Daniel Ruth: It's nice lawmakers restored recess, but just 20 lousy minutes?

At last a respite for all my fellow underachievers, a chance to shine at something at least we are good at. Ah, recess, blessed recess.

For quite some time Florida's public school students have been denied the oasis of recess as educators seemed preoccupied with the idea that the school day would be better served by learning stuff in the classroom.

That's a lovely concept, although there are some of us who are not gifted in the fine art of improving our understanding of subject matter. As a young grade school student eons ago, I found myself much more adept at staring out the window, daydreaming and lusting after my comely fourth grade teacher, Miss Krill, who often spoke French in the classroom.

I've always been a sucker for bilingual women.

When not being beaten by the nuns of the Blessed Order of the Reservoir Dogs at St. Sebastian, I mastered the academic art of Ds and Fs. But I did excel at recess. Playing baseball. Flipping baseball cards and, of course, yearning for Miss Krill, one of the few lay teachers at my Catholic school.

This year, in its wisdom, the Florida Legislature passed a measure requiring the state's elementary schools to carve out recess time for kids in kindergarten through fifth grade. That's a good start.

Just how the recess requirement will be implemented is pretty much being left to the state's school districts. And, indeed, some districts have left it up to individual schools to figure out how to introduce the concept of recess into their schedules.

There is one problem though. As stipulated by Tallahassee, recess is only supposed to last for a mere 20 minutes. Really? Just 20 lousy stinking minutes? Why that would leave barely enough time to work up a suitable swoon for Miss Krill!

The paltry amount of time dedicated to recess would seem to suggest that neither the Florida Legislature nor professional school administrators seem to appreciate the value of giving especially young children a much needed break from the stresses of the classroom.

Given what a test-centric education culture we live in today, schools and school districts are under intense pressure to pack as much learning into a school day as possible, or run the risk of losing out to funding based on test scores. Who has time for recess when the kiddos have an exam coming up?

What's missing here, it seems, is a complete lack of understanding of the intrinsic educational value of recess in the overall learning process. These are children after all. Children play. That's what they do. This is elementary school. It is not Harvard. And playtime is educational time, too.

Recess should be, at minimum, at least 30 minutes long. It gives kids time to run around, burn off some pent-up energy and prepare them for the remaining lessons of the day. You could also argue recess is a time for students to hone their interpersonal skills, or deal with conflict resolution, or perhaps fantasize about their fourth grade teacher. There's value in that. At least there was for me. Discovering women is a very educational experience.

For me, trapped in the vise-grip of the humorless Sisters of the Divine Abu Ghraib, recess marked at least 45 minutes or so of freedom when I wasn't being slapped around, or beaten with a ruler, or otherwise treated like a Turkish political prisoner.

To be sure, schools today are no longer the rigid death march of conformity I was subjected to. But children are still children. And they need the experience of recess built into their daily school lives.

Recess should not be viewed as a nettlesome inconvenience imposed on school officials. It should be regarded as an important part of a student's broader education, in essence part of a child's bill of rights — to be able to run and jump and play and gaze lovingly in the general direction of their own Miss Krill.