Logo

Risky Business

May 19, 2015

At a time when efforts to promote student-athlete health and safety are more obviously than ever at the top of our daily to-do list, it may seem ill-advised to suggest that kids need more danger in their lives. But they do! And that’s the point of 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do) by Penguin Books.

From mastering the perfect somersault (#3) to melting glass (#47), and from climbing a tree (#28) to walking home from school (#18), authors Gever Tulley and Julie Spiegler demonstrate two obvious but often overlooked points: (1) that most of us learn by doing; and (2) that a sterile, bubble-wrapped world teaches us less than one in which we are allowed to play with fire (#45).

After-school sports and activities provide safe and supervised danger. A place to learn new skills, meet different people, perform under pressure and test one’s limits. A supervised place to engage in life before going out in the less supervised real world.

Newcomer Wisdom

November 20, 2012

A group I work with in my spare time, the Refugee Development Center, sponsored a team in a local youth soccer league.  Appropriately, the team’s nickname is “Newcomers.”

It took the team most of the season to score a goal; and it was in its final game of the season that the team earned its first victory.

After one game, I was enlisted to transport three players to their residences.  All three were Napali.  I used this time to ask their opinions about the education they were receiving in the local public school.

They had no objection to the content of the courses, but criticized the conduct of their classmates.  They cited a lack of respect for teachers, and a lack of discipline.  They had experienced the discipline of the stick in their homeland, and believed it would be helpful to classrooms in the US.

These young newcomers also noted that their instructional day in Nepal was almost two hours longer, plus they were in school a half-day on Saturdays.

From this conversation I was once again impressed that much of what has been done in attempts to improve public education has overlooked the obvious:  stronger discipline and longer days.  Most of what we do in US public education is the envy of the world.  What people from other countries wonder about is the lack of discipline and time on task. 

Empowering and supporting teachers’ discipline and increasing the length of the school day and year are not sexy solutions to what ails public education.  They are just simpler answers mostly overlooked.