Model Education
December 13, 2013
The athletic classroom is at least as pregnant with teachable moments as any other classroom of our comprehensive secondary schools.
I believe this so strongly that there is a tendency to overstate this truth; but if we include non-athletic activities like speech, music, debate and drama, I am even more certain it is true.
It is true in large part because nowhere in education will one find it to the degree we do in school activities that teachers are teaching what they want to teach to students who are learning what they want to learn, and both teachers and learners are willing to work hour after hour on their own time, even after the so-called “school day,” to make sure that everything that can be taught is taught and everything that can be learned is learned.
This is not a distraction from the educational mission of schools. It is a model of what more of education should be. And we shouldn’t hesitate to say so. Nor should we hesitate any longer to provide these model programs for younger grade levels.
Current Events
November 3, 2017
This is the ninth year that I have been posting blogs twice a week – each Tuesday and Friday. A recent project required I go back through the postings of the eight previous years; and a sidebar of that project is this posting.
I rediscovered that in the fall of 2009, I was writing about topics that remain current today. For example,
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August 18 – What new sports may be in the future of high school athletics?
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August 25 – The prospects of 8-player football.
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September 4 – Baseball pitching rules.
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September 8 – Video streaming.
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October 6 – Protection from head injuries.
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November 17 – Foreign students.
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November 20 – Football scheduling.
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November 27 – Football Playoffs.
And on several occasions over the first six months, the topics were problems in school finance and the financial pressures on school sports, reasons for various eligibility rules, changes in playing rules to promote participant safety, tournament classification, and the need for stronger leadership on all levels of school sports.
All of these topics remain current. Proving once again, perhaps, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, that there are no genuinely new topics.