More and more school kids
sentenced to years of prison 
By Danny Weil, Project Censored 
A new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) indicates that children in poor urban neighborhoods need more chances for old-fashioned playtime in their daily lives.

A number of experts in the report have raised concerns that in the current climate of treating youth not as if they were at risk, but as the risk themselves, children have little time for unstructured play — which, AAP says, is important for kids’ physical and mental development.  Perhaps the lack of play is due to the fact that more and more students are spending all day in school classes, hunched over desks preparing for standardized tests under the corporatized Obama educational policy, Race to the Top.  The (AAP) report seemed to think this was the case noting that even U.S. suburban children are “over-scheduled” with formal classes and lessons, leaving them little time for simple play (Poor kids miss out on playtime, pediatricians say, http://bit.ly/udH1U2 Pediatrics, online December 26, 2011).



A 2009 report by the Alliance for Childhood surveyed kindergartens in New York City and Los Angeles and found that children had less than 30 minutes a day, on average, of “choice” time, in which kids could do whatever they wanted.  Kids in L.A. had only about 19 minutes of free time each day. The rest of the kindergarten day was filled with the tyranny of functionalist learning  and standardized test preparation.  According to the American Association for the Child’s Right to Play, as many as 40 percent of school districts in the United States have reduced recess in the aftermath of the No Child Left Behind act, which emphasizes testing scores over anything else. ((Pappas, S. (August 14, 2011).  As Schools cut recess, Kids’ learning will suffer, experts say. Live Science. http://www.livescience.com/15555-schools-cut-recess-learning-suffers.html).



In Belmont, Massachusetts, on November 3, 2011, Superintendent Thomas Kingston closed playgrounds at the Daniel Butler Elementary School, and the town’s Recreation Department closed the playground near Winn Brook Elementary School.  The recent closing of two elementary school playgrounds in Boston for safety reasons has exasperated parents and exposed a bigger problem in Belmont, one which exists throughout the nation — chronic under-funding of playgrounds for children (or no funding at all) that leave schools unable to maintain play equipment without hefty parental fundraising and out of pocket expenses, local officials and residents say (Evan, A (November 13, 2011) Playground closings bare larger issue: Schools rely on parents to raise funds for upkeep. Boston.com. http://articles.boston.com/2011-11-13/news/30394828_1_playground-parental-involvement-school-budget).  



Part of the problem is that there is simply no money for playground equipment due to austerity measures designed to bail out Wall Street banksters, hedge fund operators and financial capitalists who have now turned to working people to belly up money or shoulder cuts in social services to pay for the banksters’ crime sprees.  The Wall Street criminals are now going through our children’s pockets.  Our children are being asked to sacrifice public space devoted to childhood play and physical education to assure that Wall Street investors and banksters suffer no loss of their own “play time” — gambling in the casino economy they created for us to we live in.


For poor children who do not live in suburbs but reside mainly in cities in particular, they complain they experience problems such as a lack of safe places to play, parents who are busy trying to pay for housing and other basics and schools that are cutting out recess and physical education to make more time for the ubiquitous and mind numbing standardized testing.  Although schools nationwide have been reducing time for recess and physical education for many years, those students in poor areas, in particular, are feeling pressure by administrators and politicians to labor to narrow disparities in student performance and this means they must give up playtime for the “chain gang” of testing.  The attack on youth extends to denying them the kernel of the very essence their childhood.



In close to one-third of schools with the highest poverty rates, recess has actually been completely eliminated. That AAP study also found that kids who lacked regular recess time were more likely to be black, low-income and live in large cities, versus kids who routinely had recess (Poor kids miss out on playtime, pediatricians say, http://bit.ly/udH1U2 Pediatrics, online December 26, 2011).



Despite the increasing amount of ‘forced, tube feeding’ now called ‘learning’, schools are trying to cram into their day (a 2008 study published in The Elementary School Journal reported that up to a quarter of elementary schools don’t even schedule recess regularly for all grade levels), some humane advocates are now advocating expenditures designed to improve kids’ playground experiences (Pappas, S. (August 14, 2011).  As Schools cut recess, Kids’ learning will suffer, experts say. Live Science. http://www.livescience.com/15555-schools-cut-recess-learning-suffers.html).



For the AAP, playtime is vital for children’s development (Poor kids miss out on playtime, pediatricians say, http://bit.ly/udH1U2 Pediatrics, online December 26, 2011).  Yet, Children’s free playtime has dropped over the years, replaced by structured activities and screen time, including television and computer use.  A 2003 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that a quarter of kids under age 6 watched TV for at least two hours a day; these same kids spent 30 minutes less per day playing outside than kids who didn’t spend so much time in front of a screen (Pappas, S. (August 14, 2011).  As Schools cut recess, Kids’ learning will suffer, experts say. Live Science. http://www.livescience.com/15555-schools-cut-recess-learning-suffers.html).



At a time when unstructured childhood time is vanishing in favor forced regimentation and militarization, a pair ofUniversityofMarylandstudies of children’s time use found that in 1981, kids ages 6 to 12 had about 57 hours of free time per week.  By 2003, kids had only 48 hours in which to choose their own activities. Time spent outdoors was especially hard-hit as children were ‘benched’ in the new learning incarceration (ibid).



Of course if Newt Gingrich has his way, children at public schools would be busy cleaning toilets, mopping floors, and otherwise doing janitorial work in their early ages which would mean playtime would be replaced with forced child labor.



Dr. Milteer, of AAP, also indicated that unstructured play has its own unique benefits, like sparking children’s imaginations, and teaching them social skills and “negotiation (Poor kids miss out on playtime, pediatricians say, http://bit.ly/udH1U2 Pediatrics, online December 26, 2011).  Arne Duncan and the venture capitalists and hedge fund operators who now work assiduously, paid for by your tax money, to privatize public schools, close public schools and force desk time over play time seem to disagree.  The Dickensian miscreants wish to steal not just taxpayer funds in their unquenchable quest to privatize schools; they also wish to steal childhood itself.  These ‘businessmen’ are not interested in ‘sparkling children’s imagination’ but instead advocate tethering students to the carpet loom of structured, functionalist-based testing where imagination suffers capital punishment.  All of this while obesity rates rise, child poverty increases and opportunities to even access public spaces such as playgrounds or public parks shrink.

In fact, more and more schools seem to resemble such Super-maximum security prisons like Pelican Bay, where prisoners are let out in the ‘yard’ for only one hour per day.  At least high-max prisoners get one hour a day of exercise; many children, the majority of them minority and lower class youth, don’t even get this.

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