School Playgrounds Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

School Playgrounds - Essay Example The more dynamic modern play has more emphasis on adaptations and innovations. While encouraging inter-ethnic friendship and a vibrant oral culture, break time gives children the chance to explore the boundaries of their gendered experience within a safe conservative environment. Children ought to have the right to play and to choose what they play, which gives them a chance to put their dreams into action. The loss of play for fun has resulted to disillusionment and depression. The absence of challenge in the 'remodeled' playgrounds limits creativity, explorations, practice and fosters the development of attitudes that imply shying off from the face of challenges and taking risks. "It is through play that children explore their environment encountering numerous challenges to personal competence that involve decisions for risk-taking behavior" as argued by Jambor (1986). This freedom denial has not only resulted to the absence of fun but also risks the social health of the children. Break time is important for academic achievement, a more healthy development and maturity of peer relations and for general school adjustment. The reasons for limiting play and the increased adult supervision are inclined on affording more time for academic excellence, fears of developing negative peer relations and aggression by providing the children chances to exhibit antisocial behavior. (Pellegrini and Blatchford: 2002) The exposure to physical dangers while children play under trees, in tackling games, playing within school buildings, jumping off playground equipment or playing in wet areas must be controlled and guided. Conflicts and petty squabbles can arise, teasing and name calling, taunting and bullying and even violent incidents such as the murder of a British Asian boy in a Manchester Secondary School playground showing that violence, possibly racially motivated could erupt in playgrounds. Concerns also arise with students' behavior that could arise over the break and spill over into the school. (Blatchford: 1989) Break time has a positive 'educational value' in the sense that the longer children work on standardized tasks with no break the less attentive to the task they become and so breaks facilitate improved attention and focus on learning in the academic program (Pellegrini: 2005) This can be explained by the massed vs. distributed practice theory which explains that breaks inserted between periods of intense work help distribute effort and increase cognitive performances. (Bjorklund and Pellegrini: 2000). The playground at break time is the place where pupils interact on their own with minimal adult interference and they consider this time significant and enjoyable. Here, they play and meet friends in cooperative interaction involving governed games with their peers. Games are particularly important at the commencement of the school year when peers are not familiar with each other, but the knowledge of the rules of some common game forms the basis for interaction after which they become familiar which results to an interaction in the other domains. (Pellegrini and Blatchford: 2002) During recess periods, students learn to resolve conflicts, solve problems, negotiate, and work with others without adult intervention and also serves as a developmentally appropriate strategy for reducing