There is a school administrator in Michigan who says the greatest controversy in his school district during his tenure has been the way the girls varsity basketball coach kept game statistics. Some parents thought the coach was favoring some players, an d under-reporting the performances of others which, among other things, they said would harm chances for post-season awards and prospects for college scholarships.
Another school administrator became the point man for a district’s public criticism of and legal challenge to the disqualification of its team from tournament play because of the participation by two ineligible students. He championed the cause of the disqualified sports team with a profile no one had ever seen him take for any academic program of the school district.
These are examples of the many times school administrators observe their communities lose perspective, or when school administrators themselves lose perspective, about the proper role of interscholastic athletics in the life of schools. I wish communit ies, school boards and administrators would get as worked up about academic matters as athletics. That they do not, demonstrates two points: sports are more important to people than they should be, and too important to ever be abolished from the extrac urricular offerings of most schools.
It is a reflection of what American society values that school-sponsored sports have increased greatly in breadth, depth and profile during this century; and it is not a fundamental flaw of these programs, but merely a symptom of what is unhealthy in ou r culture, that problems exist in school sports that adversely affect some students and schools. School-sponsored sports will not be abolished until American society abandons all interest in sports, and the problems of school-sponsored sports will not g o away until these problems are eliminated from the rest of American life.
Whether friend or foe of school sports, effective school administrators must accept first that interscholastic athletics and some of their problems are facts of life for secondary schools and, second, that the function of those who care about schools an d sports is neither to eliminate nor exalt athletic programs, but to expose and oppose their potentially dangerous directions in order to promote this ideal: School sports should provide the opportunity for as many students as possible to participate as meaningfully as possible in as many different school activities as possible.
This ideal runs counter to some of the trendy efforts to reform public education today. In the name of educational reform, options are being promoted which segregate students by ethnicity (Afro-centric schools), by religion (public funding of private schools) , by intended occupation (culinary, technical academies, etc.), or to keep students away from institutional school altogether (home schools). But the ideal is consistent with the historical role of education in America, which is to promote social understanding and democratic participation. School sports draw together students of diverse backgrounds to compete with and against one another. They provide laboratory courses in physical and emotional development, teaching (if properly led) teamwork and sportsmanship (which are fundamental elements of citizenship) more efficiently than most classroom curricula.
Among the potentially dangerous directions of school sports that we must expose and oppose are these:
• Specialization: Focusing on one sport year-round to the exclusion of most everything else. Students and their parents bring to school sports a fear that if the child hasn’t been playing a sport twelve months a year, he or she won’t make the high school team; and if th e child doesn’t make the high school team, all kinds of bad things will happen (no college scholarship, maybe no college at all but delinquency and drugs). While misguided, the worry of these parents and the important role they think school sports have in the success and happiness of their children reinforces the near obsessive importance of sports in society today, and thus in schools today.
•Paying for school sports with non-school funds: This started well enough, with all-sports booster clubs funding major capital projects; but it has evolved to single interest groups controlling the entire budget for the sport of their interest, just as they have been doing for non-school youth sports programs. Combine non-school funding with non-faculty coaches and it’s difficult to call these school sports.
•Eliminating kids too early by cutting squad sizes and curtailing playing time for all but too few too early, before many students have matured emotionally or physically and know what they might like or be good at: Even with budget problems and over-emphasis on winning, school sports actually do less of this and do it later than most non-school youth sports programs; but there’s too much of it in schools and it’s getting worse.
•Expanding the scope of competition: year-round practice, more games, further travel, more grandiose championships: It’s not enough to be county or conference champions anymore; good seasons are defined by more expansive titles, further travel, and taller trophies. Again, school sports, more than other levels, resist lengthening seasons and trips; and school sports are unique in resisting national championships which non-school sports organizations promote and commercial sponsors underwrite for athletes from ages 7 to 70. But if we drop our guard, national championships will come to school sports and drive interscholastic athletics as far from the mission of schools as intercollegiate athletics have become from the mission of most major colleges and universities.
As students specialize, as schools trim squad sizes and sub-varsity competition, as special interest groups fund their teams to do grander things, educational athletics wander from the purpose of education in America. Rather than being a melting pot fo r learning to work with others, school sports become programs for the privileged few to strut their stuff.
This elitism is more than unbecoming; it is dangerous. It tends to give more status to athletics than other school programs, where the tail starts wagging the dog. It tends to give more status to athletes than other students, where athletes begin to b elieve and expect that the world will cater to them rather than be served by them. This is the antithesis of what education should teach.
The ideal model of school sports leaves time for students to participate in several sports, as well as non-athletic activities. The ideal model of school sports leaves time for students to do their homework, every day and on time. The ideal model of s chool sports doesn’t require athletes be excused from classes more than a couple of times a year, and it doesn’t give athletes any privileges to have assignments delayed and examinations waived. This is reasonable and achievable for school administrator s to demand, even in a sports-crazed society.
Whether cheerleader or critic of school sports, effective school administrators must present interscholastic athletics as just one part of an expansive buffet of extracurricular activities that gives students special places to plug into school and feel a part of school life. The programs will help motivate some students to stay in school, do well in school, even like school. The programs will help other students develop special interests and skills, including academic, social and athletic.
Santee Ruffin, formerly with the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ Urban Services, stated in a speech in Detroit in November of 1992: “School activities represent the salvation of schools and maybe the nation.” He said, “They promot e academic achievement, equal access to opportunity regardless of race and class, cultural understanding and self-esteem by giving youth a place to be loved, cared for and to belong, a place where they can make mistakes and still be accepted. This is wh at our schools need to save them,” said Mr. Ruffin: “This is what our nation may need to save it,” he added.Douglas Heath, the educator from Haverford College who has done the best research on this topic and published it in the book Fulfilling Lives: Paths to Maturity and Success, comes to this conclusion: “School grades and achievement test scores predict moderately well which students will do well in school the next year, but they do not predict which students of average or above average grades and test scores will succeed in later life . . . Extracurricular participation is a school’s best predictor of adult success.”
In the summer of 1992, Thomas Boswell, the highly respected writer for the Washington Post, wrote a nationally syndicated column entitled “Save Now, Pay Later”. He wrote, “Shakespeare is great. But if you want to run a public school that works, there’s no better place to spend your money than on a strong athletics program that involves as m any students as possible in as many sports as possible.”
Mr. Boswell is correct so far as he goes. He should have included non-athletic activities in his statement. For the fully educated secondary school student has participated in both academic and non-academic activities, both athletic and non-athletic a ctivities, has been a star in one activity and a scrub in another, has been onstage in one activity and backstage in another, has participated in solo and ensemble, winning and losing. This is what prepares students for successful and fulfilling lives.
And only when we involve as many students as possible as meaningfully as possible in as many different activities as possible have we reached the full potential of our schools, and through them, tapped the full potential of our students.
Jack Roberts is the executive director of the Michigan High School Athletic Association