Recess Is Becoming Too Safe

A few years ago, a student shouted at me during recess: “Hey Mr. Buck, check this out!” New to the school, he’d spent the past few weeks trying to find his social niche. He was amiable and smart, but other students were still wary of the newcomer to our small academy. At this exact moment, however, he was standing on top of the monkey bars, bouncing his knees, poised for a backflip.

His callout forced a decision for me: Allow him to jump and thereby risk severe injury for him, career consequences for me, and a potential lawsuit for the school, or interject and cut the fun?

I kept mum, he landed the flip, and all awkward social dynamics vanished for him.

School Safetyism

I’m still unsure of my specific decision at that moment, but it touches on an often undiscussed, albeit consequential, piece of school policy: Recess rules. Elementary-aged students spend anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes a day outside at recess, depending on the school. How we structure that time is no small question.

My school had blessedly lenient rules: Kids could play on top of the monkey bars; children weaved between their friends on the swing set; when arguments among children broke out over football rules, we more often than not encouraged the students to figure it out for themselves. Part of learning prudence and wisdom is the freedom to make decisions, including the wrong ones.

If anything, schools have their behavior policies backwards. In the classroom, permissive behavior codes allow disruptive actions. On the playground, policies crack down on typical childish behavior.

Unfortunately, this is not the case in most schools. In a cursory glance at school handbooks and local reporting, I’ve found rules against unstructured running, touch football, jumping off of swings, running up slides, going down slides backwards or on your stomach, swinging on your stomach or feet, twisting on swings, swinging sideways, sitting on top of monkey bars, tag, and roughhousing of any kind. The district near me doesn’t even have swing sets anymore.

This overabundance of recess rules comes after a wave of safetyism regarding children’s playground equipment, more broadly. After the federal government began issuing formal guidelines for playground equipment in 1991, municipalities across the country removed seesaws, monkey bars, sandboxes, high platforms without walls, and freestanding slides from playgrounds. And this parallels a trend of decreased freeplay, more generally.

The Benefits of Risky Play

I doubt that I need to delineate the research that physical activity and outdoor play is good for children. But it’s worth noting that risky play carries distinct benefits. A systematic review found positive effects of risky play for both physical and emotional well-being in children. In an intriguing theoretical paper, two evolutionary psychologists posit that risky play acts just like cognitive behavioral therapy, children face challenging situations, must calm themselves, and ultimately conquer them or fail (and more often than not, realize that failure wasn’t that bad).

And as with overcoming phobias, children instinctively take on these fears little by little. Anyone who has raised a toddler knows that he won’t climb to the highest point on a jungle gym right away. He might climb to a low spot, bounce, and return to the safety of the ground. After a few visits or a few years of development, that child will return and climb higher. The two evolutionary psychologists conclude that “our fear of children being harmed by mostly harmless injuries may result in more fearful children and increased levels of psychopathology.”

In other words, kids need to take risks, fall, get hurt, get back up, and realize that everything is ok. Kids need to argue, rough house, and figure out their own social frustrations without adults always stepping in to hold their hands. They need to climb high, flip upside down, and feel that wonderful mixture of exhilaration, fear, and accomplishment. They need to spin too fast on a merry-go-round simply because it is good fun.

The fear of a lawsuit forces schools into safetyism. But safety can run in contradiction to healthy development.

If anything, schools have their behavior policies entirely backwards. In the classroom, permissive behavior codes allow disruptive actions. On the playground, policies crack down on typical childish behavior. It should be the reverse. Make the students work when they work and allow them to play when they play.

Unfortunately, it’s not so easy to simply compel schools to allow more free play and to quit harping on kids who just want to have fun. When New York City was busy removing dangerous equipment from its playgrounds, the parks commissioner quipped that “What happens in America is defined by tort lawyers, and unfortunately that limits some of the adventure playgrounds.”

Most school personnel intuitively understand that kids need to take risks. Even selfishly, they want their students to get their yaya’s out so it’s easier to manage the class after the fact. Well-exercised children make for well-behaved students.

But the fear of a lawsuit forces schools into safetyism. If little Johnny breaks his arm while climbing on the outside of equipment, or little Susie gets called a bad name because a teacher thought the students should work out their disagreement, the school faces parental criticism or, worse, lawsuits.

How to Fix School Recess

It’s hard to change an entire cultural zeitgeist, but there are policies that could help shift the balance. As far as public regulations and guidelines, it’s imperative that those who write them understand that there are real tradeoffs to overly safe playgrounds. Safety can run in contradiction to healthy development. A lifetime of fears and anxiety might be worse than a childhood broken bone.

And policymakers can protect school personnel from or indemnify schools against lawsuits due to a child’s injury that they get from reasonable play. Of course, any school should be held liable if there is an obvious, preventable fault: jagged edges, broken equipment, high platforms over hard concrete, or a clear dereliction of duty—students left unattended outside, for example. If Johnny falls from sitting on the monkey bars and breaks his arm, however, that’s simply not lawfare material. That’s childhood.

Finally, parents may not be able to change school policy, but they can change their own actions. We can let children climb high, tussle about with their siblings, and wander out of our sight. It may be uncomfortable for us at times, but it will save them from a lifetime of neuroticism.

Daniel Buck is a research fellow and the director of the Conservative Education Reform Network at the American Enterprise Institute.

*Photo credit: Shutterstock