The bell has finally rung on recess, or lack thereof, in the public schools in North Carolina. This occurred after the State Board of Education overwhelming adopted a “Healthy Active Children” policy focusing on obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes found in alarming numbers among children across the state.
The new directive, mandating students across the state be given enough recess and physical activity to experience positive health benefits, is expected to be fully implemented in the 2006-2007 school year.
It may be the cliched “too little too late” for the generation of children already forced into a sedentary lifestyle while waiting for a break to run, stretch themselves, and play after the schools they were attending decided to do away with recess in order to teach the core curriculum required by the current test-based system.
In most cases, however, the teachers still allowed the children to chug high-caloric drinks and eat high-fat snacks of chips or cookies. The results have been devastating, said Dianne Ward, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during an interview with Darren Freeman of The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk. “Kids are getting fatter, and many are getting fat enough to get ill, not just face health problems when they get older.”
Carolyn Dunn, a food and nutrition specialist for the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at North Carolina State University, said overweight and obesity problems have become “one of the most critical health issues” facing the nation today. “Overweight is an issue for all age groups, all races and all socio-economic levels,” she said in a May 2003 article for The Forum. “Sixty percent of adults in the United States are overweight. Our children are following in our footsteps: There are twice as many overweight children and three times as many overweight teens today as two decades ago.”
A 2002 issue of the North Carolina Medical Journal warned that physical inactivity was one of the main culprits in the obesity epidemic plaguing the children in the state. “Unfortunately, North Carolina has reduced the amount of time it allows children to spend in physical education and recess,” the preface to Kristie K. Weisner’s article “Reading, Writing and Gaining Weight in North Carolina Schools” said. “Cutting down on physical education and recess is a disservice to the health and learning potential of the children in this state.”
Weisner reported recess and other activities requiring movement were virtually discontinued to allow time to teach the tested courses of reading, writing, and mathematics. “The ABCs program requirements provide a perverse incentive for schools to cut courses and activities that are not tested,” she wrote. “Demands associated with the ABCs program have led to the misguided reduction of physical education classes.”
Ironically, Weisner said, the imbalance in the school system pitting health against activities had completely negated the research showing regular physical activity actually helps improve cognitive function, mental acuity, and mental status.
In What Happened to Recess and Why Are Our Children Struggling in Kindergarten, author Susan Ohanian said the test-based system has dismantled a well-rounded and common-sense approach to learning. One of the casualties is recess. The loss of play-time, she said, has resulted in undue stress among schoolchildren.
However, the lack of play hasn’t stopped on the playground. More and more, children, even as young as preschool and kindergarten, are not allowed a rest time or playtime in the classroom.
In an article entitled “Kindergarten less playful as pressure to achieve grows,” writer Karen Brandon of The Chicago Tribune said kindergarten teachers are being asked by top administrators to remove dolls, blocks, and other toys from the classroom in order to make the children sit still and learn to read and write. In an interview with Dick Clifford, co-director of the National Center for Early Development and Learning at the University of North Carolina, Brandon found kindergarten’s increasingly academic orientation is beginning to lead more parents to consider “red-shirting” their children, waiting a year to send their children to kindergarten.
Professors Edward F. Zigler and Sandra J. Bishop-Josef of Yale’s Center in Child Development and Social Policy said the current attack on play is misguided. “Research has demonstrated the beneficial effects of play for cognitive development, including language skills/vocabulary, problem solving, perspective taking, representational skills, memory and creativity,” they said in a recent article called “Play Under Siege.”
“Further, play fosters the development of non-cognitive factors that are essential for learning, including emotional self-regulation… and learn to cooperate. Play has also been shown to contribute to the development of social skills, such as turn taking, following rules, empathy, self-confidence and motivation…”
In an article for the North Carolina Parent-Teacher Bulletin, writer Dorothy Cald-well, coordinator of the North Carolina Initiative for Healthy Weight in Children for the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, said schools need to wake up and become a part of the overweight solution. “Many people think of overweight and obesity as strictly a personal matter, but it is a serious health problem and there are many things parents, schools, and communities can and should do to address it.”
One option, Caldwell said, is to “Educate parents, teachers, coaches, staff, and other adults in the community about the importance they hold as role models for children, and teach them to be models for healthy eating and regular physical activity.”
Now that the warning bell has sounded, time will only tell if the North Carolina School Board can turn back the clock. Weisner said anxious parents and students will have to wait and see whether North Carolina schools actually follow through on more physical activity and play time for the children.
She said it will be a daunting task because the state currently has no system to monitor or assess any curriculum that is not tested as part of North Carolina’s accountability program, making it difficult to track each school’s individual progress.
Administrators and teachers have a lot at stake if they give up precious moments to teach the core curriculum, Weisner said. After all, she said, they are offered incentives and financial bonuses if their school performs high on the “end-of-grade” tests. On the other hand, they could be fired if the students don’t perform at a certain level.
In a November 2003 Newsweek article entitled “Reading, Writing, Recess,” writer Peg Tyre said, “Principals know kids need exercise, but they also feel the sting of federal and state legislation aimed at improving test scores and bolstering basic skills. If it’s a choice between remedial math instruction and recess, math wins.”
As a result, there still may be no time to play, Weisner said. It should come as no surprise, she said, that schools continue to use their limited resources to assure emphasis on tested subjects. Nothing will change, Weisner said, unless there is state support to broaden the focus on the educational experience of a child and the resources are given to implement the changes.
Karen Welsh is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal.