Standards Promote Value
October 29, 2012
I can’t speak for every state, but it is probably true for most states, that (1) no school is required to provide a program of interscholastic activities – such are not curricular activities; and (2) participation in voluntary interscholastic competitive activities is a privilege offered to those who meet standards of eligibility and conduct of the school and standards of ability for the activity involved.
It is not a liability but an asset of competitive interscholastic activities that they are not co-curricular, but extracurricular – voluntary programs with extra standards, extra requirements, extra expectations.
We don’t need to sell the public on the value of participation; they desperately want their children to participate, and they will even sue us for the opportunity. What we have to do is sell the public on the value of the standards we maintain for participation.
Much of the value of school activities results from the standards of school activities. Many of the benefits of school activities accrue from the requirements of school activities. Raise the bar, raise the value. Lower the bar, lower the value.
Activities are much less capable of doing good things for kids and good things for schools and their communities where there are lower standards of eligibility and conduct. It’s the difference between interscholastic and intramural, between tough and easy. It is because schools have raised the bar for interscholastic activities that these programs have value to students, schools and communities.
The End is Near
December 10, 2013
From time to time we are confronted with print or broadcast media reports, or articles in scholarly publications, that criticize schools’ sponsorship of competitive athletic programs. Some authors have gone so far as to predict that the day is coming when schools are forced by the strength of intellectual argument or the shortage of resources to disassociate from competitive sports and to discharge that responsibility to local community groups and private clubs, as is the custom of most other nations.
For 50 years the “end is near” prophecy has been present among our critics. Today the prediction also can be overheard among cash-strapped school administrators, especially if they ascended to leadership without involvement in school sports.
It’s my sense that these dire predictions are not likely to come true for the reasons usually cited – e.g., that the programs dilute focus or divert funds of schools from their core mission. What is more likely is that these predictions will come true because those in charge ignore basic human needs and responses, and they fail to implement programs that meet those needs.
Our response should not be to lower sports’ profile in schools and offer less to students. It should be just the opposite. We should even more boldly proclaim the value of competitive athletic programs; we should provide more sports and levels of teams for high school students; and we should provide junior high/middle school students with more and longer contests, beginning at earlier ages.
We need to go on offense, as my next postings will prescribe.