Spitting in the Ocean
February 27, 2015
I laughed out loud when I read recently that the municipal government in Beijing, China was blaming outdoor grilling for the city’s increasingly dense smog and was banning cooking over outdoor fires.
Here is the earth’s most prolific polluter – China, and its state-run, Hell-bent-on-growth economy – telling the nice people of its capital city to stop spitting in the ocean of poison the Chinese government itself has created and still promotes.
The National Football League – whose GDP may be growing as rapidly as China’s – has acted in similar ways. Facing epidemic criticism for its handling of current and former players’ head injuries, the NFL pointed at youth football. Facing criticism for the brutality of its players toward women, the NFL prepared programs for adolescents and teens. It seems the fault is always someplace other than the NFL juggernaut.
But most times that I laugh at or criticize the blind eyes or bad faith of others, I pause to consider if we might sometimes act in similar ways. Might we be asking others to stop doing harm where we ourselves are doing more harm?
An extreme example could be that we criticize people for losing their minds at events when it is the MHSAA itself that sponsors and conducts the events of highest profile and importance ... although I will always argue that the most important events of educational athletics are the first ones – the first practices and games that introduce 7th, 8th and 9th graders to school-sponsored sports and shape their attitudes for years to come.
In any event, when any of us sees others act in ways we think are ridiculous, it would be good for all of us to then think about the ways we look ridiculous to others. And then consider if there are ways to change those perceptions.
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.