That’s the message I got from the editorial in today’s Virginian-Pilot. I miss the days when the V-P editorial board pretended to be moderate, because lately they are diving deeply into the left side of the pool.
According to the Pilot, some students won’t care about grades if they aren’t in sports, so grade standards should be lowered so athletes “get motivated about their grades.” What the Pilot is really saying is education as it is today has no hope of exciting students about learning.
Norfolk’s school system requires student to have a C average to play sports. They’re considering lowering that, and the Virginian-Pilot, in self-defeating logic, says “good job!”
They make the case that “athletes simply do better in school than non-athletes.”
Well, that’s scary! If athletes are doing better than non-athletes, and a C-average is too high a requirement, what do non-athletes average? a D-minus?
But the real problem is this assumption that the public schools are so bad, so lacking, so deviod of inspirational leadership and learning, that students with low grades and no game Friday night will just quit.
Administrators worry – rightly – that athletes who don’t make the grade will find other ways to fill their time and may even give up on school altogether.
Wrong!
If D-students are destined to dropout unless they block for the running back, only an idiot would say the solution is to get them on the field.
First, how did this student go through 8 years of education can barely muster a C-minus unless the team gives him a jersey? What kind if insipid direction did he have that let him wander into teenage years so disinterested, so ignorant, and so destined for failure that the newspaper thinks dribbling a basketball is the key to graduating an educated man?
Education had better be more than simply the medicine that must be taken with a spoonful of sports sugar. That attitude in itself is dangerous to the educational mission. The answer to lackluster learning isn’t to put the kid on a sports team, and maybe he’ll stick with it. The answer to lackluster learning is improve the learning.
Some students are so bored with high school that they skip it, go to college and graduate at 17. Some are so bored that sports is the only challenging thing to get excited about.
Someday, we might see an editorial addressing why education is boring students who use more communication technology in an hour than Apollo 11 used to get to the moon. Kids aren’t dumb. They do what they’re rewarded to do.
And the Pilot just hurt the effort.
The right wants to jeer him. The left wants to censor him. Moderates usually want both. Brian Kirwin is a political consultant and public relations strategist in Virginia Beach with a lightning-rod flair. Brian also serves on the VB Arts & Humanities Commission and frequently appears on Hampton Roads theatrical stages, if only to prove that all actors aren’t liberals. Kirwin’s columns stir up debate and hit the political scene with no punches pulled. 
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Everything does not have a political hue, Brian.
I totally agree Brian. Most kids now days just don’t see the point of a high school education. I didn’t when I went to school, and I can’t see why it would be much different with kids now.
From what I read, Norfolk is proposing that students might be able to participate in sports as long as they maintain a D average through their Freshman year.
I am not in favor of “lowering standards” but a D is a passing grade. As long as the kid is passing, why shouldn’t he/she be allowed to play sports? Perhaps this is complicated by the fact that most students with a D average are failing at least a couple classes and not progressing towards graduation. However as long as the student is progressing towards graduation, and at the end can pass the Standards of Learning test to earn his Diploma (even by the skin of his teeth) I see nothing wrong with him/her participating in athletics while in school.
If everyone is pleased with a D average, everyone has serious problems.
I wouldn’t be pleased with a D average (at least not from my kids), but why should a kid be denied sports when he is passing?
Or are you going to say we should punish people for meeting minimum standards? Ooops, that IS what you have been saying isn’t it? Why then even have minimum standards if we are going to punish kids for meeting them? If the minimum standards are not good enough, then raise the minimum standards.
Punish people? Extra-curricular activities aren’t a right. They are a privilege. You can graduate with a D. But if you won’t spend the time with your studies to get a C, you don’t need to be at practice multiple times a week.
Education is about the classroom, remember?
What I sense is largely overlooked in this discussion/editorial is that “students” (I’d still use the non-politically correct pejorative “pupils” for the D graded ones) aren’t getting the foundation needed for intermediate and high school in grades K – 6. They are pushed ahead whether deservedly so or not. By high school age it’s a bit late in the game. We know of a learning disadvantaged child who repeated a lower Elementary grade and now is making honors in Intermediate. There’s no stigma if handled with grace and compassion to the child.
John, great point!
Having actually played sports in high school and college, I can tell you that my teammates did not feel motivated to do well academically because the rest of us were. Those academically marginal athletes wanted to play, so they found a way–not always honest ways–to improve their grades, and once they met the minimal standard they stopped.
Does the Pilot know that athletes sometimes do better than regular students because it takes a team to get all the science work done? Teammates aren’t motivating each other to do better, they are often cheating to help each other do better!
I agree, a D may be enough to graduate, but we should expect better grades from athletes, and expecting an athlete to have an average grade–isn’t that what a C is?–is not expecting too much.
I just think that if the student is barely pulling through in his classes, then he must need more time to study. I mean, it is his job as a kid. If he can’t even handle that, why would anyone want to reward them with being able to play sports? We are after all supposed to be funding his education, not his sports activities with our tax dollars.