math. Just learn it.” Teachers like that are the reason I learned most of my math from my science teachers…
I hate your teacher. There are three mantras in my math class:
-Math Makes Sense. If you don’t understand how it works, ask me, and I’ll work with you until you understand how it works.
-Mathematicians are lazy. This is a jokey way of saying that you want to find an elegant solution. If you’re adding 435+40, don’t count by ones, count by tens, because it doesn’t take as long.
-Mathematicians double-check their work. I tell them about the Mars Climate Orbiter, which crashed because somebody didn’t convert from customary measurements to metric measurements.
I have other things I teach them, but these are the underlying principles, and any math teacher who doesn’t use them is a doofus.
Left Hand, I might know how to do a lot more math if I had a teacher like you. Like** Nava **I was told to shut up and learn the steps. When I hit quadratic equations in the eighth grade I was told I just had to learn how to do it but I wouldn’t be able to understand why. That was probably the turning point. It wasn’t until 12th grade that I had a teacher who thought differently, but the damage was done by then. I think it was just bad luck that I ended up with poor math teachers, I don’t think it was the standard for the schools I was in. I came out ok in the end (YMMV), but I still wish I advanced further in math.
Also Nava, I didn’t learn a lot of math from my science teachers, but I learned a lot of other things. Science teachers rock.
I suppose this would be part of the wholesale aversion I’m referencing.
I agree that math from Algebra I on requires perspective, logic, and proofs. The derivation of the quadratic formula is not terribly tricky although it would be a time waster if you recreated it every time you wanted to look for a zero.
What I was more speaking towards is having kids lock down the basic abilities of arithmetic in those grades 3-7 before moving on. Multiplication tables, adding and subtracting fractions, changing from decimals to fractions and back again, using ratios as fractions and vice versa, familiarizing themselves with math words such as “per” or “of” or “percent” and the mathematical operations thereof, the order of operations and how to use them to solve equations, etc.
That way by the time someone sees this equation in algebra I:
5x - 1/2 = 0.75, they can quickly solve for x - most probably without a pencil.
If you don’t aren’t indoctrinated into the language of math and have to translate every step of the way, it becomes a tedious exercise of adding 1/2 to both sides. Changing 1/2 or 0.75 to match and then adding. Then dividing by 5 from both sides. If fractions, make sure that the division is done properly. A 5 second problem now takes upwards of a minute. Worse yet, someone reaches for a calculator and is forever lost.
Thanks, LHoD - that gives some substance to the discussion.
I see the article says they’re also reducing PE, which is true in my son’s school: instead of PE every day, there’s an hour that rotates between PE (twice a week), art, music, and library (once each).
I’m glad they haven’t given up on art and music (and an hour a week of each is probably more than we got in my elementary school, 50 years ago), but we got PE every day.
That’s odd. Our school actually increased PE to three times a week from two times a week this year.
Just based on my kids (grades 2 and 4) there is a HUGE difference between their ability to focus on a day when they had outdoor recess and indoor recess.
When they have indoor recess, they can’t think at all. They can muddle through any easy homework but anything requiring thinking is right out.
As to the rote math debate, I think the schools need to find a happy medium. It’s fine and dandy to have the kids use logic to come to the right answers but for basic things (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions) they do need to do some level of memorization. Without knowing that 7x8 is 56 off the top of your head, you will have to spend time doing the math for it instead of working on the more difficult problems that occur during upper level math (or using a calculator which is both slower and not always available).
FWIW, I’m not suggesting that my son’s school decreased the number of times a week the kids get PE. I’m comparing Fairfax County, VA, in 1962, with Calvert County, MD, in 2012, so it’s not really the most precise comparison.
I don’t know how schools are doing it now. It’s been 20 years since my kids were in first grade. But I’m not trying to say when learning your tables is best done, just that there is a need for some rote to get started. Even now I have to pick up new computer technologies and it usually starts with a rote process of learning new terms so I can go on to understanding the processes involved. There’s nothing natural about most symbology, you have to learn it somehow, and then it can be applied. I think with math learning the tables through rote is the best way to get started. I’m not sure how there’s really an alternative. It’s just a starting point.
There’s a difference between banning recess and requiring that a student stay in from recess if s/he has to finish up work that didn’t get done earlier.
I would have said that rote memorization is the opposite of “training the mind to think in terms of math on math’s terms”. Rote memorization doesn’t require comprehension.