What Happened to Recess?

please excuse any typos I am trying to get better with my editing but I am often typing while dealing with my children, Third paragraph second sentence first word was suppose to Worse not Whose, more sleep is probably a good idea!

The developmental theories of Erikson, Piaget and others had absolutely no weight when those in power decided that little white boys and girls would be harmed by playing with little black boys and girls.  My point, schools in Mississippi discontinued recess, physical education and closed all public swimming pools because of the order to intergrate.  This is a FACT!!  My father-in-law, now deceased, was the first Superintendent of “Negro Schools” here in Jckson. He had some of the same concerns as multiculturegirl.  He spoke with so much sadness and disappointment re to that issue. This was back in 1969 - over 40 years go.

We can not continue to ignore the ELEPHANT hiding under the green on the pool table. 

Now that the schools are black in black areas and white in white areas, recess, physical ed. (gym) and public swimming pools should not be an issue.

Multiculturegirl,

Not only am I the sports guy for the JFP but I am a big believer in physical fitness. You make some valuable points about kids needing recess.

That is not the only time kids need to play. Most of the time when I am out on a nice day I do not see kids playing in their neighborhoods or their own yards. 

This is one thing that gets my goat. Everyone wants schools to make their kids play but when their kids are at home they feed them a steady dose of Sponge Bob or video games.

I am in no way saying this is what you do but it is what I see in my daily life. Kids need more physical activity then the 30 minutes they would get at school.

Kids need at least 60 minutes of physical activity everyday. If your kids are not getting recess in school it become even more important that you make sure they get out and play at home.

I am sure it was a weather shock moving here from up North. Our summers are very hot and most people do not like being physically active but for what is best for our kids we need to set the example.

How can we get out kids to go out and play when parents do not want to step foot outside and engage in physical activity themselves. Then when you add eating habits into the mix it becomes the perfect storm for obesity.

The schools are not the end all be all in physical fitness. Parents have to do their part as well.

Again I am not by any means saying you do not get your kids out of the house for physical fitness. I am just giving observations to what I see in daily life and with the kids I know.

The title of this article is “What Happened to Recess?”  I am not trying to tell anyone else how to answer the question; however, to deal with any issue, we must first identify the root cause(s). To suggest that parents, who are getting off at five or six in the evenings, rushing home to fix a meal and then helping with homework, are the total solution is with disregard for what is happening here. During the winter months, there is darkness when most people return home in the evening.

We must face the fact that we no longer live in communities where the “village” is helping to raise the children. Many people do not know their neighbors and in some nighborhoods, you don’t want to know them.  It is just a sign of the times and remedy would be to bring back our in-school physical fitness programs,then known as physical Ed. If the child gets nothing over the weekend, they would have had the number of physical fitness hours suggested for a week.

I am sure that the “Fist Lady” was not told that all of the fancy playground equipment she saw did not have a well thoughout and developed program for physical education.

Just saying.

Justjess,

I am not saying the parents are the only ones to blame but they do bare blame for lack of physical fitness. I know the article was title what happened to recess.

I was stating a fact that, kids need more than just recess to be physically fit. This is not about who or what “the first lady” says. It is not about any thing but the lack of involvement by parents and schools to care about kids physical and eating habits.

It does not excuse parents because they work and then have to find time to get out and play with their kids.

Do not just relay on one part of the problem ie recess and expect the problem to go away. Or expect the government to fix a problem that can be fixed at home.

Life is tough but it tough all over. No I will not absolve parents of their duties just because they have to work or it gets dark.

That is why we are the fattest state in union. Because we would rather make excuses or wait for someone else to fix the problem.

Just saying.

Bryan, it is about what “The First Lady” says about obesity in this country.  It’s about what any responsible adminstration should be saying since this aproblem impacts the federal budget when people get sick and are at the mercy of government. Everyone should know and should be speaking up and out. Your seemingly blame of parents will do nothing for problem solving.

The Commonwealth Fund identified causal factors in MS holding the position of #1 IN THIS COUNTRY for OBESITY, HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE, AND DIABETES.

According to the study, MS does not have a curriculum focus on nutritional or physical education.

As I stated in my initial blog on this subject, these programs were thrown out because of intergration.  My husband, also deceased, re-started the PROM at Callawsy High School.  All dances, proms ect. were cancelled for a number of years because Whites did not want their kids to mingle with Blacks.

I don’t mean to be Jack Webb, but, “These Are the facts.”

Justjess,

lets just agree to disagree. I have been in sports my whole life and parents play a major role if you want to admit that or not.

I have lived in Mississippi my whole life. When I was in school I played with whit and black kids at recess.

I do not know where you are from or what happened to you but I know I spent time with kids of every race at recess. This is not a race issue.

The facts to me are that parents in your eyes get a pass. Physical fitness like all things start at home.

If you want to give parents a pass for not taking time to play with their children or make sure they play at home, that is fine with me. But the real facts are kids learn from their parents.

If they see their parents do not care about physical fitness, they will not care either. Are parents the only one to blame..no.

In fact, in never said parents were the only ones to blame. I said, parents should not wait for schools to fix the problem but make time themselves to fix the problem.

I have a sister who is a single parent with a daughter. Every night she comes home fixes diner, helps with homework and takes her daughter out walking for at least 30 minutes a day.

That is on top of the physical activity her daughter gets at school and day care. Is it hard on her…yes. Is she doing the right thing in the long run for her daughters health…yes.

If you want to state facts just travel around this weekend and see how may kids you see playing in their yards, at parks, in their neighborhood.

We do not do enough to encourage physical fitness. At home, school, or anywhere else. As a society we have become lazy and we wait for someone else to fix our problems.

One other thing, I will mention. I hate that people say we, Mississippi, is the most obese state.

I will lay some facts on you. One Body Mass Index is wrong. Going by BMI makes nearly pro athlete obese. I for one believe guys like Patrick Wills and LeBron James are not obese but BMI would say they are.

Secondly, we again Mississippi has the highest per capita athletes in pro sports. Stats lie. Any sports fan will tell you that.

But if you want to excuse parents from their duties as parents. Fine but do not expect me to agree with you.

Again, Bryan, I refer you to the title of this issue: “What Happened to Recess?” Your responses seem to be in keeping with Gov. Haley Barbour’s recollection of MS racial history. Pretending to forget with only give pause for cange.

Again, Lets agree to disagree. I have lived in Mississippi my whole life and I know the state well.

I love this state and I want to be here my whole life. My recollection of history is from my own experiences not what anyone tells me they are.

I grew up in Rankin County and we had recess. We all played together, be we Black, White, Hispanic, Asian or whatever race they were.

But that does not mean your past and present is not affected by your own personal history. Are you saying my childhood memories are fabricated by the Republican Party? 

They are my memories and they really happened. I am in my early 30’s and I do not remember anyone telling us who we could or couldn’t play with.

So do not tell me, I follow Barbour’s idea of Mississippi racial history. I know what happened in my childhood.

As far as to what happened to recess. My point was schools are not part of the system at fault for kids not being physically fit.

Maybe you should drop the color issue and discuss what really counts. A system that is failing kids, at home and school.

Multiculture girl, “Yer up!”

I am sixty years old so I guess my perspective has been tainted by old school colored glasses.

I agree that recess should be returned even though it may take away from more structured instructional time, and yes there is an additional cost to having recess.

Recess allows kids the opportunity to, with the assistance of their trained teachers, learn and practice socialization skills, vent pent up energy and frustrations and showcase and excercise the less traditionally respected (during normal school hours at least) physical intelligence/physical learning styles.

Creative teachers can and have designed this recess time to allow kids to use their bodies, innate organizational, leadership and physical skills to reinforce lessons.

That being said, on the home front:

Since when has the innate nature of children changed so much that they need to be taught by and accompanied by parents to play?

Somehow I don’t remember engaging in hours of play (outdoors at least-we did play a lot of board and card games at night) with my parents.

On the contrary, our primary goal as kids was to get out of the house and away from our parents, and their chores and their constant questions about homework.

Sometimes I think my parents created the prospect of more chores to motiviate us to get out of the house.

In my opinion, parents don’t need spend an inordinate amount of time playing with their children.  Sure they should play with their younger childen to teach them socialization skills. 

After their child has reached a certain age parents do need to collectively (that village thing again) create a safe place and invite other children to come, and let the games begin.  I’m not talking about organized leagues, just let the kids congregate and let them do what nature intended them to do. 

Parks are good as long as adult oversight is available.  Adult oversight in public areas is more critical now as some parents appear to have spent little or no time “training” their kids to be even minimally polite, kind and non-aggressive.

Of course the parents will have to kick the kids out of their domestic “Eden” of TV, video games, cellphones, iPods and all of that other electronic mind narcotics.

Thanks for the “nudge” multiculturegirl.  Great post.

Justjess-I think your the one who is pretending. Pretending to know what happened in every school system and town in Miss 40yrs ago.

My wife went to public school in the Delta, she started in 1970, they had recess or PE and never stopped having it in the 12 years she went to school.
The public pools never shut down in the town we grew up in in fact they built a couple of new ones in the time.

The schools you went to might have done that but don’t assume or state they did everywhere else unless you know that for a fact.

The fact is that Jackson and other cities in Mississippi closed swimming pools to avoid integration. See http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/program.pl?ID=217364 and http://lawschool.courtroomview.com/acf_cases/9663-palmer-v-thompson and http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/us/18pool.html. As a matter of fact, states all over the South—including Mississippi—closed entire schools to avoid it.

To say that those days and policies no longer have any repercussions in many southern public schools today is simply naive. In 2008, a Delta high school had its first ever integrated prom. Earlier this year, a court ordered a school in Walthal County to end its racial practices. So, even if “your” school didn’t discriminate during the time “you” attended, please have enough sense (and sensitivity) to understand that others did not and do not have the same experience.

Justjess has a legitimate argument. Children get substandard meats and vegetables in public schools, courtesy of the USDA. Schools have dramatically decreased physical fitness since 1970. Half of all children and 75 percent of high schoolers don’t get PE in school, and 40 percent of schools have eliminated recess, either because of budget cuts or increased time spent on academics, or both. And school is a primary factor in teaching kids good habits; i.e., if they’re not being taught good nutrition and exercise in school, many kids don’t get taught at all.

Regardless of who is to blame—and there certainly seem to be plenty of folks doing the wrong thing—our public schools are a mess. NCLB is a dismal failure on many, many fronts, including the overemphasis on test scores über alles.

Children need to play. It’s part of the human learning process. When they’re not getting P.E. or recess in school, and being parked in front of the TV at home, it’s predictable to end up with the kinds of serious physical and mental issues we have today.

I do not know what proms, or student body elections have to do with sending kids out to play. If you want to blame the past for the present you will never move forward in the future.

It is nice to blame schools for poor nutrition and lack of physical activity but not blame what goes on at home. Just because schools do not offer PE is not an excuse to become fat.

Just because schools do not offer nutritional food is not an excuse either. School lunch is one meal a day/five days a week. That means kids eat at home 16 meals out of the week.

Parents are the primary teachers of good habits. They teach us to brush our teeth, take baths, ect and so forth.

Parents should also teach good physical fitness. That does not mean parents are anymore to blame then schools are.

It means that if the school fails parents have to step up even more. Make sure they have good breakfast and diners for their kids.

Make sure their kids get excise and not Sponge Bob and Grand Theft Auto. Outside has become a four-letter word to kids today because of air conditioning, video games, and the rise of cable TV.

It is easy to beat up on the school system because we do not have to look in the mirror and lay some blame on ourselves.

If you want to fix the problem of obesity, it begins at home with Parents teaching good nutrition habits and serving good nutritional foods. 

Then Parents have to make sure kids do not get a TV baby sister and go outside and play. All of this has to be done during the formative years of child so it sticks.

To finish fixing the problem, we as a society must demand more of our schools. But we must be willing to pay for more as well.

The answers to the problem is easy. It is implementing those answers that seem to be hard.

What happened in the past is just that, in the past. The future is built in the present.

I’m just getting time to look at this thread. It sounds like everyone is right. Obviously, it is important that parents and families encourage more physical activity. Is is also obvious that schools need to as well. It is also a fact that schools in Mississippi—except for the enlightened ones that Bubba and his friends and family attended—cut out many activitys, from proms to P.E. options—in order to keep newly integrated school kids from being in, uh, compromising situations together.

If you want to blame the past for the present you will never move forward in the future.

With due respect, Bryan, that statement is not entirely true, not to mention that I don’t see anyone here who wants to place sole blame for today’s problems on our recent and not-so-recent past. I’ve been in many discussions here, for instance, with Justjess over the years, and I understand her context and goals. She is not one to *only* blame the past.

Alas, history is important to progress, however. If it wasn’t, then we should never bother looking at it or teaching it. And we can’t only look at the history that we’re comfortable with if we really are concerned about the now and the future. The truth, and one that that is part is of the JFP’s DNA, is that denying the truth of our past never helps us move forward. I always like to say that the Mississippi riddle is solved by “both”—that is, study our history closely and succinctly, but don’t stay there. Use the information to solve the problems of today and tomorrow. And never, ever downplay what happened or the effect is has on today.

Now, I cannot tell you how to deal with the past, but I can say that the JFP *always* chooses to include the context of the past and to welcome them from our readers, so telling them it doesn’t matter or isn’t relevant to a conversation, where it obviously is relevant, won’t really get you very far with folks on this site. We believe in incorporating the lessons and knowledge of the past every chance we get, and we welcome it from our readers.

Good point, Laurie. It’s a mistake to look at every situation in isolation.

Bryan, my point in bringing up the recent incidences of racism is that the past is not over and done with. It’s living and breathing right here and now. Things are connected, whether those connections are obvious or not. I also see a huge distinction in taking responsibility for the past and, as you put it, “blaming” the present on the past. To paraphrase a truism, if we don’t know our history, we’re doomed to repeat it.

I am not solely blaming schools for the fitness of our kids; however, I clearly see that schools play a role in the problem, just as they have a role in the solution. Same with parents. Whether schools play a larger role or parents do is really not a question that makes a big difference in the long run. Both schools and parents (and government, IMHO) absolutely need to work together to solve it.

Just one last point: For many children from low-income households, the foods they eat during the school day (including breakfast for many) is their only chance for a meal, decent or otherwise. In Jackson, 86 percent of students qualify for reduced or free school lunches, and many of those kids aren’t getting fed elsewhere.

Mississippi has the highest poverty rate in the nation at more than 27 percent, with the African American poverty rate at 44 percent in 2008. In 2007, some 165,000 children in Mississippi experienced food insecurity, a nice way of saying they didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. And given the current state of the economy, I’m sure that number has risen significantly since then.

I really don’t want to get into a long, drawn-out discussion about the causes of poverty and hunger in America, but it is a stark reality and a complex one with multiple causes and multiple resulting issues. Suffice to say that not every child goes home to mom and dad, TV and video games, and dinner with the family. And then there’s the whole issue of cheap, bad corporate food, but that’s a whole other topic as well. If good nutrition and fitness really was a simple issue, I expect someone might have solved it by now.

Donna, Did they do away with recess when you went to Neshoba County schools? From what I can tell from their hand book the have “break” now.

Justjess,

I’m working on several projects designed to commerate local unsung hero’s who were involved in the Jackson Civil Rights movement,including the school desegregation and equity in education struggles.

If you’d like to have your father-in-law considered for inclusion or provide other historical insights please contact me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

“Those who cannot learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.”

One thing that comes through for me is that Bryan’s childhood and family life experiences came out of a loving, caring situation with parent(s) who knew how to care for him and did just that. This is commendable and he should be given the stage here to talk about his positive expriences and to give praise and credit to those who made his positive life experiences possible.

This is the kind of life that all children need to avoid the many issues they are at risk for, i.e., deliquency, poverty, obesity, drugs/alcohol, HIV/AIDS, pregnancy, poor academic perfomance, drop-out, prison and early deaths. MS LEADS the Nation in all of these categories. As explained by Donna and Ronni, there are many children here in MS who live in poverty and with parents who are limited in their capacity to provide these needs.  Institutional parenting is a part of the solution for this problem.  Children spend many hours in schools on a daily basis; therefore, they must be accountable, also.

It is also a part of the solution when others can look beyond the faults of others and see their needs.

Thanks for the information y’all. I didn’t realize that recess was stopped because the man was afraid of me and Susie playing jacks together. Recess was my favorite subject. I made all As in it and couldn’t wait until it started. It caused me many whippings though. If older boys weren’t jumping on me as a comeback for earlier periods when my 2 older brothers made them stand there while I hit them, ‘Fessor Moore was beating me and other students for leaving chairs on the outside as recess ended. I wish we had recess at work too, such as every other hour.