Well, there’s a bit of bad business on the overall Sailor plate this week, and a Google search of Hendrick Hudson will bring up all the Gory Ds if you're not already aware of it. I do not feel it appropriate to comment on the situation, nor do I feel informed enough to comment on the situation even if it were okay for me to do so. But it does remind one that we are in the middle of one of the most complicated processes known to humanity, i.e., the education of adolescents in 21st Century America. It’s not always easy.
Of course, I’m not a particularly educated educator, and some might suggest that even considering myself an educator borders on travesty. I always think there are some tricks of the trade I would have picked up if I had gotten an education degree, but I also think I bring some unique experience to the process that has some value. Having spent a career in business, dealing with students who will, most likely, also spend careers in business, means that I bring some wisdom that is otherwise unavailable and which may be useful. It’s all well and good to train students in speech and debate because you believe in the skills that forensics instills, but I see these skills, and the lack of them, regularly, and I see how they can be applied effectively, and how not possessing them can mean the difference between success and failure in a chosen career. Teachers may not have the insight that results from this.
But what I’m thinking about is not the lessons taught in a classroom. One of the things I’m struck by occasionally is that, unlike most of the people students come in contact with in their careers, a coach is long-term. Teachers come and go with their courses, but if you’re involved in an extracurricular activity, chances are you have the same coach year in and year out. Most of these coaches are athletic, and there are certain aspects of athletics, and athletic coaching, that are quite different from forensics. Certainly there are valuable lessons to be learned in sport other than just winning, but winning is the goal of athletic competitions, and when you’re not at a competition, you’re prepping for a competition. There will certainly be life lessons learned on the playing fields of Eton, but there really is no football after graduation, or baseball, or soccer insofar as they inform your future careers. Aside from acquiring a little extra skill for the company softball team, or having polished up a good game of recreational tennis, sports qua sports equals sports, plus maybe a little extra physical fitness. On the other hand, presenting oneself to groups, to customers, whatever, having a point of view and being able to explain it successfully, is something you could conceivably do all the time. Meanwhile, in our competitions we’ll have still touched on all those other lessons of graceful winning and graceful losing, of the need to prepare to achieve success, on the value of teamwork and so forth. Personally I think sports are inherently valuable in school, for a variety of reasons. I also think forensics is valuable. Too bad everyone doesn’t do both.
As coaches of forensics, we are in a strange position. We are speakers ourselves; unlike sports coaches, who need not demonstrate proficiency on the field on a regular basis, we must literally speak to our teams, and present to our teams, and hold their attention, and get across points of view every single time there’s a meeting. Because there is at least some controversy over what our activity ought to be, we are forced to claim some sort of partisanship, which may or may not endear us to our students (and, in the case of the Legion of Doom membership, may be perceived as detrimental to their competitive chances); I don’t think there’s a pomo dispute in lacrosse, for instance. We both coach and adjudicate; I don’t think that’s true in sports, as a general rule. Our competitions take days to complete, not hours, and require overnight stays, which means that the adults are not only on the bus back and forth, but everywhere else as well, almost every weekend, although this is more regional than some other aspects I’m discussing. As a result, one coaches twenty-four hours a day for days on end. Since I am far from a font of wisdom 24/7, nor are many of the other coaches I have run into, the best we can hope for is being a marginally not unacceptable role model 24/7. Even that’s not so easy sometimes.
Throughout all of this, we must be mindful of the role we are playing in the students’ lives. It’s easy to see that this role, whatever it is, will arguably be one of the most regular performances, and perhaps among the most important, they will see in their high school careers. It not only encompasses the lessons of forensics, of philosophy, of competition. It also includes the lesson of our example. For good or for ill, they are stuck with us for long periods in deeply dug trenches, and we can only hope that our good outweighs our ill in the final balance.
I do think about this. All coaches should think about this. With one extra warning: you’re not going to be able to put one over, at least not for long. What I’ve left out was that, as high school students go, ours are among the most savvy. They will be wise to us quickly, no matter how self-delusional we wish to be, if we are up to no good. If our values do not match our claims of value. If our failings are not honest mistakes but attempts to serve some other agenda. If we don’t actually teach them something worth knowing.
Damn, that’s a lot of responsibility.
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