Motivation Matters
November 6, 2012
I had the opportunity to compare notes with the leader of a high school in Boston which educates a high number of non-English-speaking students – more than any other public school in that diverse metropolitan area. My interest flows from my work with mid-Michigan’s Refugee Development Center, which provides English classes and other services for newcomers to our community.
We both have observed that, almost without exception, these students who are seeking to learn English are highly motivated – considerably more so than most other students we observe. They come early to class and stay after class; and if class is ever cancelled, they come anyway!
We agreed that those who are attempting to revolutionize education with one overhaul or innovation or another may be missing what’s really wrong. We don’t have a structural or systemic problem at school, we have a motivational problem at home.
It may be fashionable for the pundits and politicians to beat up public education in the U.S., but from all around the world people are beating a path to our schools for the quality of education they cannot find elsewhere. And displaced populations – most immigrants and refugees – arrive with motivation to learn and assimilate that puts U.S.-born students to shame.
Really, whose fault is this? It can’t be the schools. But schools must try to respond to the problem they are being presented.
And extracurricular activities and athletics are among the tried, tested and proven tools available to schools to help reach, motivate and educate our young people to stay in school, like school and do better in school than they otherwise would.
Peddling Influence
February 28, 2012
The Sports Business Journal published in December its annual list of the 50 most influential persons in sports business. No person from the ranks of high school sports is included, causing some to criticize the oversight. I don’t.
If ever a person from the high school level were to make this listing, it likely would be for behaving like those at the college, professional and international levels. No one will make the list for doing the job he or she is supposed to do, which is to assure that the business excesses of those other levels do not visit school sports, and to actively oppose those initiatives that would undermine educational athletics.
I understand fully that there are important business aspects to the administration of interscholastic athletics. But I also understand that these business tasks must be managed within the cozy confines of the educational mission of the sponsoring institutions – schools.
We know how to make a lot more money for school sports from networks, sponsors and promoters. But we also know why that wouldn’t be right for educational athletics. Contests on any day at any hour for broadcast purposes, at any location no matter how far. Highlighting big schools, highly ranked teams and highly rated/recruited players, to improve broadcast ratings and advertiser demands. Brilliant minds and bullying personalities couldn’t avoid this happening in college athletics. Once started, we could not fare better in controlling things on the high school level.
We have the potential to aggregate school sports content very attractively for producers, distributors and sponsors. But it’s best that we don’t. And just fine that we continue to be overlooked by business trade journals.