The Good Old Days?
June 12, 2012
In the 1950s, high school football crowds were often larger than today, and schools’ quirky gyms were never more packed with partisans. Local newspapers (more numerous then) and radio stations (far fewer then) never gave school sports a greater percentage of column inches or air time than in the 1950s. Therefore, one might pick a school year in the mid 1950s as the peak of prominence for school sports in America.
That would be true if you were a boy, and a boy who played one of the few sports sponsored by schools compared to the diverse offerings of 50 to 60 years later. However, if you were a girl, and even for many boys, there wasn’t much in the way of school sports in which to participate in the so-called heyday, the “good old days,” of high school sports.
If we judge the effectiveness of school sports programs more on the basis of participation than game night attendance, then today’s programs – where many more students participate in a wider variety of activities – are a much healthier and much more educationally sound enterprise than five or six decades ago. And actually, there are also more spectators today; they’re just dispersed over more venues, sports and levels of teams today than in the 1950s.
More students in a wider variety of sports, supported by more spectators. By these measures, a better program today than existed a half-century ago.
What is Educational Athletics?
May 20, 2016
In an effort to be even better at something the Michigan High School Athletic Association already does well, MHSAA staff spent four hours with the leader of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, Bill Gaine, who is one of the nation’s most passionate advocates for teaching people what “educational athletics” means and how to actually educate students through school sports.
Here is how the MIAA answers the question: “What is educational athletics?”
-
Interscholastic athletic competition is an extension of the classroom and an educational activity that provides outstanding opportunities to teach life lessons.
-
Through participation in such programs, young people learn values and skills that help prepare them for the future.
-
Leadership, goalsetting, teamwork, decision making, perseverance, integrity, sacrifice, healthy competition and overcoming adversity are inherent in the interscholastic athletic framework and also support the academic mission of schools.
-
Student-athletes earn the privilege to participate by succeeding academically, and the resulting positive outcomes continue far beyond graduation.
-
These programs exist to prepare young men and women for the next level of life, not the next level of athletics.
-
Wins are achieved through athletics by developing successful athletes and teams, but more importantly, wins are achieved through the educational experience by developing successful and responsible students, leaders and community members.
-
The positive educational outcomes of interscholastic athletics do not happen by chance. They happen because teacher-coaches and school administration adopt an intentional and purposeful approach to the interscholastic athletic experience.