Hey, I've got a lot more when it comes to education. As you can see, my position is that education should be for education. Novel idea these days. Education is not fun and games. It would be nice if it were possible to learn all the things that our kids need to know to Survive, Compete and Defend in the world that they will after graduation from high school, find themselves in. As parents, we are passing much of our responsibility over to the public schools to prepare our kids for life. That is what we are doing. Education is our responsibility and the public school system is supposed to help us do that. The basic problem that I have is that our public schools are not doing the job nor are they giving us our monies worth. So let's get going on another chapter.
In my last Blog, I pointed out that "Distractions" are a serious problem in our public schools and that they need to be reduced or eliminated if we are going to expect our kids to graduate with what they need to know. Here it is. Sports are the biggest distraction in our public schools. How could I say that? I know that you played football and had all kinds of fun and learned life long skills from your participation so how could it be bad and should be eliminated? All those things that you claim were the result of sports in the public schools system could have been provided out side of the public school system for a lot less money without distracting attention in public school form its basic mission. How about a short story first?
When I lived in Argentina, my kids went to the public school there. I asked my kids if they were going to learn to play soccer or go out for the team? They said that they did not play soccer at their school. I asked why not? They said that school was for learning and sports were for sport clubs outside of school. My first impression was that Argentina was all screwed up when it came to sports. It was no wonder that the USA earned the most medals in the Olympic Games with our superior healthy sports programs in public schools. When I looked into the situation further, I found that the USA were the ones who were screwed up not the Argentines. It just happens that Argentina has the highest literacy rate in the Western Hemisphere while spending a fraction of what we spend on education. How could that be? Fewer distractions. They wear uniforms in school and don't have any sports. Those are the facts.
But wait, what about the Gold Medals in the Games? As it turns out Argentina who does not have sports in their public schools won the Gold Medal for Basket Ball in the Olympic Games over the USA all star, all Black team. None of the Argentine players were Black and all could read and write.
If we were to eliminate sports from our public schools, it would not mean the end of organized sports. It would mean that organized sports in the USA would be the same as organized sports the world over. Club sports have many advantages over the USA system where we have them in our public schools under the control of the labor unions. Think about it, we could eliminate all the PE majors in our colleges. Think about how big a savings that would be. The PE majors could get regular non-public jobs and pay into the tax pool rather than taking money out. If PE teachers did such a great job, then why are our kids the most over weight in the world and in the worst physical condition?
If you played football in public school, ask yourself exactly how much difference did the coach really make? Did he or she advise you on eating habits or exercise programs. I don't think so. He ran around with a whistle tied around his or her neck and worked with the best "natural" athletes in the school. It is the same in our colleges. No player was ever really better because of the coach. It was 99% natural ability and the coaches job was to go out and get the best athletes, not take average kids and make them into great athletes. When you look at the real facts, you see that the coach does not really contribute much. Every winning coach will take credit for the wins, but it is really the natural ability of the players who make the wins possible not the coach. Am I right?
Teachers do the same thing. They all want to take credit for the naturally smart and motivated kid who does well. Did you ever hear a teacher brag about making an average kid a little bit better? You never will because that is not how it works. When kids have to pass some kind of standardized test you will hear teachers complain all over the place because it exposes the fact that the teacher is not teaching the average kid all that much. I only brought this up to show that sports and teaching suffer from the same basic problems and that we need to get distractions out of our schools.
I was reading the local new paper and found that there were six pages devoted to sports of all kinds. They gave the names of the kids and how many baskets or hits they had gotten. I guess the public had a need to know. I did not find any coverage of the real function of public school and that was to teach the kids something. Why didn't they put the names in the paper showing the grades the kids got in each class or the number of days missed? If it is so important to show names and facts about sports, why not about real education? Seems fair to me. Are you starting to see how sports screws things up? I think that I covered this in the past about limited resources where the kids have a limited amount of time and energy and much of it is being wasted on things like sports that are unrelated to real education.
Honestly think about sports and how they distract from real education and let me know what you think.
