Playtime's Over

School exists because we assume without some kind of instruction kids won't learn things they need to know, like reading, writing and standing in line to go to the bathroom. Recess exists because we figure that kids below a certain age need some time when they're not being told what to do and they can run around and scream like the barbaric little banshees they are.

Enter the "recess consultant," a person hired by a school district to tell it how to tell kids how to play. Some schools in Edina, MN, have hired the company Playworks to "remake the playground experience into more structured and inclusive play time," according to this story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The general idea, which is not a bad one, is to try to corral the worst behavior recess can bring about, like bullying or name-calling.

But when an executive of the company says that, "The aim is to build skills that would make kids 'incredibly successful adults,'" then there's a quite obvious layer o' flim laying atop the flam here. Using the phrase "incredibly successful adults" ought to disqualify anyone from working around people with unformed and impressionable minds, like children and Hollywood celebrities.

And the company's combination name that joins "play" with "work" tells you everything you need to know about what's going on in their plans. Recess will no longer be the brief time of the school day you can have to yourself to let your own imagination run free -- you pick from designated games that will be explained to you by an adult who will loom over your every action and word to make certain they conform to the model.

I speak as one of the kids who was chosen last or next to last in most playground activities. I didn't much care for it, but it seemed pretty clear to me that other kids were chosen because they were faster than I was or better hitters or knew the game better. And every now and again I got to be the team captain (it rotated) and I picked the same way everyone else did. Speedy, strong and athletic first, and then down to my own cohort of the uncoordinated at the end.

While I wouldn't describe myself as an "incredibly successful adult" and I will now pray daily that no one ever does, I've put together a half century of not screwing either me or anybody else up all that badly, notching some small achievements in my two professional fields and being of use to folks now and again. And the kids who always got picked first and maybe bullied smaller kids a little or made fun of them? You can find some of them by typing their names into the offender database search for the state department of corrections, which may indicate that "success" at recess has a lot less to do with what kind of life you live than the people of Playworks think.