I watched last night, with some agony, Duke making its miraculous
ten point comeback in the last minute of the basketball game against
Maryland. While I was listening to an excited and disbelieving commentator
on another station talk about Duke's Coach K, he said something that
caught my ear. I heard him say that Coach K was a rare breed of college
coach. He, along with John Thompson, ex-coach of the Georgetown Hoyas,
and Dean Smith, ex-coach of my beloved North Carolina Tarheels are
winners. He said something to the effect, "They're winners, not just
because they've won over 1600 games between them and their graduation
rates were almost 100%, but because more important to them than winning a
basketball game was building the character of their players and getting
them to see there was more to life than basketball, and that is what won
them all those ball games. These kids came into their programs as
basketball players and they left as young men."
Do we academics have the same commitment in our particular
classes? We should.
Do we understand that a student can get "A's" and fail in his
or her profession and in life, that a person can be an "honors"
student and leave us as anything but an "honors" person? We should.
Do we see beyond the immediate and limited horizon of the facts
and technical stuff of the subject matter, the test, the grade? We
should.
Do we get so caught up in the mechanics, methodology,
administration, assessment and presentment that we loose sight of the
student's humanity? We shouldn't.
I think we should be judged--evaluated, assessed--by the kind of
"person" who leaves our campus, not by the stats of a student who was
accepted.
Just a thought or two.
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of History http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, GA 31698 /~\ /\ /\
912-333-5947 /^\ / \ / /~\ \ /~\__/\
/ \__/ \/ / /\ /~\/ \
/\/\-/ /^\_____\____________/__/_______/^\
-_~ / "If you want to climb mountains, \ /^\
_ _ / don't practice on mole hills" - \____
