Simple solutions
The Right to Play Bill is in the starting blocks
I sure wish we had stumbled onto the mouse solution of a cheap plastic kitchen trash can with a locking lid years ago. Now these cute yet abhorrent furry frenemies no longer leap out of the trash can into my face when I least expect it. In fact, they seem to have no further interest in our house at all. Sometimes the solution to an intractable problem is easier, cheaper, and more obvious than you’d ever imagine, and you were truly an idiot for not doing it sooner. But these meditations are probably for another type of newsletter.
Let’s talk about newsletters for just a moment. Into my email inbox every day comes a towering virtual pile of reading. I subscribe to Dave Pell’s NextDraft, Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from An American, The Writer’s Almanac, Foreign Policy Editor’s Picks, Shia Kapos’s Politico Illinois Playbook, The Plough, and the WBEZ Rundown. In addition, the day’s top stories come pouring in from Crain’s Morning 10, Washington Post, NYT, the Reader, and Block Club Chicago. It’s….kind of a lot.
And I’m sure you too are deluged with e-reading. I’m not talking about ads or spam or junk. I’m talking about stuff one takes the trouble and sometimes even ponies up cash to sign up for. It can feel like we’re drowning in information. (Better, I hasten to add, than drowning in information and mice.) Which brings me to my point: Thanks for signing up for this. I realize this newsletter is like the One Thin Mint in your information glut. I’ll try to keep it wafer thin and worth your time.
Big news this week!
The Right To Play Bill—guaranteeing 60 minutes of child-directed play time per day, K-8, that can’t be taken away as a punishment—has a number! You can go read it and track its progress in the Senate at SB3717. There is a House version as well: HB5131. If you want to help with this bill, contact your legislators and tell them you think it’s important and you hope they sign on as a sponsor. If they are already a sponsor, tell them thanks!
It’s also time to gather folks to support the legislation—community groups, pediatric associations, children’s advocacy organizations—and if you are connected to anything like this, ask if they will endorse. And reach out to family and friends in other parts of the state.
This is low-cost, low-tech policy-making that touches on a lot of the issues in our schools: children’s physical and mental health, focus in class, and the development of social skills, creative initiative, and autonomy. I’m for it because I think it’s really time we adults take responsibility for giving our children what they need at school—not dozens of standardized tests per year, starting in K, that determine whether they are successes or failures; not scripted curricula to support this testing structure; not back aches in primary kids from absurdly heavy backpacks; not days that provide so little activity that kids are set on a course of poor health for their whole lives. We current adults weren’t raised this way; our schools weren’t like that. It isn’t right for us to allow anti-child policies to dictate what our schools look like. This bill is one simple way we can fight back against profit-driven nonsense policy that harms children.
Sign up for CPS Insider, or share, if you feel the same. And thanks for reading.