Anna Beresin documents the recess play of children at an urban American school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1991 to 2004. In the face of a prescribed and often hostile adult world, the children at Mill School express their basic humanity through play. Adults generally misunderstand this play, label it as violent, chaotic, and destructive, and attempt to suppress it by banning particular games and even abolishing recess. Forty percent of American schools have removed or are in the process of removing recess. But as Beresin shows, violence on the Mill School yard occurs primarily during the transitions to and from the short fifteen-minute recess, as an expression of frustration at the restriction of play, rather than during the play itself. While appearing as chaos to adult eyes, children’s recess play is actually carefully organized by the children themselves. Through play the children challenge themselves, their minds, their bodies, and each other. They move, develop physical skill, express joy, and establish community. They negotiate rules and develop relationships within the encompassing frame of an oppressive adult world. The adult culture prefers to train passive consumers and cooperative workers, rather than creative, intelligent, and inspired human beings.
Through tales of danger, punishment, and sexuality, the children mimic, reverse, and manage the fears and confusions of a violent world. They play and describe handball games, with names like “Suicide” and “Homicide,” in which the unpredictability of potential danger creates great excitement. In 1991 few girls played these games, but by 2004 many did, reflecting a shift in society at large.
Through hopscotch, girls negotiate elaborate rules and relationships and establish a social space for hanging out and sharing snacks. The children turn a painted square for ball bouncing into a wrestling ring for the Fighting Game. They play joyously through the seasons with leaves, snow, gypsy moth caterpillars, and even sand from the graffiti-removing power wash. Space itself is re-imagined through play: the lone tree into a base for tag, stairs and stoop into a jail, window grates into targets for tennis balls. Homemade toys are cherished: paper airplanes, jump ropes made of interlocking rubber bands, homemade books. Though adults generally discourage touch (“Put her down,” “Stop holding hands,” “Get off him”), games allow friends to touch and connect: tickling, hand holding, bear hugging, head patting, shoulder patting, clothes adjusting, hair fixing, and nose rubbing.
Through jump rope rhymes girls absorb the commercial messages of Channel 1, the commercially driven television show that they are forced to watch daily in their classrooms: “Nike, Nike, Who can do the Nike?” “R-E-E, B-O-K, Do your footsies, the Reebok way.” “Big Mac, Filet o’ Fish, Quarter Pounder, Frenchie fries, Icee Coke, milk shake, foot.” Though the girls accept these rhymes unthinkingly from commercially sponsored jump-rope competitions, they still move and enjoy the freedom of their bodies and the delight of social relationships while jumping rope. Other jump rope rhymes are more creative, expressing identity, sexuality, and agency. Both jump rope and hand clapping games are most popular with African American girls. Between 1991 and 2004 games became more integrated, only to reverse and become more segregrated again, as a reflection of official desegregration policies, and the end of them, in the school district.
Beresin’s work is a profound indictment of a society that is moving ever more closely toward blind consumerism, while teaching its children not to think, not to act, not to connect with, talk to, or even touch each other. The responsible adults in this society unthinkingly perpetuate the empty values of a consumer culture, while educators abdicate their responsibility to teach in favor of control. It reminds me of the movies One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The King of Hearts, in which those considered insane by society’s standards are actually human, while those considered sane are hopelessly lost to a militaristic totalitarian mindset. Has our society gone mad, that it can no longer tolerate or even recognize the joy and creativity of children? This story makes me weep. Tears for the hearts of grown ups that have grown cold. Tears for the American Revolution, which was supposed to unlock a more creative and independent human spirit, but has instead unleashed the powers of money, and made us all slaves to the new King of Consumerism. Even so, the children in Beresin’s study offer hope. In spite of the many ways in which they are restricted, hemmed in, silenced, and controlled by adults, they still manage to play.
Referencing theorists of play from different disciplines, Brian Sutton-Smith, Iona and Peter Opie, Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, Gregory Bateson, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu, and sociologist Erving Goffman on frame analysis, Beresin reveals the multifaceted, unfinished, and endlessly creative nature of children’s play and its power to express, mimic, question, and subvert the historical and cultural forces of the society at large. Play is essentially paradoxical and complex, and paradox is the source of depth and wisdom in human affairs. Beresin links oppression with the search for and imposition of ONE TRUTH. Play, like dreaming, links body and world, self and society. It generates hope and joy, and taps into some inexplicable source of energy and spirit. The fire in the eyes of both children and elders who play reveals play to be the essence of life, and the core of social renewal.
What I love most about Anna Beresin is that she moves from scholarship to advocacy. When I met her at the American Folklore Society annual meeting of 2010 in Nashville, Tennessee, listened to her presentation there, and later walked through Nashville’s lively downtown core and shared a meal with her, I felt her energy and passion. She seemed alive in a way that scholars who stop at scholarship, and do not take that step into active, heartfelt, and committed engagement with the world, have never seemed to me. Like the children she gives voice to, she has that sparkle in her eye, that fire, that sense of hope and joy. Evidently truly engaged scholarship is a form of play, a source of life and renewal. You can learn more about her movement to protect children’s play and preserve recess at www.recessbattles.com.
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[Review length: 1036 words • Review posted on June 30, 2011]