by Jodie Leidecker

Created on: May 10, 2009

Apparently we are in a race. Those appointed to represent us in it:
our kids. I mean, the elementary school ones. That's what I found
out when I called members of Kentucky's House and Senate Education
Committees about children needing daily recess. I heard things like
"For every engineer we produce, India is producing seven" or something
to that effect. Never mind that they have over a billion people, by

God, our country is falling behind and kids are going to have to pay
the price.
And pay the price, they will, these fifth grade and younger kids who
are forced to try to learn all day without breaks, despite all the
evidence that incorporating recess into the school day makes brighter,
more active, more well-behaved and less stressed-out children. Has
anyone thought to measure the cortisol levels in children who are in
this race against unseen forces, or to examine what happens when the
mind has no downtime for the truly creative thought that comes during
self-directed free play? Recess is not just the time when the brain
processes information that is being learned; it is the time when
completely creative thinking happens, as long as adults get out of the
way of it. Kids will need more of it, not less to be able to work in
the new kind of marketplace, where really creative minds create new
technologies faster than we can conceive. Imagine the outcome of the
Renaissance genius, Leonardo Da Vinci, who spent his young years
outside in nature, wondering and observing, forced to sit in a
classroom all day, doing a portfolio or something else
"other-directed." What would be the likely effect on his later work?
Why are we then, always telling kids to stop "playing around" and to
"start learning?" Why don't we look at why children want to play so
much that they even will forgo their bodies' need for food or bathroom
breaks, at least for a while? Research clearly shows that kids learn
best through play, something that we really don't understand. I
remember well a series of long recesses in fifth grade in which we
developed and carried out "weddings." I was the preacher. We had a
long cast of other characters. I don't pretend to understand what
this sort of play means in terms of child psychology. An expert in
that field could explain it, I'm sure, but I do remember the absolute
joy of having creative control, in cooperation with the other
children, over something that I had brought forth from my own mind,
the exquisite pleasure of play, what's called "being in flow." How

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