These next two posts are about the school ground as a place of Wonder during recess especially.
Children today spend ninety percent of their time indoors, and forty or so hours per week in front of screens, a historically new phenomenon.
That doesn't mean that the importance of time outdoors (including at school) is a new realization, of course. A book out of Britain, Special Places, Special People by Wendy Titman, shares writings from the early 1900 until 1994 emphasizing the same idea. "The fact that stereotypical school grounds are a wasted resource had long been recognised," says Titman (p. 13) What's more, "It appears that it was once quite commonplace for schools to utilize
the land around their buildings for many formal as well as informal
curriculum. However, the tradition waned in the last three decades or so
to the point that, in the main, school grounds became used only for PE,
games and playtime..." p. 17
She continues by describing an article from 1939, "Many of those who had embarked upon the development of school grounds were convinced that in addition to the benefits of specific changes, other less tangible benefits accrued ... which had a significant impact on the operation of their school as a whole. Examples cited include a reduction in vandalism; changes in social behaviour and attitude; the development of a new ethos of care for the place and the people in it; increased level of community interest and involvement; a reduction in truancy levels; improvements in discipline, and generally that "everyone somehow seems happier, even the school keeper!"
The author of the 1939 article noticed the benefits of swings and slides, and trees to climb in, but especially of ditches! "In the waste ground the children will trench, dig, make rivers, hills and valleys, pools and streams. They may try to float boats, bury hidden treasure and make see-saws of planks and logs. They will find caterpillars and worms, ants, and slugs, and stop what they are doing to examine them. Waste ground, with trees and rubbish and perhaps a ditch, is the best plaything a child can be given. Geography is easily learned and wild fantasies worked out in the health-giving open air." (E. R. Boyce, Assistant Inspector of Education, 1939)
According to Special Places, Special People, by the 1970s, schoolyards were "uniformly dismal green deserts". This situation eventually prompted a research project that involved consultation with children.
Titman asserts that the school grounds send a message to children the same way the rest of the school's elements do, messages about what the adults think is important or not important for children, how children are valued, and what the children should value. She calls it the school's Hidden Curriculum.
The point of Titman's book is that, since the Hidden Curriculum of playgrounds and school grounds affect children, we would do well to know what children themselves make of, and need from, these places.
For the 1994 study, 216 children from 12 schools in Britain were interviewed in groups while they were shown pictures of a variety of school grounds. The majority of children were between 8 and 10, but some groups had 5 and 6 year-olds, or 11 and 12 year-olds. Below is a summary chart of what the researchers found. These findings is fleshed out in Hidden Curriculum II.
