Robust Benefits
February 6, 2015
Here are some research-based opinions that track with the personal experiences of most of us who have given our careers to educational athletics. The words are those of Kevin Kniffen, who teaches leadership and management at Cornell University (from NYTimes.com [Oct. 22, 2014]):
“Research shows that people who play high school sports get better jobs, with better pay. Benefits that last a lifetime.
“Those lessons presumably help to account for the findings that people who played for a varsity high school team tend to earn relatively higher salaries later in life. Research to which I contributed, complementing previous studies, showed that people who played high school sports tend to get better jobs, with better pay, and that those benefits last a lifetime.
“Hiring managers expect former student-athletes (compared with people who participate in other popular extracurriculars) to have more self-confidence, self-respect and leadership; actual measures of behavior in a sample of people who had graduated from high school more than five decades earlier showed those expectations proved accurate.
“We also found that former student-athletes tend to donate time and money more frequently than people who weren't part of teams.
“In other words, there are clear and robust individual and societal benefits that appear to be generated through the current system of school support for participation in competitive youth athletics.
“With respect to whether youth athletics should be part of educational institutions, it’s certainly true that there’s no necessary relationship between the two; but, what would happen if schools were to drop all of their interscholastic sports programs?
“Any policymakers who took such action would effectively be privatizing – and, in turn, limiting – an important set of opportunities that schools presently provide in a significantly more democratic and open fashion than likely alternatives would. Beyond raising a basic barrier for anyone to gain the kinds of experiences that appear to be rewarded in the workplace, the privatization of competitive youth sports would also create the largest barriers – and cause the greatest long-term losses – for those whose families are not able to bear the costs of participation outside of the public school system.”
Hit Again
April 1, 2013
Education reform needs a Mulligan. A do-over. The opportunity to go back to “Go” and start over. For example . . .
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Back to a time before the attack on neighborhood schools closed those schools and contributed to neighborhood collapse and community disconnect.
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Before suburban schools were allowed to prey on and profit from an urban school’s misfortunes.
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Before large buses lumbered down narrow residential lanes to transport our littlest learners from the shadow of their local school to another across town, where all the other littlest students were gathered for more “cost-effective” education.
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Before schools shuffled off low-achieving students to alternative schools in order to elevate their ranking on standardized test scores.
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Before teachers based their lessons more on test preparation than learning.
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Before education re-segregated through specialized charter schools with non-inclusive curricula.
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Before public schools were barred from beginning their instructional days before Labor Day, or whenever their community thought it best for the education of its students.
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Back to a time when pedagogy more than politics planned and delivered education.
Let’s tee it up and hit again.