See What You Say
July 31, 2012
Edward Morgan Forster is an English novelist who died as I was graduating as an English major at Dartmouth College in 1970.
Like many creative writers, E. M Forster traveled the world; and of his six novels (each of which was made into a film), it is A Passage to India, written in 1924, that was most popular.
He also wrote many short stories, plays, film scripts, essays, literary criticism, two biographies and even a libretto. He was, to say the least, a prolific writer.
The secret of his productivity is probably the genius and tortured soul which drives so many great authors. However, there is one quote from E. M. Forster that may be especially revealing. He said: “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” He was a writer in order to be a better thinker.
I have neither genius nor a tortured soul; but what has driven me to write throughout my administrative career – and what has kept me blogging twice a week for three full years as of today – is that I cannot be sure what I know – or what I believe and will stand behind – until I can see it in writing and know that it will be read by others. That’s when I begin to know what I really think.
Thinking of Don Quixote
October 10, 2017
The athletic transfer problem is not confined to high schools alone. Recently, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has had a work group studying the NCAA transfer rule for Division I institutions.
The problem has been of particular concern in Division I men’s basketball where more than 20 percent of scholarship players changed schools between last season and this.
The work group appeared to have narrowed its study to two options: Make every transfer student ineligible for one year; OR, Allow every transfer student immediate eligibility. And the second option seemed to have had the early momentum.
But last Wednesday, the work group announced that the proposal to grant immediate eligibility to transfer students who meet certain academic standards will not advance during the current NCAA legislative cycle. Two days later the report was corrected: there's still a chance for change by 2018-19.
Major college conference commissioners and NCAA leadership have surveyed the landscape. They see athletes arriving on their college campuses from an environment where, if they weren’t happy with a team, they changed teams.
Apparently, the non-school, travel team attitude is bigger than the NCAA may want to battle.
Yet here we are, thinking of how to wage war on athletic transfers in high schools.