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.
Late to the Game
November 8, 2016
The Michigan High School Athletic Association’s Task Force on Multi-Sport Participation has learned that school sports are in competition versus non-school youth sports, not only programmatically but also and more fundamentally, philosophically. School sports sees child development quite differently and has as its mission developing the whole child.
Non-school youth sports business interests have convinced consumers (that’s parents) that early and intense specialization with private lessons and personal trainers, and lots of travel and tournaments is necessary for a child’s athletic interests and ultimate happiness. That is sometimes true ... once in a very great while.
What is much more often true is that specialization in a sport that is too early and too intense stunts a young person’s physical literacy, which often leads to less well-rounded athletic ability, a more sedentary lifestyle and poorer health in later life.
The theme of the Task Force recommendations to the MHSAA so far is that we have to reach youth and their parents earlier in life if we hope to compete for their hearts and minds.
When 80 percent of youth drop out of organized sports by the age of 13 – usually because they have been left out or become burned out – we’ve missed the kickoff if we start talking to them in 9th grade about the benefits of multi-sport participation and the school sport experience. In fact, the game is more than half over by then and our messages fall on deaf ears. We are absolutely correct with our message but appear out of step and out of touch to those who have only heard the sports specialization speech from youth coaches and their commercial interests.