Posted on 07/21/2026 3:16:50 AM PDT by Adder
You remember recess, right? Monkey bars, blistering hot metal slides, tetherball, sitting around on a bench chatting with your pals. It was great.
And for most of you Gen Xers, baby boomers, and older millennials, it was the best part of school… right up there with “pizza Fridays.” The bell would ring, and the doors couldn’t fly open fast enough… kids would pour onto the playground like they were just released from prison.
Recess was a total hodgepodge created by the kids. Sure, there was usually some half-interested teacher keeping an eye on things, but the kids picked teams, made up games, argued over rules, settled little disputes, scraped their knees, and figured out how to get along without an adult hovering over their every move.
That half hour might’ve looked like chaos, but something really important was happening. Children were learning how to read a room, deal with conflict, make friends, lose gracefully, speak up for themselves, and recover when things didn’t go their way.
(Excerpt) Read more at revolver.news ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
That’s the sad truth.
You are right there...While I live in an older neighborhood...there are kids...I don’t see them on the streets but I see them riding in cars...so i know they are there
:]
“The bell would ring, and the doors couldn’t fly open fast enough… kids would pour onto the playground like they were just released from prison.”
FINALLY, someone else uses the prison analogy. I’ve always said that comparing public schools is like comparing cell blocks - you really don’t want to be in any of them (but many, perhaps most, of you have forced your kids into them).
The ban on recess is to benefit the professional “educators.” It reduces the potential for violence.
When I was a kid the teachers/nuns asked who would man the band-aid box that day when recess was over, there was always a couple volunteer kids or the teacher picked a kid.
When the buses reach their stops, parents whisk their kids straight into the car. We never wanted to see our parents waiting for us like that, even if it was raining. Maybe in the dead of winter but then that cup of hot chocolate at home wouldn’t taste as good.
Could just be our litigious society. Know when they opened our recess doors we did some possibly dangerous stuff, but all survived and no lawsuits.
The teachers don’t want to sit outside because it is either too hot or too cold. And the school lawyers say someone could get hurt.
Imagine recess at “Yogi and Booboo Elementary School” ...
That's no exaggeration. The latest junior/senior high school built in my county could easily double as a minimum security prison with it's electronic doors, cameras and a design that insures no one goes outside between opening and closing bells.
Curriculum-wise recess isn't the only endangered institution. Physical Exercise classes (P.E.) have become mostly voluntary where it's common to see kids opting out to stay on their phones during that time. Civics is as dead as Latin language courses as that interferes with Democrat programming. Then there's the insidious "gender fluidity" garbage that teaching has no business indulging in.
It's a wonder most kids come out of there sane at all.
I went to a parochial school for 8 years . The asphalt playground had a line down the middle to separate the boys & girls . We had a basketball court on our side . In spring and summer it was baseball almost every day .We couldn’t use bats and hard ball so we had a rubber ball that we hit with our fists ! In fall it was either BB or touch football using one of those mini-footballs ,
In winter we played kings of the mountain . I lived in eastern CT and it snowed from late Nov. until April . The snow would get piled up high against a long fence that separated our playground from property belonging to the other catholic school / church next to our school . Man that was a blast .
In the middle 60s I took a toy gun (lever action rifle) to school to play with at recess. No one cared. Crazy how far we’ve fallen.
We played this "game" all of the time, and would come in from recess with grass, dirt, and sometimes mud, all over ourselves. There were also the associated scratches and bruises from tackling or being tackled.
We loved that game, and no one (including teachers) had any problem with any of it. This was in 4th-6th grade. It was just boys blowing off a tiny portion of their boundless energy.
I can't imagine any part of that recess experience being allowed today. And that's a serious problem, for many reasons.
It probably could be the same. But instead of play guns, students decided to bring real guns and use them.
absolutely...tho not at school, usually.
There have been videos of new recruits arriving at basics. Women were fat. The young men with boobs were just gross.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.