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Rethinking Extracurricular Activities
I think it’s time to reconsider how extracurricular activities are handled by the school systems that support them. My half-baked idea is that we should decouple things like sports and music from the schools and turn them into clubs that would accept anyone from anywhere. And I think it could be done from top to bottom, including the college system.
The COVID pandemic has radically disrupted the education establishment in America. Parents are questioning the old model and are looking for new ways to get their kids educated. Sports and music are important ways to educate kids too, but there’s no reason why they must be associated with a particular school district or university.
If they were separated from the education establishment, homeschool kids, podlings, whomever, could have access to that and benefit from them. The schools would contract around more academic-oriented programs. Colleges and universities would lose a source of revenue and prestige, but they would drop the pretense that the football and basketball programs aren’t farm teams for the majors.
Published in Education
I could not agree more about the collegiate fiction that division 1 sports are anything other than major league farm teams. The resultant academic corruption is a travesty.
Extracurricular activities have slowly morphed into a part of the regular school day. Texas schools have assigned class period for athletics, band, theater, yearbook, etc. It lengthens the school day considerably. The downside with getting rid of it is that in practical terms schools function as day care services for a lot of parents. It’s completely understandable for couples where both parents work. Not an easy problem to solve, although more academic work for kids when the school day is over would be a net positive. While after school extracurriculars are going on other kids would be in mandated tutorials.
Managing a child’s non-academic activities – especially if a parent wants to encourage athletics at all ages – with 2 working parents is a hard slog. Add any kind of commute and you’re sunk. Often the second salary supports the activities. Sports and clubs do contribute to a real depth of community within a school and its neighborhood – it sure did for my school years – so that would be missed if no alternatives evolve to serve the same tribal/team loyalty.
BUT: If schools went back to teaching “stuff,” then perhaps there would be more teachers hired who knew their “stuff” and more incentive for people who love the “stuff” to teach without having to take on responsibility for a club or sport. Perhaps there would be fewer complaints that the guy who’s teaching state history was hired because he’s a good football coach and doesn’t really know or care much about history, to use a frequent stereotype. Kids could then choose their sport and club based on the best mix of coach, team philosophy and intensity for their child. And the school team wouldn’t be the only option for a child to play their chosen sport.
AND: the school budget would be more clear – it’s for teaching necessary “stuff” and insuring children are capable and knowledgeable. Hopefully, parents would be better able to see how well the school does that.
Belt,
Very good idea! Thanks for taking the time to write.
Camper
I once had an strange group interview for a position teaching history where the school was clearly looking for a football coach. They asked all the applicants why they should be hired; all the men were rah rah football. I said I could actually teach history. Needless to say….
Also, public school teachers love duties like sports or clubs because they get paid thousands of dollars extra. I worked at one school where one of the drivers ed teachers also coached the golf team. He spent most of his time day trading on the school computers.
I don’t recall which city in the western suburbs of Chicago, but at one point the high school band was made up of about 85 percent homeschoolers. Ability of homeschoolers to participate in public school sports and clubs varies by state.
UIL in Texas oversees both the athletic, as well as the academic and skill-based extracurriculars like band, so that unbundling them from the rest of the state’s education system would be a nightmare (especially after private schools in the past 15 years were finally given the OK if they wanted to do so to participate in the UIL’s system, as opposed to the parallel private school extracurricular system).
I’d say in the UIL’s favor here is that the extracurricular system, and the competition levels against other schools, is where any ‘Every child gets a trophy’ ideas go out the window. It’s still a merit/performance-based system where there are winners and losers in head-to-head competitions, whether that’s football or academic skills.
Another reason for separating academics from extracurricular is that it removes one more point of leverage that the education establishment has over the students and their parents.
There’s the possibility for using school facilities for it as a kind of “booster” club paying rent to the facility OR reduced use as a community building (paid for by the community).
My hometown had one football field shared by two high schools with a booster club that helped maintain the field. There was one game a year where the winner got to put their colors on the field for the next game season.
Eventually, one of the schools built their own field, but that went on for 40-50 years in that community.
I like it. A lot. My wife and I were just talking about college football. She asked what I thought would happen to the proposed football seasons if they sent the students home. I think they wouldn’t have to change anything. There is barely any connection at all between football and college students. Why not just formalize the separation and stop the hypocrisy?
I disagree with you here. It would be simple to cut out any event or group of events from UIL. Ever notice how they don’t regulate cheerleading at all? They don’t want the headaches, but cheerleading is as much of a fit as journalism events, band, or golf. Besides that, UIL is (IMHO) dysfunctional if not outright corrupt, realignment being the prime example. For non-Texans, every two years this quasi-government group tells every school district what other districts are their official sports opponents. The result: kids from my district are assigned to play, for example, Bracketville TX schools – a minimum three hour bus ride away. So on Thursday evening during football season, 8 graders and high school JV players from one of the districts will get home at 1 or 2 in the morning. It’s a terrible thing we do to kids. I have believed for years that districts should just forfeit games that are unreasonably far away. Unfortunately too many parents think that athletics are if not more important, than equally as important as academics.
The success of UIL realignment appeals are pretty much based on how close the school is to Austin — they once paired Sonora (mile marker 400 on Interstate 10) in a district with Anthony (MM 0 on Interstate 10) and didn’t bat an eye, while if Austin Westlake doesn’t want to drive 100 miles to Waco, they’re moved into a different district). But my point was the politics of unbundling the UIL would be tough, because a number of the big private schools are also now invested in the system
For an American example, I think something like that is done for hockey in some northern Minnesota high schools. A step-nephew played hockey, but it was done through a separate hockey association or club. It wasn’t part of the school system. It wasn’t completely divorced from the school, and it isn’t clear to me on just what the relationship was. Maybe the schedule was somewhat coordinated with the school schedule. If you go to the school’s web site now, there is information about hockey, but there is a link to a separate web site for the local youth hockey association.
Swimming was done as a regular school athletic activity, with school buses used to take kids to swim meets. But hockey was more of a hands-off relationship. And there was an extra cost to belong to the hockey association.
I presume football and basketball were done the usual way, but none of the kids in the family played those sports, so I didn’t have any reason to pay attention to those.
Interesting idea. I always wondered why sports became so connected to school. Maybe it’s because I went to a small Catholic school through 8th grade, and there were no extracurricular activities at all. We went to classes with a break for lunch and recess, and then went home. If kids wanted to play any sports it was pretty much just pick-up games with other kids around the neighborhood.
A lot of people will defend interscholastic sports with some form of the “sound body sound mind” or “sports teach you how to cooperate and compete” but in all but the tiniest high schools this is reserved for a minuscule fraction of the student body. If it were true that sports competition was a real enhancement for life (which may well be true) then you would expect the sports proponents to try to include as many students as possible into the programs. That is, the majority (or all of) the sports programs would be intramural. But that view barely exists. What they want is local heroes and headlines, even if only in the town weekly paper.
This sounds like a good more detailed model for Belt’s broader idea. There would be a mutually beneficial “special relation” between the two. Coordination of schedules is an excellent example. Informal, but coordinated sharing of staff and hiring processes too…you could teach Driver’s Ed at Springfield High, and coach for the Mustangs club. There could even be a continuation of the American tradition of school spirit…the Mustangs are Springfield High’s team, let’s root them on to Victory!”
Admittedly, a big hurdle would be the history and nostalgia for the team’s association with the school.
Yup. I did just enough high school interscholastic sports to understand the value of being able to represent your school in competition against others. But to give as many students as possible that experience, schools need to be small. I’ve had people sneer at that idea, saying those are just big fish in a small pond. But that’s exactly what is needed — the opportunity for a lot of students to be big fish for a day in a small pond. But the whole idea of greater opportunity for all runs into opposition from those few families who want the most competitive opportunities possible for their offspring, so those offspring will be prepared to go on to become Division 1 college stars and maybe pros. We sacrifice a lot to give those few people that opportunity.
Yes, and that history and nostalgia is not to be despised. I have a on my bookshelf a book titled, “Henning’s Orange and Black: A historical look at Henning basketball 1914 to 2019.” My class of 1966 had huge role in that book, though I didn’t myself. We were a small rural school that held its own against the best and biggest schools in the state. I still have some memorabilia from that year that I will probably donate to the town’s little historical museum. Ours was almost like the story of Hoosiers, a point that was recognized at the time (though I don’t think the movie had yet been made).
I have the football history book, too, but loaned it to my brother (who actually played football) and haven’t got it back yet.
The history and nostalgia are important.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t better ways for the future.
There are so many thing a kid could do to fill the time. Hell, make ’em read books just to read books.
But quit showing them $%^@ing films! I hate that.
I played tennis for about 15 years and four years of varsity in high school. My senior year, my private Midwest prep school started paying nationally ranked junior champions to come so I (a non-import) slipped down, but remained varsity. Our team won the state championships, but as I explained, it was because nationally ranked athletes were paid to come. The same happened with hockey where they even paid athletes from Lithuania!?
When I first started at this school in 5th grade, our sports teams were a citywide joke and were routinely decimated by the big public schools. By the time I had graduated, the school administration had bought teams capable of domination in several sports, instead of relying on the “indigenous” population of athletes like me. Very artificial. Why?!?
Also interesting that when I started as a freshman on the tennis team, the coach gave us the track suits out of a dusty cardboard box. We bought t-shirts with the name of the school and wore them with our own black skirts. Then at the end of the season we gave the track suits back.
The year we “became” state champions (by buying the players) my senior year, we were ordering uniforms directly from Adidas: these skintight tops, skirts, sweatsuits – it was the advent of the slinky spandex look in women’s tennis. Must have cost over $200.
I played tennis for about 6-8 hours a week during the year.
So it was crazy when I started thinking about sports for my own kids here in France and there are 0 high school sports teams. No high school has courts or facilities. No inter-school competition. No “recruitment” of star players. The universities (even the top ones) select based on grades alone. From what I can tell, the “tournament level” kids seem to practice about twice a week at this YMCA type club in our neighborhood. The guy in charge seemed to find this very intense. He expressed a lot of frustration that since Francois Holland’s education reform kids go to school Wednesday mornings, and that leaves less time for sports.
Oh dear ! No Wednesday mornings?! What about Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday afternoons and evenings and Saturday mornings too? Plus weekend tournaments?
My French husband quaintly (by US standards) considers himself a tennis player and he played with his brother against a wall.
We have really lost it over this in America.
You make that sound like a bad thing. :)
The issue I have with this is that a LOT of college athletes are given an opportunity to go to school that they may not otherwise have. Yes it could be said that in say, football, Div 1 schools like the SEC are in some ways NFL farm leagues. The fact is it is still a vast minority of college players that even get a cup of coffee in the NFL and many of them completely change their life with degrees they earn while playing.
That’s the traditional justification. It may be time for somebody to do a study and get some hard data on this.