Nonfaculty Coaches

June 18, 2012

Since the so-called heyday of school sports in the 1950s, when you could count on more talk in a community about its few high school teams than about all the college and professional sports teams in the country combined, some things have improved – diversity and safety, for example; but some things have not met the high ideals hoped for in educational athletics.

During the explosive growth period of school sports in the 1970s and 1980s, when girls programs were introduced or reintroduced to schools and well-established community programs were added to the school sports curriculum, schools in almost every state had to backpedal from the ideal that only trained educators – certified teachers – could coach interscholastic athletic teams.  (In Michigan, except for two years in the mid 1950s when certified teachers were required, the rules only urge that coaches be certified teachers.)

While the number of sports and levels of teams have greatly expanded these past five or six decades, the coaching pool within the faculty of a school district has not.  Furthermore, teachers’ salaries improved so much that coaching stipends became less necessary to supplement teachers’ incomes, so teachers “volunteered” less readily to serve as coaches for a second and third sport.

Moreover, the coaching demands for one sport increased out of season, interfering with a person’s availability to help coach second and third sports during the school year.  This was commonplace in the sports that moved from the community into schools, but the out of season demands have increased significantly for traditional school sports as well.

There is irony that community youth sports programs not only have provided school districts with a pool of informed and interested people to serve as coaches, but they have also increased the demands on coaches so much out of season that coaches must specialize in a single sport and therefore are less available to assist with the many different sports and levels of teams that school districts struggle to provide students.

It is estimated now that more than half of all high school coaches do not work in the school building where they coach, which can create communications challenges for schools.  A smaller but growing number of high school coaches do not work at all in the field of education, which can create philosophical problems as well.  Not always, of course; in fact, many nonfaculty coaches are a rich and increasingly indispensible blessing for school sports.

Lost in Time

August 25, 2015

So, North Korea is establishing its own unique time zone – “Pyongyang time” – named after the nation’s capital city. North Korea will fall 30 minutes behind Japan whose time zone was imposed on the entire Korean peninsula more than 100 years ago.

Actually, North Korea is more than 30 years behind Japan in almost every aspect of civilized life.

This time zone adjustment gesture is of little practical significance because North Koreans have been closed off from global interaction by the impositions of their brutal dictators since the end of World War II. It’s symbolism befitting the backward nation’s isolationism.

The negative effects of this isolationism upon the nation are visible across the Demilitarized Zone from South Korea. Behind visitors to the DMZ is the vibrant mega-city of Seoul, South Korea. Across the river is a bleak, barren landscape with no sign of life. No people, no agriculture. Just a few buildings, without inhabitants. Built only for show.

There are many lessons to be learned from this contrast, on many levels. Of course, we see how people thrive more in an atmosphere of freedom than totalitarianism. We see the benefits of engagement over isolationism. We see that symbols without substance are meaningless.

Lessons for nations, to be sure. But reminders for enterprises of all kinds, including ours.

And a note to North Korea ... Newfoundland Island has had its own time zone for many years. It’s 30 minutes ahead of the rest of North America, and a century ahead of North Korea.