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Skills We Value

May 19, 2013

Evelyn Evans was a National Endowment of Humanities participant at The Henry Ford in 2009 and an early adopter of The Henry Ford Innovation Education Incubator pilot project in 2012 (click here). 

Here’s some of what she has to say in that organization’s very fine January-May 2013 publication:

“As educators, we face decisions daily.  Our job is a simple one:  teach our students the content curriculum, 21st-century skills, social skills, critical thinking, research skills, test-taking skills, responsible citizenship, stewardship, morals, ethics and everything else . . .

“What skills do I value?  Risk-taking, problem-solving, critical thinking and perseverance.  What do I want my curriculum to do for students?  Motivate.  Excite.  Stretch.  Encourage.  To let them know that it’s OK to take a risk.  It’ is also OK to fail, because failure is a learning experience and can be a stepping-stone to a greater idea.”

It is difficult for me to think of any part of our schools that provide these lessons and nurture these skills any more efficiently than extracurricular sports and activities.

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.