Give children a break

Anthony D. Pellegrini Project Syndicate

The buzzword of preschool and primary school education in many countries over the past 20 years has been "accountability." Advocates suggest -- rightfully, I think -- that scarce tax dollars should be spent only on programs that "work".

But one of the less noticed effects of the movement for greater accountability has been that children's opportunities for free time and opportunities to interact with their peers, especially at recess, has been eliminated or diminished in many school systems in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain.

Politicians and school superintendents view "accountability" as a way to prove that they are "tough on education" and are striving to improve academic performance. Indeed, it seems like common sense that reducing recess time would have a positive effect on achievement-- a position endorsed by educational leaders like Benjamin Canada, a former superintendent of schools in Atlanta, Georgia. But there is no empirical or theoretical evidence to support this claim.

On the contrary, whereas many educators recognize the centrality of teaching skills and maximizing efficient use of classroom time, they also advocate breaks between periods of intense work to allow children to relax and interact with peers. They also hope that children will return to their classrooms after their breaks and work with renewed interest.

There can be common ground between these two positions, particularly with respect to primary schools. While accepting the need for accountability, our best theory and empirical evidence must be used to guide practice. To do otherwise is to squander the trust and resources of children, families, taxpayers, and educators.

Indeed, far too many of the policies being recommended for primary schools have no scientific basis. I am not aware of any data supporting the idea that eliminating recess maximizes children's attention to classroom tasks.

In fact, experimental data supports the argument that what goes on during recess periods is "educational" in the traditional sense. Specifically, children are more attentive to classroom tasks after recess than before recess. Attention to classroom tasks, such as reading, is related to more general indicators of cognitive performance, such as reading achievement, so it is an important indicator of the effects of break time.

Anecdotal evidence from East Asia also suggests that children's attention to classroom work is maximized when instructional periods are relatively short and followed by breaks. In most East Asian primary schools, for example, children are given a 10-minute break every 40 minutes or so. When children come back from these breaks, they seem more attentive and ready to work than before. American experimental evidence that my colleagues and I gathered also supports these claims.

To illustrate the role of recess on attention, consider the findings of a series of experiments conducted in a public elementary school, in which we manipulated recess timing, or the time children spent doing seatwork before recess. On randomly assigned days, the children went out to recess at 10 a.m. or at 10:30 a.m. Before and after the break, children's attention to classroom tasks was coded. In three of the four experiments, we also controlled the tasks on which children worked before and after recess.

In all the experiments, the children were more attentive after the recess than before, and they were less attentive when the break came later. Furthermore, in many cases, gender moderated the effects of recess. First, in reading assignments, the children were more attentive to same-gender, relative to other- gender, books. Second, boys' attention was especially sensitive to recess timing: Boys were more likely than girls to be inattentive when recess came later.

In one of our experiments, the recess period was held indoors rather than outdoors. We chose this venue first, because the effects of indoor recess on children's attention would provide insight into the role of a relatively sedentary break period on subsequent attention. If children's attention were greater after the indoor break than before, the role of physical activity per se would be minimal. Second, as a policy matter, educators sometimes use indoor recess as an alternative to outdoor breaks. The results from this experiment replicated the findings from the outdoor recess results: The children were more attentive after recess than before.

In conclusion, these experiments support the idea that providing breaks over the course of instruction facilitates children's attention to classroom tasks. The fact that these results were obtained using well-controlled field experiments and replication across a number of studies instills confidence in the findings. Educational policymakers should therefore use these findings to guide policy. If they do not, concerned citizens should demand that educators provide a justification for the policy that they do impose on schoolchildren.

School officials and politicians often extol Asian educational practices, but they should also consider Asian recess practices in the context of an extended school day and academic year. Extending the length of the school day and the academic year -- a key priority of "accountability" advocates -- might positively affect children's achievement while simultaneously providing parents with badly needed additional childcare. But requiring that children spend more time in school will not boost cognitive performance and social competence unless we also increase the time children spend outside the classroom.

The writer is Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota and author of The Role of Recess in Children's Development and Education.