VARSITY. The principal team representing a... school in sports competitions.
Dear Editor, Portland Press-Herald:
Isn't it time for this newspaper to rethink the kind of message it's sending in its sports section?
Despite widespread worries about student achievement and endless debates about school funding, the sports section, in columns like "Athletes of the Week" goes right on in its little world of pretend-professional sports. Couldn't you at least recast this column? Let the jock-writers go on with their business of touting teeny sports heroes/heroines, but add, right alongside, "Scholars of the Week"?????? (And I DON'T mean "scholar athletes" -- have your real writers get out there and uncover heroes in all the other walks of student life: scientific inquiry, the arts, public service…) GIVE KIDS WHO AREN'T VARSITY FIRST-STRINGERS SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF, SOMETHING TO ASPIRE TO !!!
Richard Wolfe
Cumberland, Maine
Isn't it time for this newspaper to rethink the kind of message it's sending in its sports section?
Despite widespread worries about student achievement and endless debates about school funding, the sports section, in columns like "Athletes of the Week" goes right on in its little world of pretend-professional sports. Couldn't you at least recast this column? Let the jock-writers go on with their business of touting teeny sports heroes/heroines, but add, right alongside, "Scholars of the Week"?????? (And I DON'T mean "scholar athletes" -- have your real writers get out there and uncover heroes in all the other walks of student life: scientific inquiry, the arts, public service…) GIVE KIDS WHO AREN'T VARSITY FIRST-STRINGERS SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF, SOMETHING TO ASPIRE TO !!!
Richard Wolfe
Cumberland, Maine
posted by Richard Wolfe at 2/06/2006 06:42:00 AM
2 Comments:
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006
From: "Richard Wolfe"
Subject: A Record-Setting Scorer Wants to Be Just Like Kobe
To: letters@nytimes.com
As an educator, parent and taxpayer, I find it stunning that scarce public education resources are devoted to creating local imitations of professional sports celebrities, especially ones who misbehave. From a legal standpoint, my interpretation is that this constitutes misappropriation of public funds. From a practical standpoint, it sets a bad example when our schools are otherwise trying to encourage sharing and discourage bullying. The lack of public acknowledgment of this farce will someday be seen as a blind spot of our day and age, just as today we look back with disdain at the days when girls were not allowed on the court.
Richard Wolfe
Cumberland, Maine
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/03/sports/basketball/03prince.htm
If I had been the opposing coach, I would've been tempted to do one of the following: (1) order the "Hack-a-Prince" defense coupled with a slowdown offense; (2) Order my team off the floor; or (3) My preferred--go into a "box-and-one" but where the 4 in the box all covered Ms. Prince and the 1 covered the rest of the team.
Perhaps then she and her coach could have had an epiphany about sportsmanship.
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