Over Our Heads

June 29, 2012

In last month’s Wired magazine, Vint Cerf of Google cites American computer scientist Alan Kay’s comment, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Wired’s Thomas Goetz writes, “Too much of the technology world is trying to build clever solutions to picayune problems.”  (A quick look at the more than 1.2 million mobile phone applications available free or for sale in our world today – growing by 2,500 per day – makes the observation abundantly clear that many great minds are being wasted on the mundane, silly apps that do nothing to improve the quality of life for humankind.)

Goetz would have these talents aimed at much higher order needs of society.  “These times especially call for more than mere incrementalism.  Let’s demand that our leaders get in over their heads, that they remain a little bit naïve about what they’re getting into.”

And what might “going beyond incrementalism” look like for us in school sports?  Well, on just one topic – health and safety – it might mean, as provocative samples to stimulate bigger and better ideas:

      • Restricting kickoff returns, punt returns and interception returns in football – the three most dangerous times for players.
      • Reducing heading of the ball in soccer to reduce the effects of repeated blows to the brain.

      • Requiring all head coaches to complete CPR training, and requiring all coaches on all levels to complete an online coaching fundamentals course within their first two years of coaching.

      • Presenting an AED with every MHSAA tournament trophy – District, Regional and Final, for both champion and runner-up – during each of the next four years.

In any event, we need to avoid the distraction of meaningless matters and fix our focus on larger issues, and risk raising ideas and making changes that could have more lasting impact than incremental changes.  Just talking about these things begins to send messages that improve school sports.  Doing some things like them would actually invent our future.

Inner Life

November 25, 2016

Good reading here from Jody Redman, Associate Director of the Minnesota State High School League:

“The goal of interscholastic and youth sports is not to prepare students for a college scholarship or some professional career. It just doesn’t happen that often.

“Seventy-eight percent of youth who play sport will quit by the age of 12 because it just isn’t fun anymore and 97 percent of the students who go on to play at the high school level will have a terminal experience when they graduate. They will no longer play organized sports as they have throughout their youth experience.

“So what’s the point? Why do we play?

“We play to develop students into people with sound moral character that will prepare them for a life that recognizes the humanity of others, that is rich with empathy and compassion and develops in them the moral courage to stand up for what is right. When we only focus on physical skills and accomplishments we don’t give them the skills that will help them over the course of their lifetime, skills that will make the world a better place. We give them very little that has any real inherent value.

“It is time to give sports back to the children who play them. To focus on the true purpose of sports in our children’s lives. For this to happen, we have to establish a clear path, one that defines purpose, promotes values that are important to students and their community and defines success beyond winning.

“When we define success by the holistic development of our children into moral adults of character and compassion, then sports will regain its proper place in our families, schools and communities and most importantly, for the children who play them.”