I grew up in a small town which correlated to a small school. In school we had one playground for grades two through six. The playground was broken into three sections separated by gates and tall chain-link fences like a patchwork of territories. Over half of the playground was covered in concrete with the ghosts of tennis and basketball courts barely visible through chipped green paint and fading boundary lines. There were four basketball goals across the two concrete sections. Two in one section making a full court and two on the side that used to be tennis courts – one of which was perpetually unusable for various reasons.
I remember recess clearly – my favorite thing to do was to swing. In fact, my first and only priority during the entirety of my recesses was to go as high as gravity and physics would allow me to on the swings. There were four good swings on the best of days and if you didn’t finish lunch quickly and sprint there fast enough you most likely weren’t getting one. When I got a turn; when I felt the wind on my face and my feet brushing the sky, it felt like freedom. That swing set taught me something that I didn’t realize until recently. It taught me the difference between equality and equity.
Every student had access to the same recess – the same courts, same slide, same jungle gym, and same swings for the same amount of time. The same fenced-in zones and theoretically the same chance to use the swings or the courts. That’s equality – everyone received the same opportunities but not necessarily the same experience.
Sometimes there were kids who were…let’s say more assertive, who may not have reached the swings first but could often “persuade” others out of the seat. Some kids had friends or older siblings who would “hold” swings by choice or in exchange for something – usually dessert. You could usually guess when such a transaction had occurred since the trade happened in the lunch room with all the subtlety of a fireworks display. Personally, I was a slow eater with short legs so there were plenty of times I missed out on a seat on the swing set.
These situations were accurate for every section of the playground from the slide to all three of the good basketball goals. And if you liked a sport besides basketball, well, I suppose you could play football on concrete but in all my years on that playground I had never seen an actual football be made available. Some kids would bring basketballs from home to try to ensure they had the chance to play and even so, if too many kids were using one basket or if a legit game was started they would be shooed away like an annoying housefly.
Equity would have asked more than does everyone have the same thing. Equity asks if everyone has what is needed to experience joy, play, and belonging – the things that should be afforded a child at recess.
To put it even simpler, equality provides every child the same pair of shoes while equity makes sure the shoes that are given fit every child.
In the case of our playground, equity might have meant more swings, or a rotation schedule for different grades, asking why there was little grass for games like tag and red rover, or even considering why a quarter of the courts was still dominated by concrete that few used.
Too often in our society we settle for equality because it feels objective, tidy, and most likely easier. But the lived experience tells us otherwise. Access isn’t the same as inclusion and opportunity isn’t the same as outcome.
That old playground, with its fences and broken goals, reminds me of how systems are built — perhaps not maliciously, but often mindlessly. We inherit spaces and policies and routines without asking: Who is this working for? And who is it leaving out? I may have grown up in a small town with a small school but the lesson from that swing set is anything but small – if we truly want fairness, we have to be willing to go beyond equal and strive for equitable because only then does everyone get the feeling of freedom we so desperately crave.