Re: [Winona] Andrews anti-sports comments
[Winona Online Democracy] Hello Winona Online Democracy, I wanted to thank Andrew for the example he is setting. To be more blunt, he is teaching the "adults" much. Most of us are not use to his intellectual depth and, more importantly, his noble diplomacy and tact. He rests on the strength of his ideas and arguements to convey a point and manages to avoid petty personal jousting. I only wish that more of us, again...me included, could follow his lead. Thank you Andrew. Dwayne Voegeli [Winona Online Democracy] I"ll give you the benefit of the doubt and presume you did not call me a "lazy bum." As I've now said a few times, my assertion was never that sports in and of themselves negatively affect education. Rather, the problem comes from the too-high priority placed upon athletics, at least at WSHS and a few other schools of which I have some knowledge. I'm not sure we disagree on this fundamental point, but the problem is real and is often minimized by people eager to extoll the virtues of athletic participation. I go to a school with many student athletes who put more effort and enrgy into playing their respective games than they do into developing their aptitudes in academic subjects, and I have not noticed an effort by most teachers or administrators to rectify this. This is the problem, not the sports themselves; you may have misread my meaning, and I apologize if I was not clear. I myself played hockey beginning at an early age and continued until further participation would have required joining the schol team, and I certainly don't think I am any the worse for it. Some of my fellows who intended to continue on the school team, however, clearly had the impression that the "athlete" would be the important part of "student athlete." When students maintain this attitude about sports and no one tells them "No, you are here to study, and that is where you will devote yourself first", this will adversely affect their academic education. The need for physical exercise: something I don't dispute. However, it bears remembering that school-run atheltic teams are not the only means of developing the body. Many private organizations and clubs operate sports leagues, and even participation in an organized competitive atheltic league is not the only way to exercise. I've found the canoeing, hiking, and recreational skiing I do to work quite well in that regard. One place I have done a bit of study of in the area of student life is Germany, where the rate of athletic involvement by students is fairly high, comparable with the U.S., but where the idea of a school sponsoring a sports team is relatively unheard of--it is seen as the job of schools to teach young people academic subjects, and the recreational realms of life as something separate. Clubs are the mechanism by which students play sports, and the German educational system appears to work fairly well. "School spirit": I equate it with patriotism, which George Bernard Shaw defines as "your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born here." In moderation, school spirit is alright, so long as it does not interfere with other areas of development like critical thought and an awareness of why the student is in school, and so long as the school does not try to artificially create it or enforce it. One of my better teachers,(who might be reading this; there's a free compliment if you are) who had assigned George Orwell's "1984" as part of the course I was taking, remarked upon the class's return from the use of class time to celebrate one or another of the school's athletic teams (it was "homecoming week", perhaps) that we had just participated in something out of Orwell's book. Teamwork is a valuable skill, but institutional groupthink is something to be wary of. I dislike nitpicking over minor points in any argument, as I'm sure you do, but perhaps I should clarify one of th examples I used: the student to whom you referred askd a question in a class clearly indicating a belief that Thomas Jefferson was alive during the American Civil War and was a particiant in the events surrounding it. I can certainly see the relevance of his ideas to the Civil War, which would be an entirely new, though interesting, discussion, but in the example I used it wasa case of not knowing to which period of American history Jefferson belonged. If I was "insensitive" to anyone, I apologize, but I believe that my statements are the conclusions which stand to be drawn from what I see in my school environment. From: "Anthony Dooley" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Winona] Andrews anti-sports comments Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 02:43:04 [Winona Online Democracy] OK, It has been a while since I've been able to read this string of mail. But, ANDREW, I've had it with your insensitivity to the athletic world! I personaly think that you have got it mixed up with
Re: [Winona] Andrews anti-sports comments
[Winona Online Democracy] I"ll give you the benefit of the doubt and presume you did not call me a "lazy bum." As I've now said a few times, my assertion was never that sports in and of themselves negatively affect education. Rather, the problem comes from the too-high priority placed upon athletics, at least at WSHS and a few other schools of which I have some knowledge. I'm not sure we disagree on this fundamental point, but the problem is real and is often minimized by people eager to extoll the virtues of athletic participation. I go to a school with many student athletes who put more effort and enrgy into playing their respective games than they do into developing their aptitudes in academic subjects, and I have not noticed an effort by most teachers or administrators to rectify this. This is the problem, not the sports themselves; you may have misread my meaning, and I apologize if I was not clear. I myself played hockey beginning at an early age and continued until further participation would have required joining the schol team, and I certainly don't think I am any the worse for it. Some of my fellows who intended to continue on the school team, however, clearly had the impression that the "athlete" would be the important part of "student athlete." When students maintain this attitude about sports and no one tells them "No, you are here to study, and that is where you will devote yourself first", this will adversely affect their academic education. The need for physical exercise: something I don't dispute. However, it bears remembering that school-run atheltic teams are not the only means of developing the body. Many private organizations and clubs operate sports leagues, and even participation in an organized competitive atheltic league is not the only way to exercise. I've found the canoeing, hiking, and recreational skiing I do to work quite well in that regard. One place I have done a bit of study of in the area of student life is Germany, where the rate of athletic involvement by students is fairly high, comparable with the U.S., but where the idea of a school sponsoring a sports team is relatively unheard of--it is seen as the job of schools to teach young people academic subjects, and the recreational realms of life as something separate. Clubs are the mechanism by which students play sports, and the German educational system appears to work fairly well. "School spirit": I equate it with patriotism, which George Bernard Shaw defines as "your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born here." In moderation, school spirit is alright, so long as it does not interfere with other areas of development like critical thought and an awareness of why the student is in school, and so long as the school does not try to artificially create it or enforce it. One of my better teachers,(who might be reading this; there's a free compliment if you are) who had assigned George Orwell's "1984" as part of the course I was taking, remarked upon the class's return from the use of class time to celebrate one or another of the school's athletic teams (it was "homecoming week", perhaps) that we had just participated in something out of Orwell's book. Teamwork is a valuable skill, but institutional groupthink is something to be wary of. I dislike nitpicking over minor points in any argument, as I'm sure you do, but perhaps I should clarify one of th examples I used: the student to whom you referred askd a question in a class clearly indicating a belief that Thomas Jefferson was alive during the American Civil War and was a particiant in the events surrounding it. I can certainly see the relevance of his ideas to the Civil War, which would be an entirely new, though interesting, discussion, but in the example I used it wasa case of not knowing to which period of American history Jefferson belonged. If I was "insensitive" to anyone, I apologize, but I believe that my statements are the conclusions which stand to be drawn from what I see in my school environment. From: "Anthony Dooley" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Winona] Andrews anti-sports comments Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 02:43:04 [Winona Online Democracy] OK, It has been a while since I've been able to read this string of mail. But, ANDREW, I've had it with your insensitivity to the athletic world! I personaly think that you have got it mixed up with something else. When you said this...(below)... I thought to myself how limited your views really are "Interestingly enough, most of my classmates who confuse Cambodia with Colombia, associate Thomas Jefferson with the Civil War, or don't know how to read a periodic table are major participants in school-sponsored athletics. (All of these actually happened in classes I've been in.) It's because football (or track, or dance team)
