Reader Angry Mom writes,
May I ask your opinion on public schools and the new common core regs? I recently started volunteering in my 8 yr olds class once a week 2nd grade). They do not do recess at all. If they get work done by a certain time they get a five minute “brain break”. This week the teacher said because their class’s testing scores were not where they are supposed to be they could not go to specials (physical education, music, art etc).
I wonder if I am being irrational because this really upset me. My child has recently been diagnosed with ADHD, I am beginning to wonder if what’s wrong is not with my child, but the way they do schooling. I have homeschooled before and am seriously wondering if this should be an option again.
Dear AM,
Congratulations! Your child’s school is revolutionary. They have figured out a way to make children hate academics, feel bad about themselves, and become sedentary, all at once! How wonderful. And it’s also the first time that I can imagine a situation in which I would choose to homeschool! Imagine this conversation with your pediatrician:
Pediatrician: How do you discipline your child?
You: Well, when he doesn’t do well enough on the worksheets I provide him, actually, more like when his grade on them cannot be averaged with those of the neighbor children to yield a score I like, then I punish him with no physical activity!
Pediatrician [dials Child Protective Services].
I find it difficult to believe that this was actually happening, so I googled around, and found this Forbes article that explains all the reasons that schools are doing this, and why all the reasons are terrible. Since I don’t need to reinvent the wheel, let me just tell you something about behavioral research.
When we punish our kids, they may not do the behavior, but they also start to hate us and hate the behavior. So basically, if you punish kids for not doing well enough on schoolwork, they may try harder (short term) but they will learn to hate their teachers and hate schoolwork. Also, the theory of learned helplessness states that if people have no control over bad things that happen, they are likely to become depressed. Here, no matter how well child X does on the test, child Y may do poorly, so child X’s own efforts don’t even net him recess!
Also, of course, habits are formed in childhood, and if kids don’t learn to love exercise and physical activity outdoors at this age, they are likely to become adults who don’t exercise either. And exercise is associated with so many positive outcomes on physical and emotional health.
Socialization is integral for kids, and recess includes lots of social time. The first question I ask my kid when she gets home is who she played with at recess and what she played. (Okay, you got me, that’s the only question. I have three kids.) Show me a kid who does awesome at test scores and terrible at socializing and I will show you one unhappy kid who is at risk for depression. And what about the kid that’s awesome at PE but crap at testing? That kid no longer has any chance to shine at school at all. His self-esteem will plummet.
Lastly, as usual, the kids who suffer most from this absurd policy are the lower income kids. They may not have safe, or any, backyards to play in, and their parents may be working later shifts and unable to take them outside after school (if they even have time, with all the homework kids get, which is another issue equally horrendous). So they sit around in school, then they sit around after school, and oopsie, I guess that means they never get physical activity at all! Sorry, kids.
You are correct that ADHD-like symptoms can emerge in all kids who don’t have access to unstructured play. And for kids who do have ADHD, taking recess away worsens symptoms, as this article explains.
You owe it to your kids and the other kids in the school to have a sit down discussion with your principal before you pull out your kid. Bring all of those articles. See what they say. Also, you can try to compensate for this stupidity by giving your child plenty of unstructured outside play time after school. But if you know in your heart that this is bad for your kid, and the data back you up, and you have no other schools as options, then I encourage you to explore homeschooling again. It is so sad that this school doesn’t have the best interests of the kids at heart, and even sadder that administrators have likely convinced themselves that test scores are more important than brain and body development.
Please keep me updated, and till we meet again, I remain, The Blogapist That Says, Look At Finland, People.