Our Narrative
November 21, 2011
Thomas Friedman – author of The World is Flat, From Beruit to Jerusalem and Hot, Flat and Crowded, among other major works – has a gift for converting complicated topics into moving narratives. So I took note, during President Obama’s second year in office when, in a New York Times column, Mr. Friedman took the President to task for a communication gap.
Friedman wrote that the President doesn’t have a communications problem per se (in fact, he’s been one of our nation’s more articulate chief executives), and he has a good grasp of facts on many subjects.
What he has, according to Friedman, is a narrative problem. “He has not tied all his programs into a single narrative that shows the links between his health care, banking, economic, energy, education and foreign policies.” Without this, wrote Friedman, people do not see these are all “building blocks of a great national project.”
Regardless of one’s opinion of Mr. Obama as President and Mr. Friedman as pundit, those responsible for school sports should pause over this observation or opinion; should stop to consider how all the projects and programs we contemplate either do or do not help us tell the story of educational athletics in Michigan.
The narrative for school sports can be compelling. When and where programs maximize participation and promote high standards of eligibility, conduct and care; when and where programs demonstrate quality coaching and officiating; and when and where it can be demonstrated that the programs are not merely compatible with the educational mission of the school but actually improve attendance, raise GPAs and increase graduation rates; then and there we have a coordinated and convincing narrative.
Projects and programs that produce and promote these results will be the kind of building blocks that tell our story and should generate popular support for many more years to come.
No. 1 Worries
September 21, 2012
Fueled by the “No. 1” syndrome, people often worry about and value the wrong things when it comes to interscholastic athletics.
For example, they worry about the eligibility of athletes more than the education of students. They worry about athletic scholarships to college more than genuine scholarship in high school. Faced with financial shortfalls, they use middle school athletics as the whipping boy because the No. 1 syndrome causes people to value varsity programs more than junior varsity, and high school programs more than middle school.
It is possible in the subvarsity programs of our high schools (far more than in varsity programs where crowds and media bring pressure to win) and it should be and usually is pervasive in our middle school programs, that participation is more important than specialization, trying more important than winning, teamwork more important than individual honors, and teaching more important than titles and trophies.
At the middle school level, coaches have an opportunity to look down the bench for substitutes without first looking up at the scoreboard. The scorebook should be kept to see how many students played in the game, not how many points any one player scored.
Here is where education prevails over entertainment in interscholastic athletics. Here is where philosophy of athletics is more in tune with the mission of the school. Here is where the taxpayer’s dollar is spent best.
To the degree we introduce large tournaments and trophies into middle level programs, we damage the purity of educational athletics and the purpose of middle school programs. To the degree we cut middle level programs in the face of budget crises, we succumb to the No. 1 syndrome.
We must expose the No. 1 syndrome for the sickness it is: a cancerous growth that must be cut out of educational athletics before it leads to cutting out what is arguably the most educational part of interscholastic athletics: middle school programs.