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The Problem with Exceptions

November 22, 2011

Picking up where my last blog left off, this posting presents two more of six lessons that experience has taught me during my enriching years with the MHSAA.

Lesson No. 2:  Beware of bad precedent.

An exception today that doesn’t seem to matter much is almost certain to be recalled and used against you tomorrow when it really does matter. People have poor memories for most things, but they have long memories for exceptional things, like making an exception to a rule.

A corollary to this lesson is that “no good deed goes unpunished.”

Lesson No. 2 is closely related to Lesson No. 3:  The path of least resistance usually is not.

Making an exception for a squeaky wheel will likely lead to more noise, not less.

One corollary to this lesson is that there will be more fallout when people believe you have ignored rules than when people believe you have been heartless in applying the rules as stated.

A second corollary to this is that following the rules is the safest harbor during stormy seas.

The Investment

February 3, 2015

Last month, Steve Christilaw who writes for the Spokane (WA) Spokesman-Review, ended an opinion piece with these statements:
“. . . a strong, vibrant society invests in its future by investing in young people. What our youth can learn from playing sports are life lessons we, as a society, place at a high value.

“How we pay for it all – education, the arts and athletics – has become a political football . . . and it deserves to be treated as the serious and significant investment that it truly is.”
Previous to that conclusion, Christilaw opined from his experience that the values of participation in school-sponsored sports are different than what young people gain in non-school club teams where the focus is more often on one’s self than cooperating with a team and representing a school or entire community.
There are those, of course, who see athletics as a distraction from the educational mission of academic institutions. I don’t doubt that can be the case in some places on some occasions; and I know from experience that leadership must be vigilant to keep a lid on the program and resist those who wish to take school sports to extremes.
But athletic programs which are true to the mission of supporting the educational mission of schools are far more the rule than the exception, most often operating at small fractions of the school budget, and most often involving large majorities of the student body.
A “serious and significant investment” indeed.