Do Teens Need Recess? (no longer available on CommonLIt)
2017
Some high schools across the country are implementing "big kid recess" as a response to student stress levels. Should playtime be mandatory for teens nationwide?
Recess is a regularly scheduled period within the school day for physical activity and play. Traditionally, elementary schools offer recess for students. However, having this break in the day is not common for students in middle and high school. In this text, high school students Ryan Nguyen and Reagan Zuber explain their arguments for whether or not teens need recess.
As you read, identify the evidence each student uses to support their claim.
YES
“A break during the school day would benefit everyone.”
Ryan Nguyen, a high school sophomore
in Massachusetts
We need a break! Ask a teen about their day, and they’ll likely give you a long list of classes,
extracurricular activities, and schoolwork. I’ve witnessed so much anxiety related to these hectic schedules: students pulling the fire alarm during midyear exams, kids sobbing in class, and even a girl fainting during a test. With today’s intense pressure to succeed, many teens are pushed to take on too many responsibilities at the expense of sleep, exercise, and free time.
Thanks to this unhealthy atmosphere, it’s no wonder that more than 25 percent of teens ages 13 to 18 have a diagnosable anxiety disorder at some point, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Even those who aren’t struggling with a disorder often still have trouble getting through the painfully long school day. With only a few hurried minutes between classes, we get worn out, and it becomes increasingly hard to pay attention
the longer we sit at our desks.
Recess is the best remedy for this unfortunate situation. Studies show that children who engage in physical activity reap the benefits of improved physical and mental health — yet only 27 percent of high schoolers get the recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity. That’s probably because we have so much going on after school that it’s hard to make room for exercise. If schools were to set aside even a short amount of time for us to move around, it could help relieve our stress — and it also could make us more focused in class later
on. Recess has other positive aspects too. Even if students didn’t want to run around, they’d still benefit from a mental break. That way, their brains could regroup for a bit, and they’d go back to class feeling refreshed and ready to learn again. Plus, recess would serve as an opportunity for social and emotional interactions that can’t take place in the classroom, like meeting new friends.
Something as beneficial as recess shouldn’t be just for little kids. We teens deserve a chance to blow off steam and recuperate from demanding classes. After all, taking care of our mental health is just as important as what we’re learning in class.
NO
“Setting aside time for recess would hurt my education.”
Reagan Zuber, a high school junior in New York
Recess would increase my stress, not take away from it. I want to focus on the subjects I’m interested in and develop skills that’ll help me in the future.
If I’m forced to go to recess, that cuts back on the time allotted to my education — and that’ll only hurt me in the long run.
The idea of recess is well-intentioned, but where would we fit another period in the school day? One option would be to shorten classes, giving teachers less time to teach important material. That means they wouldn’t have time to cover everything, so we’d likely end up with more homework, which would add to our stress levels. The other option would be to lengthen the school day, leaving less time afterward for extracurricular activities and homework — and that would just stress us out too. For many of us, those extracurricular activities are our
recess!
High school is our chance to seize as many opportunities as possible so we can figure out what we want to do after graduation. That’s why many students enroll in electives and AP courses — we want to expand our horizons before entering the real world. A mandatory recess would take away precious time we could be spending exploring these topics. Besides, we’ll have even more on our plates when we’re adults, so figuring out
how to cope with heavy workloads now will only help us later on.
In addition, mandatory free time could lead to increased trouble on campus if teens get bored and feel the need to "shake things up." And even if everyone is well-behaved, I imagine plenty of teens would spend the period staring at their phones, rather than exercising or running around with friends.
Instead of forcing all students to participate in recess, we’d be better off encouraging everyone to develop individual methods of coping with stress, like adding a study hall to our schedules or sitting with friends at lunch. That way, we can all relax — without taking away from anyone’s education. Approximately 6.5 hours is the average length of an American school day. Is there really room for recess?
"Do Teens Need Recess" from Scholastic Choices, September 2017. Copyright © 2017 by Scholastic Inc. Reprinted by permission of Scholastic Inc.
Unless otherwise noted, this content is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
