Middle School Dilemma: Does Recess Still Matter?

Student and teacher opinions on whether recess should be brought into middle school.

Remember all those times when you and your besties hung from the monkey bars upside down and tried to persuade the teacher to let you have more recess time? Everyone in middle school has had different elementary school experiences, but there is one thing that everyone has experienced- and that’s recess. When you get to middle school all of that joy is over. Now, students have way more work than connecting the dots, and they can’t even depend on recess to improve their day. This seems like enough of a reason to bring recess to Rachel Carson Middle School. Well is it?

Rachel Carson Middle School does provide students with one form of free time called Panther Time, where students aren’t allowed to socialize. Seems like a nightmare for teenagers, doesn’t it? Well, according to a survey taken by students in Carson Middle School, 68.2% voted that they would rather have Panther Time, than recess. Shocking? Not really. Several students who went against recess stated that “Panther Time is more helpful to us because it gives us time to work on schoolwork and catch up, unlike recess.” This may actually be pretty reasonable. It is true that they have a lot of work to complete in middle school, so isn’t it crucial for them to have enough time to get it done?

Well, the anti-recess crew weren’t the only ones who were persuasive. 39.2% of the respondents claimed that they would rather have recess, not Panther Time. And they also had pretty good reasons. For example, several stated that “recess would be good for us because it would give us a break, help us calm down, and socialize with our friends.” However, the students weren’t the only ones who supported this claim. An English teacher from Carson, said that she would like to have recess in middle school as well. However, when asked whether she would rather have Panther Time or recess, she said that she would have both, because according to her, “both are necessary.”

It seems that the majority of students at Rachel Carson prefer Panther Time over recess. According to them, Panther Time helps the students and actually allows them to get work done, while at recess, they would just socialize. This would seem surprising, but it seems as if the students have indeed matured since their recess days. They don’t have time to hang from the monkey bars anymore, instead, they have book reports to finish.