The Early Death of the American Childhood by Evagelia

The Early Death of the American Childhood by Evagelia - July 2022 Scholarship Essay

Before the pandemic occurred in 2020, I was a teacher’s assistant at an inner-city school in Boston. I had worked with the same group of children for three consecutive years, moving with them from kindergarten to second grade. I learned numerous things from these students, including the fact that I wanted to work as a clinical psychologist for children and adolescents someday. However, one of the most significant lessons they taught me was just how distressing schools have become for students, especially schools that suffer from a lack of funding.

One of the first observations I made when working there was how long the school day was, even for kindergarten students. Their day starts at 9:00 AM and ends around 4:00 PM. There are no naps and there is rarely ever any recess. When I attended kindergarten, we had recess and a shortened school day, so as a result, I was shocked to see that these children were being lectured almost the entire day without any scheduled break. The teachers had to take it upon themselves to provide the children time away from lecturing, even though so much information was assigned for each individual school day. The loss of recess can lead to a lack of attention, poor physical health, and even increased aggravation and misbehavior.

So why has recess been removed? As I performed research on this topic, I learned that it was for the same reason that schools have been decreasing lunchtime and cutting funding for arts and sciences. Schools like the one I worked at have to “teach to the test.” In order to receive more funding, students need to excel in their standardized examinations. The resources at my school were already minimal, and the teachers had to work extremely hard, as the student-to-teacher ratio was extremely high. As a result, teachers in inner-city schools (and many other schools) have to "teach to the test" to receive the money for the resources they need to purchase. To acquire more time to prepare for standardized testing, schools have cut time for recess, lunch, and other recreational activities, and when schools do not receive enough funding, the arts and sciences are the first areas to receive budget cuts. This issue also disproportionately affects children of color. Most children that attend inner-city schools are children of color, which includes immigrants. I worked in an ESL (English Second Language) classroom, so while my students were struggling to learn English, they also had to learn standardized test content to provide the school with the funding it needed.

I believe that someday, if we genuinely care about children and their future, we will work together to oppose the erasure of recess, arts, and sciences in schools, and if we fight even harder, we can have every school in the United States funded equitably so as to truly not leave any child behind. Every child deserves the right to creative play and an adequate education that will prepare them for the occupation they desire. I am hoping that ten years in the future, we will have made enormous strides in providing a fair education to every child in the United States and other parts of the world.