Readers React: Here’s a good homework assignment: Go outside and play

To the editor: You know our nation’s children are overworked and overscheduled when school teachers come together to assign a new kind of class work: play. (“How not to raise a workaholic,” Opinion, Jan. 29)

This week my junior AP English students will have less homework in at least one class as we’ll be participating with more than 100,000 students across the world in Global School Play Day, a day dedicated to unstructured play.

As a child I used to race home after school to escape the mental and physical confines of the classroom in backyards, empty fields and drainage ditches. Now my students will find a similar reprieve this week at school.

Sean Ziebarth, Fountain Valley

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To the editor: Days before I read Vicki Abeles’ piece about the problems of excessive schoolwork and overscheduling of children, my sister had given me my mother’s eighth-grade report card from her rural parochial school in Pennsylvania in 1928. The card has pre-printed guidance for parents, and the first two items are:

“The time after school up to supper should be given children for play. Sunlight and exercise at games will keep them healthy in soul and body.”

“Preparation of the next day’s lessons should follow supper before the fatigue comes. Parents may help by hearing them recite but should give no special lessons, as they have enough to do in meeting the requirements of their regular teacher.”

This seems not to have inhibited achievement: My mother received this eighth-grade report card at age 11, having been advanced two grades by that time.

Michael Maniccia, Alhambra

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