Our Environment at Risk
October 18, 2011
My wife and I are passionate travelers. We plan our own trips and we read about the history, music, art, government and food of the places we plan to visit. I struggle to learn a few phrases to get by in other languages.
No matter how cramped airplanes have become and no matter how compromised we feel as we shed our belongings and submit to the frisking and fondling of airport security, we remain enthusiastic planners and pilgrims. And the more exotic the destination, the more excited we are.
As we have traveled, it has been impossible to escape the realization that civilizations rise and fall; and it’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that one of the most compelling reasons why civilizations fail is that they ruin their environments.
Some civilizations have done this to themselves, poisoned their own environs; while other civilizations saw their environments contaminated by foreign influences. Some were invaded by brute force; others peacefully introduced new customs or germs that weakened the people or their flora or fauna.
It is one or more of these influences that caused the Mayans, who built structures that still stun 21st century engineers, to be reduced from many millions to a few remnants.
The historical principle that civilizations collapse when their environments are contaminated is worth considering for our little niche in modern society: the enterprise of school sports.
We cannot expect school sports to survive – these programs can only collapse – if we ruin the environment in which school sports breathes and lives.
This is an environment of comprehensive, community-based schools.
But schools are losing both these characteristics – both their comprehensiveness and their community base.
That we have a few schools of narrow focus is reasonable; that we have a few schools of specialized populations is tolerable; that we have a few schools without strong neighborhood connection is acceptable.
However, it does our neighborhoods no good, our communities no good, our state no good, nor our nation any good – in fact, in total, it does our nation much harm – as more and more schools trend further and further in these directions.
To abandon the school with comprehensive programs serving the invested neighborhood around it does us harm: nation, state, community and child.
It is almost irrelevant that this is bad for high school athletics. It’s bad for America.
Soccer Head Games
September 1, 2015
Recently, people who do have the credentials that I apparently lack have given credibility to my concerns, including a host of former World Cup champions led by Brandi Chastain, who are supporting Safer Soccer which says banning heading for participants under 14 years old (especially females) is a “no brainer.”
Launched in 2014 by Sports Legacy Institute and the Santa Clara University Institute of Sports Law and Ethics, the goal of Safer Soccer is to educate the soccer community that delaying heading until age 14 or high school “would eliminate the No. 1 cause of concussions in middle school soccer and is in the best interest of youth soccer players.”
The danger is both in the head-to-ball contact and the head-to-head contact by two players competing to head the ball.
There are legitimate differences of opinion on this topic, as well as absurd claims of some that this campaign is intended to give back the hard-fought gains of women in sports, and equally bizarre blather of others that this is intended to keep the sport of soccer in a place of secondary profile in the U.S. If we can get past that nonsense, perhaps then we can have an adult debate about children’s health.