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>7th and 8th grade have no recess in her district Wait what? Is there some difference in notation since recess (in Finland it's 15 minutes between each class a

>7th and 8th grade have no recess in her district Wait what? Is there some difference in notation since recess (in Finland it's 15 minutes between each class and usually 30min after lunch) is like absolute must for kids of any age. There's even recess in upper secondary school but the lessons are 75 minutes usually instead of 45 minutes as in comprehensive school. Are you really saying that it's directly from class to another class? That's crazy!

jrochkind1 7y ago
Nope, you get it. It is crazy. The educational system is REALLY MESSED UP in the U.S. Recess doesn't help you do better on standardized tests, so it goes. I don't know what's wrong with Americans either, and I am one.
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  When do kids socialize then? Breaks between lessons is how students can get to know each other, grab some snacks, go to the toilet, talk about the game last night, flirt etc etc. Do you really mean there are no breaks in between? Or you mean there's only 10 minutes to get to the next room? It cannot be 0 because people can't teleport and I assume not everything is in the same classroom.
  - kn0where 7y ago
    At my school it was 5 minutes to get to your next class. Socializing was during lunch (we got an hour).
  - liability 7y ago
    They talking in the halls, during class, or during lunch. Study hall or detention. And all the while looking for teachers out of the corner of their eye. Many teacher are eager to scold any socializing, sometimes even during lunch, and students are willing to risk a scolding to have social contact. The teachers interpret this as unruly behavior and in an act of circular logic use the perceived unruliness of the children as a justification for scolding students who socialize. 'Gifted' students and those on the honor roll are often given a reprieve from this vicious cycle. But the majority are subjected to it.
    - bonoboTP 7y ago
      I am in shock if that's not exaggeration... But then again this might be one of those things - which do happen a number of times - where an American whom I actually meet in real life tells me not to believe what I read about the US online. I mean, there are tens of millions of schoolchildren in the US, and they seem to be "fine". Therefore it cannot be THAT bad. But I do remember from American "highschool movies" (OK not that good of a source) that the students were always on the way to a class, just grabbing things from the lockers, but almost never just chilling, sitting around or similar (except while watching some school sport game). But how do you even concentrate without taking breaks? That's not even good for standardized test scores. Your brain will just not take up any more info if you don't take breaks.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - mntmoss 7y ago
        Everything does vary a substantial amount between districts and even individual schools since at the national level there are only a few guidelines(although standardized tests have crept in since No Child Left Behind), so even with the public system the schools vary between feeding the "school-to-prison" pipeline where students walk through metal detectors and have little breathing room, and "magnet" schools that soak up all the academic achievers and give them back-breaking workloads. In general the school schedules are arranged for the benefit of the faculty more than the kids, though. The days start too early for most teens, and there's a lot of rushing between overly-short classes, to the point where I recall witnessing some students being marked persistently late simply because one teacher ends the class late and the other starts early. The upside of that is that you do tend to have a break because every single class has a few minutes of administrative work before it can really start.
      - jrochkind1 7y ago
        So when I was in primary school in the US in the 1980s, we had recesses. That is the golden age of those "highschool movies" -- and they were to some extent of course "fantasy" portrayals of high school even then, although not about the time between classes and recesses necessarily. We also biked to school ourselves unattended. And we had maybe two half-days a year spent on standardized tests, one test each. The insanity of American schools is a more recent phenomenon. It can vary between school districts though. Generally the wealthier and whiter the neighborhood/city/school, the better the kids will be treated. Although it's pretty shitty even at most of the "good" ones. What you are reading isn't much of an exagerration though. It is a good reminder of how insane it sounds to you, because IT IS INSANE. And you say we seem to be "fine" in the US? Have you even been paying attention to what's going on in the US? I don't know how much of it can be blamed on the eductional system... but you know, probably a chunk of it. The schoolchildren and former schoolchildren of the US are decidedly not "fine" though. This place is fucked up.
  - Qwertystop 7y ago
    Ten minutes, maybe five minutes if the school is small enough physically to get between rooms in that time. The break is definitely not meant to be long enough for more than "get to your next class" - and that's from someone from a relatively well-off suburban school district. Elementary school gets recess, don't remember how long. Middle school I don't remember very well; high school you just get lunch (but are perhaps not restricted to one room to have it, at least).
  - drunken-serval 7y ago
    During the 25 minutes for lunch and maybe 10 minutes before and after school. Otherwise, everything else is what your parents allow.
    - bonoboTP 7y ago
      Sound horrible, like being in prison.
  - LeifCarrotson 7y ago
    Here's my district's high school schedule for an example, schedules vary slightly from district to district and state to state but this is reasonably representative: http://www.rockfordschools.org/high-schools/rockford-high/daily-schedule/ http://www.rockfordschools.org/high-schools/rockford-high/da... The breaks in my district are 6 minutes long, with five 71-minute class periods. You can't socialize much in 6 minutes, you have to get from one class to the next, which might be a 400m walk if you want to stop at your locker - walking through a dense crowd of people, with a 15 lbs backpack. Or 200m if you bring a backpack of 40+ lbs of books and binders for all your morning or afternoon classes, stopping by your locker just at lunch. Lunch is 24 minutes long somewhere before/in the middle of/after 4th period. "Zero hour" at the top of the linked schedule is if you want to take an extra class, eg. to accomodate state requirements like civics and communications while also taking year-long AP classes, performing arts classes, or doubling up on science/math electives beyond the minimum. If you have an average morning bus arrival at 6:50, and add a sport that goes until 5:30PM, and are quick enough to have get your homework done in just an hour each night, it ends up being about the equivalent of a 60-hour work week...pretty rough on a 14-year-old child. But we're a Blue Ribbon Exemplary School! Top 250 in the nation! In spite of the flaws obvious in the schedule above, if my family is going to be in an American school system, and especially if we want them near extended family, friends, and my job, we're not going to do too much better than this: I bought a house in this district so my kid could get the same great education I did.
    - war1025 7y ago
      WTF are kids doing at the school at 6:30 (Zero hour)? That's ridiculous.
      - liability 7y ago
        School districts are pressured by parents with jobs to make the school day start early, so that parents and kids can leave the house at the same time in the morning.
        bonoboTP 7y ago
  - dorchadas 7y ago
    At the high school I teach at, there's 5 minutes between class, with a 10 minute break in the afternoon between the last two. It's absolutely awful.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
liability 7y ago
In most of the US from what I've seen, recess is seriously degraded for 5th and 6th grades, then eliminated entirely for 7th and beyond. They really expect teenagers to be sedentary until the end of the school day.
- cliffy 7y ago
  I vividly remember recess going away after 6th grade and it bummed me out hard. It's usually replaced by PE or some organized sport, which felt strictly worse in overall enjoyment.
nlavezzo 7y ago
My wife (a former PS teacher) just literally created a microschool focused on project based collaborative learning and lots of outdoor activity so that we wouldn’t have to send our daughter to that system. We thought we might get 10 kids enrolled the first year and got 34 and are waitlisted. There is a huge demand for alternatives, and we don’t live in a progressive area of the country.
- ksdale 7y ago
  My wife and I are very interested in something like this, does your wife have a website?
Spooky23 7y ago
My nephew's school in upstate NY eliminated recess periods starting in grade 7. He's in 9th grade and gets 25m study hall 4 days a week. He has 3 minutes to get between classes. They essentially added time for test prep. When I was in the same school district in the early 90's, we had a 42m recess period at least 3 days a week and either a 42m or 20-25m study hall every day. For my kids, we bit the bullet for private school. There are some things I don't like about private school, but I'm unwilling to make my son a subject of whatever bullshit social experiment is being conducted. You're only young once, and we live in a world where you need to be top of your game.
yardie 7y ago
Not sure if it's the same, but in France school was from 8AM to 4:45PM. Which makes sense if you have one or both parents working typical business hours. In my case I paid the school to supervise our son for an extra hour and made sure to conclude my business by 5:30P. In the US school is typically 8AM to 2PM. There is very little time between classes and the kids have to scramble for the next class. I also found out our son has been missing lunch because the cafeteria line queue is too long to accommodate all the students. In the US schools attempt to do more with less they have stripped any joy out of the educational experience. No recess, fieldtrips, or extracurriculars. And arts and sciences are a pale comparison of what they used to be. Labs and lab equipment has been replaced by online videos and virtual learning.
dmurray 7y ago
I experienced secondary school in Ireland, France and Germany around 20 years ago and never saw this "15 minutes between class". In all three, as far as I remember, we had 3-5 minutes to get from classroom to classroom, a lunch break of 40-90 minutes, and one or two other breaks of 15-20 minutes. I think this is completely normal in Western Europe.
- emilfihlman 7y ago
  Damn, I bet the success in education in Finland can be hugely attributed to just having actual recess between classes for all the classes and through the whole basic education (comprehensive school and upper secondary / vocational school). Here's actually a somewhat recent news on the matter (in Finnish https://www.kaleva.fi/uutiset/kotimaa/aivotutkija-valitunnit-voivat-selittaa-suomalaislasten-koulumenestysta/767720/ https://www.kaleva.fi/uutiset/kotimaa/aivotutkija-valitunnit...) and here's https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UC_7A7Zpe-FEK__blB6g21swi4HFLLhEdhLeODWPmNA/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UC_7A7Zpe-FEK__blB6g... a somewhat normal (though day length variation seems to not happen much in this schedule, it does happen all the time in that you can have shorter days by either going to school later or leaving earlier, too) timetable for an 8th grader.
emilfihlman 7y ago
Here's some Finnish 8th grade timetable I found and translated for you: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UC_7A7Zpe-FEK__blB6g21swi4HFLLhEdhLeODWPmNA/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UC_7A7Zpe-FEK__blB6g...

jrochkind1 7y ago

Nope, you get it. It is crazy. The educational system is REALLY MESSED UP in the U.S. Recess doesn't help you do better on standardized tests, so it goes. I don't know what's wrong with Americans either, and I am one.

bonoboTP 7y ago
When do kids socialize then? Breaks between lessons is how students can get to know each other, grab some snacks, go to the toilet, talk about the game last night, flirt etc etc. Do you really mean there are no breaks in between? Or you mean there's only 10 minutes to get to the next room? It cannot be 0 because people can't teleport and I assume not everything is in the same classroom.
- kn0where 7y ago
  At my school it was 5 minutes to get to your next class. Socializing was during lunch (we got an hour).
- liability 7y ago
  They talking in the halls, during class, or during lunch. Study hall or detention. And all the while looking for teachers out of the corner of their eye. Many teacher are eager to scold any socializing, sometimes even during lunch, and students are willing to risk a scolding to have social contact. The teachers interpret this as unruly behavior and in an act of circular logic use the perceived unruliness of the children as a justification for scolding students who socialize. 'Gifted' students and those on the honor roll are often given a reprieve from this vicious cycle. But the majority are subjected to it.
  - bonoboTP 7y ago
    I am in shock if that's not exaggeration... But then again this might be one of those things - which do happen a number of times - where an American whom I actually meet in real life tells me not to believe what I read about the US online. I mean, there are tens of millions of schoolchildren in the US, and they seem to be "fine". Therefore it cannot be THAT bad. But I do remember from American "highschool movies" (OK not that good of a source) that the students were always on the way to a class, just grabbing things from the lockers, but almost never just chilling, sitting around or similar (except while watching some school sport game). But how do you even concentrate without taking breaks? That's not even good for standardized test scores. Your brain will just not take up any more info if you don't take breaks.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mntmoss 7y ago
      Everything does vary a substantial amount between districts and even individual schools since at the national level there are only a few guidelines(although standardized tests have crept in since No Child Left Behind), so even with the public system the schools vary between feeding the "school-to-prison" pipeline where students walk through metal detectors and have little breathing room, and "magnet" schools that soak up all the academic achievers and give them back-breaking workloads. In general the school schedules are arranged for the benefit of the faculty more than the kids, though. The days start too early for most teens, and there's a lot of rushing between overly-short classes, to the point where I recall witnessing some students being marked persistently late simply because one teacher ends the class late and the other starts early. The upside of that is that you do tend to have a break because every single class has a few minutes of administrative work before it can really start.
    - jrochkind1 7y ago
      So when I was in primary school in the US in the 1980s, we had recesses. That is the golden age of those "highschool movies" -- and they were to some extent of course "fantasy" portrayals of high school even then, although not about the time between classes and recesses necessarily. We also biked to school ourselves unattended. And we had maybe two half-days a year spent on standardized tests, one test each. The insanity of American schools is a more recent phenomenon. It can vary between school districts though. Generally the wealthier and whiter the neighborhood/city/school, the better the kids will be treated. Although it's pretty shitty even at most of the "good" ones. What you are reading isn't much of an exagerration though. It is a good reminder of how insane it sounds to you, because IT IS INSANE. And you say we seem to be "fine" in the US? Have you even been paying attention to what's going on in the US? I don't know how much of it can be blamed on the eductional system... but you know, probably a chunk of it. The schoolchildren and former schoolchildren of the US are decidedly not "fine" though. This place is fucked up.
- Qwertystop 7y ago
  Ten minutes, maybe five minutes if the school is small enough physically to get between rooms in that time. The break is definitely not meant to be long enough for more than "get to your next class" - and that's from someone from a relatively well-off suburban school district. Elementary school gets recess, don't remember how long. Middle school I don't remember very well; high school you just get lunch (but are perhaps not restricted to one room to have it, at least).
- drunken-serval 7y ago
  During the 25 minutes for lunch and maybe 10 minutes before and after school. Otherwise, everything else is what your parents allow.
  - bonoboTP 7y ago
    Sound horrible, like being in prison.
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  Here's my district's high school schedule for an example, schedules vary slightly from district to district and state to state but this is reasonably representative: http://www.rockfordschools.org/high-schools/rockford-high/daily-schedule/ http://www.rockfordschools.org/high-schools/rockford-high/da... The breaks in my district are 6 minutes long, with five 71-minute class periods. You can't socialize much in 6 minutes, you have to get from one class to the next, which might be a 400m walk if you want to stop at your locker - walking through a dense crowd of people, with a 15 lbs backpack. Or 200m if you bring a backpack of 40+ lbs of books and binders for all your morning or afternoon classes, stopping by your locker just at lunch. Lunch is 24 minutes long somewhere before/in the middle of/after 4th period. "Zero hour" at the top of the linked schedule is if you want to take an extra class, eg. to accomodate state requirements like civics and communications while also taking year-long AP classes, performing arts classes, or doubling up on science/math electives beyond the minimum. If you have an average morning bus arrival at 6:50, and add a sport that goes until 5:30PM, and are quick enough to have get your homework done in just an hour each night, it ends up being about the equivalent of a 60-hour work week...pretty rough on a 14-year-old child. But we're a Blue Ribbon Exemplary School! Top 250 in the nation! In spite of the flaws obvious in the schedule above, if my family is going to be in an American school system, and especially if we want them near extended family, friends, and my job, we're not going to do too much better than this: I bought a house in this district so my kid could get the same great education I did.
  - war1025 7y ago
    WTF are kids doing at the school at 6:30 (Zero hour)? That's ridiculous.
    - liability 7y ago
      School districts are pressured by parents with jobs to make the school day start early, so that parents and kids can leave the house at the same time in the morning.
      - bonoboTP 7y ago
- dorchadas 7y ago
  At the high school I teach at, there's 5 minutes between class, with a 10 minute break in the afternoon between the last two. It's absolutely awful.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

liability 7y ago

In most of the US from what I've seen, recess is seriously degraded for 5th and 6th grades, then eliminated entirely for 7th and beyond. They really expect teenagers to be sedentary until the end of the school day.

cliffy 7y ago
I vividly remember recess going away after 6th grade and it bummed me out hard. It's usually replaced by PE or some organized sport, which felt strictly worse in overall enjoyment.

nlavezzo 7y ago

My wife (a former PS teacher) just literally created a microschool focused on project based collaborative learning and lots of outdoor activity so that we wouldn’t have to send our daughter to that system. We thought we might get 10 kids enrolled the first year and got 34 and are waitlisted. There is a huge demand for alternatives, and we don’t live in a progressive area of the country.

ksdale 7y ago
My wife and I are very interested in something like this, does your wife have a website?

Spooky23 7y ago

My nephew's school in upstate NY eliminated recess periods starting in grade 7. He's in 9th grade and gets 25m study hall 4 days a week. He has 3 minutes to get between classes. They essentially added time for test prep. When I was in the same school district in the early 90's, we had a 42m recess period at least 3 days a week and either a 42m or 20-25m study hall every day. For my kids, we bit the bullet for private school. There are some things I don't like about private school, but I'm unwilling to make my son a subject of whatever bullshit social experiment is being conducted. You're only young once, and we live in a world where you need to be top of your game.

yardie 7y ago

Not sure if it's the same, but in France school was from 8AM to 4:45PM. Which makes sense if you have one or both parents working typical business hours. In my case I paid the school to supervise our son for an extra hour and made sure to conclude my business by 5:30P. In the US school is typically 8AM to 2PM. There is very little time between classes and the kids have to scramble for the next class. I also found out our son has been missing lunch because the cafeteria line queue is too long to accommodate all the students. In the US schools attempt to do more with less they have stripped any joy out of the educational experience. No recess, fieldtrips, or extracurriculars. And arts and sciences are a pale comparison of what they used to be. Labs and lab equipment has been replaced by online videos and virtual learning.

dmurray 7y ago

I experienced secondary school in Ireland, France and Germany around 20 years ago and never saw this "15 minutes between class". In all three, as far as I remember, we had 3-5 minutes to get from classroom to classroom, a lunch break of 40-90 minutes, and one or two other breaks of 15-20 minutes. I think this is completely normal in Western Europe.

emilfihlman 7y ago
Damn, I bet the success in education in Finland can be hugely attributed to just having actual recess between classes for all the classes and through the whole basic education (comprehensive school and upper secondary / vocational school). Here's actually a somewhat recent news on the matter (in Finnish https://www.kaleva.fi/uutiset/kotimaa/aivotutkija-valitunnit-voivat-selittaa-suomalaislasten-koulumenestysta/767720/ https://www.kaleva.fi/uutiset/kotimaa/aivotutkija-valitunnit...) and here's https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UC_7A7Zpe-FEK__blB6g21swi4HFLLhEdhLeODWPmNA/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UC_7A7Zpe-FEK__blB6g... a somewhat normal (though day length variation seems to not happen much in this schedule, it does happen all the time in that you can have shorter days by either going to school later or leaving earlier, too) timetable for an 8th grader.

emilfihlman 7y ago

Here's some Finnish 8th grade timetable I found and translated for you: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UC_7A7Zpe-FEK__blB6g21swi4HFLLhEdhLeODWPmNA/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UC_7A7Zpe-FEK__blB6g...