crime and privilege

The school across from D's house has several fields and a garden, basketball courts, soccer goals, jungle gyms with slides and monkey bars, picnic tables and other objects of innumerable imaginative possibilities for kids. (Walking by, I heard a girl instructing her playmates, “The red is hot lava!” I also spied two boys in a less-trafficked corner of the grassy schoolyard climbing into an empty garbage can, throwing furtive glances behind them to see if their activities were being monitored....Ah, the art of play..) I was thinking, wow, bet these kids don’t know how lucky they are to have recess. And most of all, they get to have grass and trees.

Growing up in tree-lined, white-picketed Pleasantville, those precious things always seemed a given for me. I think those things should be a given for every child. It never occurred to me to consider kids privileged for having access to those things, until I realized that childhood can, in fact, exist without them.

I think play is a human right for children, and I think that not having time for kids to play and be active is criminal. So, technically speaking, given the lack of recess, green spaces and playtime at PS 00, and the intractable, hard-nosed, “data-driven” curriculum that I do my best to adhere to every day, that makes me an accessory to the crime.

I’ve been thinking, given my ample down time at the moment, about what my ideal school would look like (and sound like and smell like and be like.) I can’t say I have a precise picture in my mind, but there are certain fundamental things I already know...

Cement-block walls in a concrete jungle: no. Grass and trees: yes.

Scantron sheets: no. Recess: yes.

Test-prep: no Music, art and dance: yes.