Learning from Experience
November 5, 2013
Readers who frequent this space might assume (correctly) that I enjoy travel, especially so to places where I don’t speak the language, don’t know what’s in the food and can’t drink the water.
Back in the days when it was possible to travel in Europe on $5 a day, my wife and I honeymooned across that continent for a summer on slightly more than $6 daily, combined. Today we spend more than that for our morning coffee; but we enjoy the adventures no less or no more.
I suppose on some level we have been making up for the lack of diversity of our childhood homes in the Midwest and our nose-to-the-grindstone approach to high school. Neither one of us ever thought of study abroad, or had time for it, as we pursued good grades and gratified ourselves and others in school-related activities.
This is in sharp contrast to the foreign exchange student from Germany who spoke last month at the annual meeting of the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel. His family has hosted two students from China and he is now being hosted by a family in the USA. The point he made was this: He prefers to learn about life from experiences, not stereotypes.
And so do I. I just got to this realization later than this fine young man from a small town in Germany.
Students of Rules
November 12, 2013
Those who make rules ought to be students of rules. We mean this in at least the two ways this posting and the next will address.
First, rule makers should know the essence of the existing body of rules which they will be responsible for upholding or modifying during the necessary ongoing review of those rules. These rule makers should have a general awareness of when and why each rule was first adopted, how it might have evolved, how it is now applied and what the major compliance problems have been in the past or may be in the future.
This first requirement is as important for those who prepare the rules for the contests – the playing rules – as for those who promulgate the rules that establish the minimum eligibility standards and the maximum limits for competition. In the face of any proposal to eliminate or greatly modify any rule, rule makers must ask what problems may return if they remove the rule that solved those problems.
Dov Seidman writes in how: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything: “Rules, of course, don’t come out of thin air. Legislatures and organizations adopt them usually to proscribe unwanted behaviors but typically in reaction to events. They lower speed limits after automobile accidents become too frequent, regulate pit bulls after a series of dog bites, or institute new expense-tracking procedures after someone is caught trying to get reimbursed for their new iPod. Rules have been established for a reason, but most people are out of touch with the rationale and spirit of why. They don’t read legislative histories and so have a thin, superficial relationship to the rules . . .”
That is not acceptable for those who write, review and revise rules. They have to know where each rule has come from. This is why for the rule makers and for those in our member schools responsible for applying the rules day in and day out, the MHSAA keeps current “The The History, Rationale and Application of the Essential Eligibility Regulations High School Athletics in Michigan."