Disney’s Recess Was the Best Social Philosophy Cartoon of All Time

I remember this old saying, “everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten.” You might remember it on posters inside your classroom or from your teacher friend touting validation in their job – and it was always funny to me. The underlying message is simple, that the most important things you learn in life – kindness, sharing, right and wrong – are the most basic values we learn at an early age. It’s funny because, to me, the values that really stuck during grade school were actually mastered outside the classroom. The best things I learned? Well, they all came between the hour of 12 and 1. And no cartoon captured that magic of social philosophy quite like Disney’s Recess. We’ve seen it before, right? A rag-tag group of kids getting into trouble and working their way out – it seems just familiar enough to be both comfortable and completely unremarkable. Yet Recess was anything but common, and is, to the day, Disney’s most well rounded social commentary that hid life lessons in a seemingly small cartoon. Recess was a Trojan horse of teaching children about life, and it worked in a way that resonates decades after the show ended. And it started with the best clique ever assembled.

TJ Detweiler, Vince LaSalle, Ashley Spinelli, Gretchen Grundler, Mikey Blumberg, and the new kid, Gus Griswald, were actually the most basic of casts at first blush. Gretchen was the tall, skinny genius who was the smarts of the squad. Spinelli was the tomboy spitfire who stood up to anybody. M…