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Saving Free Form Play Recesses

As many readers of the ToysPeriod Blog are aware, several public school districts in the United States are in the process of evaluating their ability to continue offering recess periods to their elementary school students.

Recess periods, for those not familiar with the term, are times during the school day when students are allowed free form play, that is, play formulated by their own imaginations, unfettered by adult preferences and direction.

The threat of recess cancellation has slipped into the potential category (from the heretofore impossible) as a result of lawsuits brought on behalf of families for playground incidents over which administrators and teachers, despite their diligence, had no real chance of preventing.

Playgrounds throughout history have been places where skinned knees and emotional challenges are presented to developing children in the context of their own imaginations.

With playground freedoms come a full range of experiences, some happy, some not so, but always with the goal of preparing the individual to eventually navigate an adult world.

Leading psychologists agree that free form interactive play is essential for the healthy development of all higher beings. Children, of course, are at the top of the developmental ladder. However, horses, dogs, cats, as well as bears and chimpanzees, also make mental, emotional and physical progress through play.

The more sophisticated the being, the more essential play becomes for establishing trust in self, developing confidence in taking initiative, and, mastering control of the body and its musculature.....

Continue reading Comments (4) Friday, 5:01 pm | January 15th, 2010

Bulletin Japan: LEGO to the Rescue

We have heard it before: The average Japanese student is doing as well in mathematics as the best US students. In test after test, the top 5% of US math students are matched by the top 50% of their Japanese counterparts.

Why should that be so? Surely US students compare well with Japanese learners in terms of intelligence, and potential.

Well, we know that schools stay open longer in Japan, an average two hours per day longer, than in the US. It has also been pointed out that in order to promote proper attention to classroom lessons, each Japanese classroom period is followed by a recess aimed at allowing excess youthful energy to be discharged. Sadly, this is at a time when many US schools are being forced to abolish recesses altogether because of the threat of violence recesses pose.

Until recently, the one area in which US students continued to outperform their Japanese counterparts was that of creativity. That is, in tests measuring the ability of students to innovate, US learners seemed to be able to consistently rank higher than Japanese learners in their ability to formulate a number of solutions to any given problem.....

Continue reading Comments (0) Thursday, 5:35 pm | August 13th, 2009

Taming Teens with Lego

It is a chilly September morning in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

A group of lab students at one of the top universities in the world wait with some degree of nervousness for their legendary instructor.

Professor Seymour Papert, founder of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI Lab) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) briskly enters the room.

The twenty expectant faces that Dr. Papert has been assigned this semester watch the grizzled instructor expectantly.

Dr. Papert faces his charges and bellows, "Bring on the Lego!"

This kind of scene at a top research facility may seem surprising.

Many of us perceive Lego as a mere child's toy.

But, not so fast, the same kind of scenario is being duplicated at the California Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley, Purdue University, and many other lofty educational towers. What's going on?....

Continue reading Comments (1) Saturday, 6:17 pm | July 18th, 2009