Darell Hammond Quotes

We have a lot of pressures on children very young. We have ambition. We over-schedule our children. We want them to have soccer lessons and violin lessons... I think children need to have at least an hour of fun a day.

Right now many schools have no recess. Most schools have no PE.

Many kids, particularly in lower-income families, would actually benefit from more structured activities. Plenty of children, especially teenagers, thrive on a busy schedule. But just as other trappings of modern childhood, from homework to technology, are subject to the law of diminishing returns, there is a danger of overscheduling the young.

Every child should have time for arts, music, sports, drama, robotics, school newspapers and the like, not to mention recess and play.

I felt sad because everyday I had to wake up early to practice before going to school. After school I had to go back to tennis again, and then after tennis I had homework. I didn't have time to play.

We must make sure that there is recess and P.E. class in every school, getting kids outside for 60 minutes, every day.

This summer, we need to let our kids go play and we need to stop worrying about whether or not it's going to ruin their chances of getting into college.

No child wants to fall off a jungle gym or slide. Accidents are an unfortunate fact of life, but to lower every last slide and jungle gym to a height that would only interest a toddler is doing our children a grave disservice.

Toddlers need to get off the soccer field and onto the playground. Children need to get out of the gym and into neighborhood stickball games. We need to give kids room to create their own rules, set their own terms, and move their bodies in their own ways.

My kids are exhausted every day, and I keep them that way. It's gym, ice, homework. They're too tired to get in trouble.

Of course, in our grade school, in those days, there were no organized sports at all. We just went out and ran around the school yard for recess.

During the year, our schools are busy slashing P.E. and recess to make more time for math. During the summer, we get ourselves worked into a tizzy that our children will forget their fractions.

My parents were obsessed with my education.

You know what I worry about? I worry that kids today don't have enough time to just sit and daydream.

Being in school and doing the fighting stuff, it is very tough. I had school work all the way from Monday through Friday, and then on the weekends, you had homework, engineering projects and stuff. That makes it very tough.

When we were children we played on the street - on tarmac and things like that.

My upbringing was definitely piano lessons and homework, just as much as the next Asian kid.

Rose: You're crazy. Jack: That's what everybody says but, with all due respect, Miss, I'm not the one hanging off the back of a ship here. Come on. C'mon, give me your hand. You don't want to do this.

An environment-based education movement--at all levels of education--will help students realize that school isn't supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.

- L, did you know we’re reenacting the Salem witch trials in English tomorrow? - Haven’t been memorizing your case file? Do you even look in your backpack anymore? - Did you know my dad is videotaping it? I do. Because I walked in on his lunch date with Mrs. English. - Ewww. - What should we do? - I guess we should start calling her Ms. English? - Not funny, L.

I'm much more of a kid now than I was when I was a kid. I was the kind of kid who was valedictorian, a straight-A student. My mom used to say, "Please stop studying and get outside."

Let us become the first generation to decide to be the last that sees empty classrooms, lost childhoods and wasted potential

I'd like to say let your kids go out and play. Then I'd say you're not going to do that are you? Make your kids go out and play.

I forgot how much I loved going to class, actually. But I also forgot what having school homework feels like: stressful!

Reducing children to a test score is the worst form of identity theft we could commit in schools.