Responding to a trend to shorten lunchtime and abolish afternoon breaks in English schools, Peter Blatchford and his colleagues have done extensive empirical research that seeks to weigh the pros and cons of break times ("recess," in U.S. elementary school parlance). Social Life in Schools draws this research into a descriptive account of the activities and social relations that unfold when students are in school but outside the constraints of classrooms (the paradox of "compulsory recreational breaks" lurks through the analysis). The data, gathered during the 1980s and 1990s, include a national survey ascertaining the views of breaktime held by teachers and staff in 6 percent of English schools; longitudinal interviews with students at ages 7, 11, and 16 years; and a case study of the break time activities of a class of eight and nine year olds.

The empirical chapters detail pupils’ views on break time, changes in break time activities across the three ages, playground games, and pupils’ views on teasing, name-calling, and fighting. Each chapter opens with a series of factual questions and then mobilizes interview excerpts and other data to provide answers. For example, eight questions frame the chapter on children’s friendship formation, including "How can the nature and composition of friendship groups of children after entry to junior school be best described?"; "What distinctions do pupils make about friendships?"; "Do they distinguish between ‘friends’ and ‘best friends’?"; "What factors are important in explaining why children are friends?" Student answers to the last question are organized under an inventory of "factors": "age," "known the longest," "known from previous school," "known outside school," "having interests and views in common," "they always play with you." Although the data reveal interesting variation across ages and levels of schooling, this formulaic, question-answer format flattens analysis and limits interpretive possibilities.

Longitudinal interviews with the same students at different ages provide intriguing data about changes from ages nine to 16 in students’ activities and experiences of break time. At ages eight and nine, friendships and gender and ethnic relations take shape within a context organized by games and physical activity, but by age 16 break times become more sedentary, focused on talking and "hanging around" (this is especially true for girls; some boys continue to play football). Blatchford frames these age-related changes as a developmental shift in children’s peer relations. But he also describes differences in the institutional cultures of English primary schools (where students are sent out to "playgrounds" during lunchtime and break time) and secondary schools (where students can choose to stay inside or go out and where play is not emphasized). Some 16 year olds observed that lunchtime at secondary school felt "more grown up," which points to the social regulation of age-related behavior. (How, I wonder, did football escape the label of "childish"?)

The book would be stronger if it examined cultural assumptions about the needs and "nature" of children, varying by age and gender, that are embedded in the organization of primary and secondary schools. These assumptions, and the institutional practices they inform, change over historical time (a different temporal framing than developmental time, although the two types of time should be brought into closer analytic conjunction). The author alludes to changing constructions of childhood and age relations when he describes a decline over the last few decades in the overall spatial autonomy of English children—a decline related, in part, to adult panic about child safety. As Blatchford observes, this trend as well as the movement to shorten the time students spend on break mean that the lives of contemporary English children are more circumscribed by adults than those of an earlier generation.

Half of the surveyed schools had shortened break time as a way of increasing the amount of time students spend in the classroom and as a strategy for reducing behavior problems, especially at the primary level. Blatchford reports on the negative dimensions of break time, including problems like bullying, name-calling, teasing, and fighting. But he argues that children need periods of relative freedom from adult control and an opportunity to pursue friendships and create their own social worlds. Calling for a balance between adult control and children’s independence, he makes suggestions for improving the quality of break times, such as involving pupils in the design and improvement of playgrounds, the training of playground supervisors in techniques like collaborative conflict resolution and peer counseling, and generally working with children "to harness their energy and enthusiasm to education and social goals."

The weighing of break time pros and cons and of strategies for promoting positive interaction among students would be enhanced by comparative research in schools with different demographic profiles, menus of activities, and philosophies and styles of playground and lunchroom management. But the data were aggregated by age and by gender rather than organized in a way that would facilitate comparisons across schools. Social Life in Schools is a useful source of information about break time and the social worlds of children, but it does not plumb the data, or the issues, with sufficient vigor and imagination.

© 1999 American Anthropological Association. This review will be cited in the March 2000 issue of Anthropology and Education Quarterly (31:1).