LETTERS

Free play recess

Posted

To the Editor:

The Rhode Island General Assembly recently enacted legislation mandating public schools provide at least 20 minutes of “free play recess” to children from kindergarten through grade five. 

This is what happens when the political elites, investors and billionaire dilettantes decide to “reform” public education. There is no time for recess in “A Race to the Top.” Even if unstructured play was not central to a child’s cognitive, social and emotional development, autonomous interactions, learning from and relating to each other is. 

How did our educators and administrators get through college without at least an introduction to child development and the seminal works of Piaget and Vygotsky? What studies can these teachers and administrative taskmasters cite, in these “innovative” and “successful” reform schools (pun intended), to support and justify the elimination of recess?

Whatever reforms were implemented by the former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, they apparently were not good enough for his own children who attend the University of Chicago Laboratory School. A progressive school founded and predicated upon the ideas and methods of John Dewey, who undoubtedly would be appalled to see what constitutes public education for the lower classes in the 21st century.

John St. Lawrence

Johnston

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  • JohnStark

    Independent of any positive or negative outcomes of recess, this is not a proper role for state government. Once again, some pols can't seem to help themselves from meddling in local issues.

    But Mr. St. Lawrence is onto a larger point, and that is the common practice of beaurocrats who denounce educational choice initiatives for low income children to attend private and parochial schools, while simultaneously sending their own children to these schools. And all the while extolling the virtues of public schools, so long as their own children need not be exposed to them. Barak Obama's first act as president was to genuflect at the high altar of the teachers' union by ending a DC voucher plan that allowed low income kids to attend private and parochial schools. His second act was to enroll his daughters at a private school.

    Sunday, June 26, 2016 Report this