Over the years I’ve done a fair amount of work with schools, the focus being on ‘playtime’, a designation that could be found guilty of offending the Trades Description Act, were it applicable to some, perhaps many, schools.
Too often ‘play’ or ‘breaktime’ represents an unwanted lacunae within the school day, a day otherwise devoted to more worthy and directly educational purposes.
Conceptually, too, play or break time presents a difficulty for schools. Schools are highly ordered, hierarchical institutions, their governing motif the timetable that slices up and controls time and purpose, breaking the day into predictable and repetitive chunks. Order is all. Continue reading
Bernard Spiegal 