Recess is the Most Important Period of the Day

Kids are fat. Study after study suggests kids are staggeringly obese to the point where this generation may be the first to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. We know kids are fat. We see them on the street, on the news and on TV shows. We have even re-defined fat: I realized that kids who when I was in school would have been considered "chubby" are considered normal now.

Kids are dumb too. If you watch the news or listen to adults speak, kids score lower on test scores compared to many nations in the world. We are a nation of dumb, fat kids. Adults like to blame kids' dumbness and fatness on kids. However, adults are to blame in many ways.

Adults do not know what is good and what is bad for children. We raise our kids based on the myths perpetuated by pop culture and evening news programs, not actual facts or research. What school has time to research its policies before implementing them when a sensationalist television show provides all the answers? If our kids are dumb, and TV tells us they are, they need more time in school: that's the answer. If six hours a day in the classroom is ineffective, seven hours is the solution. To add another hour of classroom time, we eliminate the unimportant classes and the wasted time: recess, PE, art, music and other extra programs.

These "frivolous" classes and wasted time are not extras to be disregarded to make room for more important activities. In fact, many of our kids are dumb and fat because they do not get enough recess, PE, art and music. Recess, of course, is wasted time that is easy to eliminate. However, research suggests recess is a far more powerful time than administrators believe.

Recess contributes significantly to the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive (intellectual) development of the young child. Recess is one of the few places and times during the day when all these developmental domains are utilized in a context that children view as meaningful.