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War Stories

May 25, 2012

I recently returned from a national meeting of my counterparts – an annual gathering where legal and legislative topics are on the agenda. With increasing frequency, the business aspects of the gatherings are sidetracked by “war stories,” as my colleagues relate the latest attacks on their organizations by media, legislators, lawyers, parents and others as these good leaders assist their member schools in regulating interscholastic athletics. 

It is well known that respect for authority figures and organizations of all kinds has been slipping for decades; and there are many reasons for it.  What has made the decline even more apparent is the Internet where people can communicate with more speed and less consequence than before.

It is well studied that appropriateness of tone and language diminishes as one moves from face-to-face meetings, to telephonic conversations, to traditional letters, to emails, texts and Twitter.

People will usually research topics and learn more about the complexities of an issue before meetings and use dialogue to come to consensus during conversations.  They will be more circumspect and contemplative in correspondence (which means, literally, an exchange of letters).  But they will not hesitate to make assertions and cast aspersions without any factual basis in brief, one-sided email or social media comments; which usually adds nothing but acrimony to the issue.

Perhaps by being the No. 1 user of social media among the nation’s state high school associations, the MHSAA has made the problem worse.  Perhaps by being the only state high school association executive director in the country to blog, I’ve also added to the problem.

Sports, after all, is not a subject that often suffers from too little communication.  Perhaps, at least sometimes, it suffers from too much quantity and too little quality.

Integrated Learning

July 1, 2016

One of the positive aspects of life that school sports and other after-school activities do better than most everything else is to build a sense of community. Another is to teach teamwork. And both are mostly missing in the world of individualized, online learning.

It sounds good to advocate for personalized, learn-at-your-own-pace “curriculum” (one can hardly call it “instruction”), but that model misses so much of what education is supposed to help a civilized society accomplish.

Benjamin Riley, founder and executive director of Deans for Impact (deansforimpact.org), makes this point in his May 18, 2016, Opinion on EdSurge (edsurge.com), “Bursting the ‘Personalization’ Bubble: An Alternative Vision for Our Public Schools.” Mr. Riley advances four principles:

  1. Teachers – not technology – should be the primary designers of students’ learning experiences.

  2. The experiences that teachers design should emphasize the social aspect of learning.

  3. The experiences that teachers design should be informed by learning science.

  4. Teachers should primarily use technology to identify social learning opportunities.

Mr. Riley concedes that these four principles are just a sketch – an outline for a different conversation than that which currently dominates education reform. “But there is one point on which I’m unyielding,” Riley writes: “We begin to forge the character of our country in our public schools. At a time when I feel our nation pulling further apart, I hope we start thinking and talking more about how we might move closer together, and promote the integration – rather than the personalization – of our learning experiences in public education.”

It is not Mr. Riley’s point, but it is mine, that school sports – including the requirement that participants be full-time students in the schools they represent on interscholastic sports teams – promotes the integration of the learning experience which is critical to shaping the character of our country.

The integration we speak of is developing the whole child through direct interaction daily with a diverse student body and a wide variety of curricular and extracurricular activities. This builds students, schools and society.