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The signing season has begun.
Look through your local newspaper for the next few weeks, and you’ll see a lot of posed pictures of high school athletes.
Everyone will be at a desk or table.
Around each one will be their parents and their coach. In some cases, add in an athletic director, a principal, and someone representing a college the young athlete is planning to attend.
It makes no difference if it’s a Division I or Division II school; sometimes it’s even a Division III school. Star athletes at the end of their high school careers get photos and applause. They can even get special financial aid and scholarships just for being able to play a sport well. At Division I universities, they also receive special academic tutoring to make sure they stay eligible.
Excel on an athletic field, and the local media will take your picture and write stories about you. If you’re good enough, the sportswriters might name you “Athlete of the Week” and present you with a certificate or small plaque.
At the end of the season—it makes little difference what season or what sport—you might be named to an all-district or all-regional or all-state team. You might even be voted by the sports writers in your area “Player of the Year” for your sport.
If you do extremely well in college sports, at the age of 22 you might be able to command a six- or seven-figure salary in a professional sport. Become a coach of a major sport at a Division I school, and even if your team is only mildly successful you’ll earn several times what professors earn.
Now, let’s pretend you’re a scholar. Even in the world of rampant grade inflation, you’re running an “A” average and are in the top 5 percent of your class. You just aced the SATs and are heading to a Division I university.
You probably won’t get your picture in the paper, surrounded by parents, counselor, mentor, or anyone from that Division I university. It just isn’t done. Newspapers have Sports sections, sometimes 8–12 pages; they don’t have Education sections.
Although some editors may claim that “education” is spread throughout the newspaper, the reality is that column inches devoted to sports coverage is significantly greater than column inches devoted to education news.
The American educational system rated just 17th among 50 industrialized countries, according to an analysis by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The countries with the leading educational systems, according to the EIU, were Scandinavian and Asian. The EIU analysis looked at both quantitative data (including class size, facilities, and government spending per pupil) and qualitative data (including development of cognitive skills.)
In another major study, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) revealed that U.S. students were average in reading and science skills, and below average in math skills. Fifteen-year-old students, according to the report, ranked 14th of 34 countries in reading abilities, 17th in science, and 25th in math. As for writing and cognitive skills abilities—just look at any letter to the editor to find out how well students command those subjects. The PISA testing requires students to take knowledge of a subject and apply it to solving real-world problems.
“This is an absolute wake-up call for America,” Dr. Arne Duncan, U.S. secretary of education, told the AP. He said the study was “extraordinarily challenging to us and we have to deal with the brutal truth [and] get much more serious about investing in education.”
There are innumerable problems in America’s educational systems. One is that the gap between the higher performing students and the lower performing students in all areas (including humanities, arts, and sciences) is increasing. Another is that educational systems, spurred by taxpayers who don’t want higher taxes, have learned not how to effectively cut expenses but have sacrificed education by packing more students into a classroom; almost every study (including the PISA testing) shows a link between class size and educational achievement.
Another link is the workload of the average teacher. Many taxpayers and some in the media believe teachers are overpaid and work “only” six or seven hours a day for only 180 days a year. However, the evidence doesn’t support the public perception. Teacher pay averages about 12 percent less than for professionals in comparable jobs, according to a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute; in some states, the pay is 25 percent less than for comparable jobs. The average teacher workload is significantly greater than the number of hours in the classroom. According to a recent study by Scholastic and the Gates Foundation, teachers average about 53 hours a week, including time spent on class preparation, student evaluation, and discussions with students and their parents. Even during breaks, teachers are usually developing classroom materials or attending conferences and in-service training. The PISA report links general public respect for teachers with greater educational success.
And, yes, in the educational system are weak and ineffective teachers, school administrators, and school board members who are part of a system that may have become more lethargic than revolutionary.
But, a look at American society, as seen in the pages of the local newspaper, is a reflection of what Americans think is important. When you’re looking at a four-column picture of a smiling athlete at a signing ceremony, ask yourself why do we wring our hands, furrow our brows, and complain about low educational scores.
The answer might be that while athletes are photographed signing on the dotted line, highly-talented student musicians, artists, writers, and future scientists, among several hundred thousand others, are also signing on dotted lines—but, these are dotted lines on financial loan statements.
[Dr. Brasch, who has mixed teaching and journalism for more than three decades, is an award-winning journalist and the author of 17 books. His latest is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth investigation of the effects of fracking upon public health, safety, and the environment. The book is available from amazon.com or www.greeleyandstone.com. Assisting on this column was Rosemary R. Brasch.]
Photo by Jamie Williams under Creative Commons license
13 Comments
I was almost going to be a teacher a few years ago. It wasn’t worth the certification/education. Get a masters and start at $50K?
And then dealing with the bureaucracy. I looked at the Houston ISD teacher material and the grade school teachers day was planned by the district down to the 5 minute level as far as classroom stuff. No freedom to explore a topic that seemed to grab students interest.
One reason for the disparity in pay is that teachers are retail and athletes are wholesale. It’s loke selling one pair of shoes to a lady versus selling ten thousand pairs to T J Maxx. That’s the flip side of smaller classroom size.
We need to honor the brilliant students. We need to have a national competition and pay big prizes to the winners. We need recruiters and combines and recognition.
And another thing. we need the media to stop portraying smart people as socially and developmentally challenged. Think about how the geniuses are portrayed.
House – a jerk
Sherlock Holmes – a jerk unable to communicate with normal people.
Sheldon and Leonard – losers at everything else not involving IQ.
Bones – a social misfit.
No wonder smart = loser in junior high.
I guess the article did not reflect on opportunities for brain damage. When will the parent encouraging kids in football be
considered for child abuse?
Now that the US military– with our tax dollars– is promoting women in combat in its ad campaigns along with the, er, novel “recruitiment” techniques (begin 14:45 – 15:58 of docu film, “Authority and Expections“) and access to your kids’ XBOXes, I sat down and explained to another adult how to make sure their children avoid the conveyor belt of Death for “harvesting” in the next planned war. The “why” will be explained to them so they can understand but guess what the environment, activities and training of these children won’t include?
Another problem that this diary alludes to is the winner-take-all mentality that has pervaded our society. It isn’t limited to sports. We see it in finance, industry, and the arts as well.
What accompanies our winner-take-all mentality is the widely-held belief that one’s fortune in life is determined entirely by one’s own “attitude” and work ethic–luck, such as having rich parents, has nothing to do with it–and that people owe none of the credit for their success to their fellow citizens.
Quit worrying about the corp media which is doing just what it is designed to do as it answers solely to money and the 1%ers. Instead,
[Video] “What If Money Didn’t Matter?”
The winner-take-all ethos is insidious. It has infected higher education in almost every domain, especially in the elite schools and so-called research universities, which at the undergraduate level have become little more than screening mechanisms for access to an upper middle class life. There is a strong interaction between that ethos and the cobination of increasing income inequality and diminished quality and access to public services, which makes ‘winning’ even more essential to survival. The United States has become a deeply perverted society, and it will only get worse. We are reproducing the post-Reconstruction South without the overt racism. It was a very stable society that, but for the New Deal and World War II would have survived to the late 20th century and in some respects survives to this day.
We will never improve the educational system in the United states until the valedictorian is held in higher esteem than the quarterback.
Americans really don’t like smart and well educated people. We have a long history of anti-intellectualism. Smart people challenge our core beliefs while athletes and the sports they play reinforce our myths.
No amount of money or tweaking of methodology can fix the child that enters the school doors in the morning with a bad attitude and a disdain for education.
Joe Flacco just signed a record breaking contract. His peers in the business world are routinely required to sign away the rights to their intellectual property to their employers.
We have a news media that routinely equates opinions with facts.
In Texas we have a state school board that disparages teaching “critical thinking” because it undermines parental authority.
Smart, well educated people challenge our myths and misconceptions and we hate them for it.
“At Division I universities, they also receive special academic tutoring to make sure they stay eligible.”
At Kansas State University, a Big 12 school, the academic help received by basketball and football players far exceeds simply special academic tutoring. Indeed, if the player is valuable enough to the team, the normal rules for academic performance simply don’t apply. Most players of these two sports leave K-State in debt and with a degree that isn’t worth the paper it is printed on.
“Become a coach of a major sport at a Division I school, and even if your team is only mildly successful you’ll earn several times what professors earn.”
Again at K-State, the head football coach’s total annual package makes him 10 times more than what the university president makes in a year. After a winning season, bonuses to the coaching staff have been as high as 20% of their base salaries.
If you were a student who could play ball, in light of the economic realities of college sports what would you make of the value of education?
Right you are, richmonster! Don’t forget all the corruptiony sorts of dealings amongst the sports PTB at K-state and KU.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/football/ncaa/05/13/kansas.kansas.state.ap/index.html
And, there has been millllioooons put into the university sports facilities at KU since 2008, (give or take,) as funding for academics has fallen and tuition has climbed.
I find this discussion about the quality of education in USA extremely depressing. Usually such debates have plenty of teachers who argue that: 1) We aren’t really behind, those other countries cheat on the big tests by sending in only their best students (false). 2) The problem is lack of funding. (false, we spend zillions on our schools) 3) Our class sizes are too large. 4) We spend too much on sports. etc. etc.
How about we look at the real problems? 1) Our schools were so traumatized during the Cold War years that by now only right-wing kooks are allowed to teach. 2) Our schools turn out folks with degrees, not a working knowledge of anything (have you ever known a history teacher who knew any history, an English teacher who could write, etc?) 3) American exceptionalism won’t allow us to learn important lessons about education from anyone outside our borders. 4) No one in the educational-industrial complex seems to be able to explain why anyone should actually be educated (outside of getting a better job, that is.) 5) Our so-called elite schools crank out dunces like W. Bush (Harvard AND Yale with a history major, no less) with astonishing regularity. Why should we expect schools in the ghettoes to be any better? 6) The education establishment is filled wall to wall with C- “scholars.” Anyone who wants to do a good job in that environment is treated as a irritant.
My impression is that the CIA definitely seems to care about the valedictorians.
Book Salon up with David Brin’s Existence (Novel) hosted by Siun
Public education in the US, from its inception, was about making citizens fit for industrial production. Now that the US has switched from a manufacturing based economy to a finance based one, it no longer needs public schools to fulfill this function. I don’t think the reason for the decline of public education in the US is any more complicated than that. Why would people with serious money want to pay for an institution that no longer serves their needs?