Kids Need More Structured Playtime, Not Less
The cover story
of last month’s Atlantic magazine struck a nerve with many parents.
Written by Hanna Rosin, an Atlantic national correspondent, and titled,
“The Overprotected Kid,” it describes a generation of children who have
experienced hardly an unsupervised or unstructured moment in their
lives. Looking for an alternative to America’s risk-averse culture of
child rearing, the author takes her 5-year-old son, Gabriel, on a trip
to North Wales, where an “adventure playground” called the Land opened
two years ago.
At the Land, there are few rules and minimal
adult intervention. Ms. Rosin describes children starting fires,
building forts using hammers and wooden pallets and doing flips “on a
stack of filthy mattresses.” She watches as children push tires (and at
one point, her willing son, sitting in a bin) into a creek. She
concedes that the goings-on at the Land fall outside what most American
parents would find acceptable; she presents this extreme version of
youthful freedom to make a point. But is her point right?
Lauren McNamara would
say no. An assistant professor of educational psychology at Brock
University in Canada, she has studied what goes on among children during
unstructured playtime. Professor McNamara, who grew up in California,
conducted research at schools in Chicago before joining the faculty at
Brock, in St. Catharines, Ontario.
Children in both countries have little
experience with old-fashioned play, Professor McNamara said. She and
Ms. Rosin agree on that much. But Professor McNamara doesn’t believe
that more freedom is the remedy. The children she observed during school
recess were given plenty of freedom, and their freedom quickly turned
ugly. Teachers released children onto the playground with few resources
and little guidance. A result was frequent and sometimes intense social
conflict, as students told her in interviews: “Some kids get real
aggressive when the teacher is not looking.” “I wish there was less
bullying and exclusion.” “We need help out here.”
Professor McNamara set out to offer them that
help, recruiting some of the students in her Brock classes to act as
playground organizers and coaches. In her initiative, called The Recess Project,
these undergraduate “recess leaders” help the older children on the
playground become leaders themselves, guiding younger children as they
learn how to juggle or make crafts or do Zumba, the dancelike exercise
regimen set to fast-paced music. All activities are optional; the idea,
the professor said, is to give children choices “on the continuum of
unstructured free play to structured games.” An emphasis is placed on
resolving conflicts productively and on including everyone. The ultimate
goal is nothing less than changing “the culture of recess.”
Professor McNamara’s Recess Project is akin to ventures in the United States such as PlayWorks and the Recess Enhancement Program (REP),
although these organizations rely on trained adult coaches to lead
schoolyard activities. (PlayWorks also has a Junior Coaches program that
trains fifth graders in leadership skills and conflict resolution.)
Like Professor McNamara, the directors of PlayWorks and the Recess
Enhancement Program report that their interventions lead to less
conflict, more physical activity and even to better behavior among
students once they’re back in the classroom. All three programs arose
from the same reality noted by Ms. Rosin: Children today, either because
they are continually entertained by digital devices or continually
ferried from lesson to practice to play date, don’t know how to handle
unstructured time. Ms. Rosin’s answer to this dilemma is for adults (as
the inside-the-magazine title of her article puts it) to “leave those
kids alone.”
Professor McNamara fervently disagrees.
“Children need guidance, role models and activities that help them
connect and maintain their friendships,” she said. “When kids feel
connected and accepted they will engage more effectively with each
other, feel better, negotiate play more effectively. We need to help
them do this; they are struggling on their own.” In an article
in a scholarly journal documenting her research, Professor McNamara
elaborates on this view: “There appears to be an assumption that recess
is a delightful moment in our children’s day when they are free from
their academic restraints to burn pent-up energy, to laugh, and to play.
And it is for some, perhaps. But we suspect many of our students are
challenged by the lack of structure, the social awkwardness, the
conflict, the lack of equipment, and the absence of organized
activities. The students themselves had pointed this out to us — they
had brought their issues and concerns forward and nudged us to pay
attention.”
Clearly, Ms. Rosin’s stories of bygone
childhood freedoms resonate with many adults. Perhaps others will
recognize the scenario that Professor McNamara describes, a social mosh
pit that is less Norman Rockwell and more “Lord of the Flies.” On a
purely logistical level, Professor McNamara’s solution seems the more
plausible: Schools aren’t about to break out matches and hammers at
recess. It also seems the more humane.
The dangers today’s children face from unsafe
playground equipment and child abductors are indeed, as Ms. Rosin
documents, wildly exaggerated. But the harms they face from their own
classmates — from bullying and exclusion and sheer meanness — are often
understated or ignored by adults. If children don’t yet know how to be
kind and generous and inclusive, isn’t it our job to teach them?