"I was a secondary school teacher for 38 years and now am a retired member. I am an adjunct at Cabrini College, teaching elementary social studies methods to local teachers.

"I have heard a lot of stories over the last several years. The most common complaint in my class is that social studies time has been cut. In some schools, it has been eliminated. In many schools, it has been limited to a half-hour three times a week. The social studies curriculum has been bastardized by making it the stepchild of language arts and just another way of teaching reading and reading skills. Doesn't social studies have value in itself?

"While this has upset me, my students are more upset about another change in their school. In a few schools in our area, recess time has been reduced or eliminated. How can administrators be so blind? I have had to lend a shoulder to cry on.

"One evening, a third-grade teacher arrived to class distraught. She informed us that starting the next day her class would no longer have recess time. She didn't know how they would handle that, and how she would handle it herself.

"This creative teacher reported, later in the course, that she had found ways during the classroom day for the students to move about, so that some physical tension could be released. How can administrators forget the real needs of children? Can a few points on a test be more important? How?"

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