We Must Do Better
July 16, 2012
Everybody is expressing opinions about the US Supreme Court’s various written opinions regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
However, my mind goes back to the heated debate the previous year, to a passage about this topic in a July 13, 2009 Businessweek column co-authored by Benjamin E. Sasse, US Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2007 until taking a teaching position at the University of Texas in Austin in 2009, and Kerry N. Weems, an independent consultant who previously served 28 years in federal government, most recently as the head of Medicare and Medicaid.
Sasse and Weems wrote: “. . . passionate certainty that things are broken is not the same as dispassionate clarity about how to fix them.” They were critical of people on both sides of the health care debate who were “still campaigning on the issue when what’s needed is a detailed conversation.”
What bothered Sasse and Weems on July 13, 2009, seven months into President Obama’s first term, has only gotten worse on July 13, 2012, four months prior to the next election. Many are campaigning – on health care, as well as the economy, the environment, education and every other pressing issue of our times and our children’s times – but few are truly leading on those issues.
Borrowing from the title of Bill Bradley’s latest book, which he borrowed from Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, "we can all do better." In fact, we not only can, we must. It’s a matter of will more than it is of wisdom.
The Limitation of Rules – Part 1
September 2, 2016
From the age of 10 to 20, my position as a baseball player was catcher. Sometime during that decade I was taught to return the ball to the pitcher with authority, with a snap throw from my ear, targeting the glove-side shoulder of the pitcher.
I caught every inning of every game, including doubleheaders. In those years, there was less concern than today for protecting the arms of pitchers, and there was no thought given to the throwing arms of catchers.
Today, the shoulder of my throwing arm is shot; I cannot throw a ball overhand with any force.
But here’s the thing. I didn’t ruin my throwing arm in youth and school baseball; I wrecked it as an adult doing silly things with a tennis ball on the beach with my teenage son. We had a blast for a summer afternoon, and I’ve paid for it the rest of my life.
The point of this brief baseball bio is to demonstrate an example of the limitations of rules.
We can identify dozens of risks to student-athletes and we can promulgate an equal number of rules to help them avoid injuries in our programs; but we cannot protect them against a lack of common sense in our programs or accidents in other aspects of their lives.
Even if we implement new rules to limit the number of pitches by a player, what good is that if, after reaching the limit, the pitcher and catcher switch positions? Do we need a rule to address that coaching decision too?
Do we need rules that prohibit large students from practicing against small, or experienced players from competing against inexperienced? How would we ever monitor or enforce such rules? Where do rules leave off and common sense take over?
Even if we put players in bubble wrap for sports, what do we do about their decisions away from sports, perhaps in vehicles, with their friends and their cell phones? Where do laws and rules stop, and personal responsibility start?