If your kid goes to one of those academic and/or desperate to improve schools, where all the little ones are hunkered down drilling math facts and learning phonics and taking practice test after practice test, you might need to worry.
Schools responding to the test score requirements of No Child Left Behind -- many of which have given up recess and other free time to up math and reading test performance -- are failing children (yet again!) in terms of learning how to behave socially.
From Reuters (via Yahoo!):
"The available research suggests that recess may play an important role
in the learning, social development, and health of children in
elementary school," the research team said in a study published in
Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
But today many children get less free time and fewer physical outlets at school "because many school districts responded to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 by reducing time committed to recess, the creative arts, and even physical education in an effort to focus on reading and mathematics," they added.
These schools, which often serve urban children who don't get much free time outdoors either, are also not helping the rise in childhood obesity. Another topic, another day.
Here's my question: if learning the academic stuff like math and reading is all about putting in hours, why not up those hours? Not by killing off art and P.E. and music, but by extending the school year. The U.S. school year is surprisingly short and the summer break is painfully (and harmfully, if you ask me) long.
You teachers out there might hate me for this, but the normal two-month summer break should be way shortened -- to two or three weeks. Then the days could be less packed, there would be time to bring back music and art and who knows what other long-term learning projects.
What do you think?
Photo: DrRobyn.blogspot.com
