Recess portrays the lives of six fourth graders at Third Street Elementary School, where students have set up a microcosm of traditional human society complete with its own government, class system and set of unwritten laws. They are ruled by a monarch, a sixth grader named King Bob, who has various enforcers to make sure his decrees are carried out. The society has a long list of rigid values and social norms that imposes a high expectation of conformity upon all the students.