Close Calls
November 22, 2011
The little slip of paper I removed from the fortune cookie read: “Every important call is a close one.” That notion may be more critically important in some aspects of life than others, but nowhere in the fun part of life is it any truer than competitive athletics.
Where the winning margin can be a fraction of a second or inch, observed by hundreds or even thousands of spectators, athletes, coaches and contest officials, we know this to be true: the toughest decisions are the most critical, most defining of all.
School and school sports administrators learn that it is the closest calls – where evidence is least conclusive, opinions most divided or precedent lacking – that have the greatest effect on their school communities and their own careers.
It is at these times – close calls – that leaders show up. That they speak up. That they stand up.
Correctable Error
January 17, 2014
I have written at other times and places that if it had been the stated purpose of our state’s and country’s chief executives and legislators for the past 20 years to weaken public education, they would have done exactly what they have done. They have spoken about strengthening schools and improving education, but their actions have done the opposite.
This is precisely the point of the richly researched Reign of Error, The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools by Diane Rovitch (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013).
Competition, choice and corporate influence are all attacked, as are the misuse and overuse of standardized testing and the excessive reliance on e-education.
The author’s prescription for schools is not everything new and different, but removal of politicians and profiteers. And, catching my attention most, Rovitch writes:
“As students enter the upper elementary grades and middle school and high school, they should have a balanced curriculum . . . Their school should have a rich arts program where students learn to sing, dance, play an instrument, join an orchestra or band, perform in a play, sculpt, or use technology to design structures, conduct research, or create artworks. Every student should have time for physical education every day . . . Every school should have after-school programs where students may explore their interests, whether in athletics, chess, robotics, history club, dramatics, science club, nature study, scouting or other activities.”
The kinds of programs that the MHSAA promotes and protects are the keys to the type of education students want, need and deserve. And I admire every school that provides these programs in spite of all that has conspired against them for two decades.