Education and Sports
High school sports must help us to impart the values and attitudes we desire to this cadre of highly trained individuals. At the level of high school, sport’s focus must be developmental — it must be a developmental tool used to help inculcate life skills that will prove beneficial to the student’s success.
We must teach our youngsters how to transfer the skills and confidence gained from sports to other areas of their lives. Sports in school is a microcosm of life where success comes much more quickly and hence many lessons can be learnt here which apply to life in general. We should be using sports to help youngsters be better prepared for life; to acquire/strengthen life skills that can facilitate academic, as well as other areas of success.
Whereas other aspects of school life help us to prepare academically, sports should help us to prepare behaviourally, emotionally, socially as well as technically. It should be a way to help students, all students who show up, develop coping skills, self-belief, resilience, delaying of gratification, conflict resolution, relationship skills and the belief in the pursuit of excellence, among other things.
It has very different aims to professional sports where winning is “everything” and where we are dealing with adults. In high school, unlike even university we are dealing with children, who are still in their formative, sensitive, most impressionable and vulnerable period.
We must not distort what should be the purpose of school sports helping those that we have, develop a mindset, an attitude, a sense of values that will help them in later life. We cannot allow winning to trump everything else and to skew or corrupt the purpose of sports in high school. We must not lower standards to facilitate talented sports students. We are concerned that importing undermines the integrity of sports in schools.
A very accomplished and highly rated high school in England which has produced several Prime Ministers and which competes fiercely with other high schools in sports, wrote the following:
Games are central to the curriculum not just because boys enjoy them, but because they embody many qualities in which the school believes. Learning to win and lose, to lead and be led, to push oneself to and perhaps beyond one’s limits, to think as part of a team, to know when to strive for more and when to acknowledge defeat; these are all part of learning to be human. Consequently, we aim to give every boy the chance to benefit from learning through sport by playing and being taught the sport of his choice at the level appropriate to his abilities and interest. Boys are obliged to commit themselves to a major sport each half, whilst minor sports are optional.
Two officials of the school on being interviewed indicated that they did not import (recruit) sportsmen. One went on to say “because of this at times we have weak teams which only mean that we have to work harder. We use what we have.”
Our high schools should do the same.
We must relentlessly work to inculcate the mentality of self reliance in our students and our people in general. Importing youngsters to high schools based on their talent in sports sends a very different message.
Sir Winston Churchill in one of his famous speeches said in part, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”. Those were all we had. We must nurture, nourish the “so few” to do heroic things, not weaken them by bringing in others from outside.
We think also that importing readymade sports students is a quick fix solution which goes against the spirit (grain) of sports in high school, where it is implicitly assumed that the school molded, developed, nurtured, manufactured if you will, made this product — the sports student — primarily through its own effort.
Einstein it was who said “All things are created twice. There is a mental or first creation and a physical or second creation”. In this case the physical or material creation is the “import/recruit/transferee” coming to the school. The first or mental creation is the intent, the motivation to import. Of course the first is the most dangerous of the creations — the idea that people should import to influence the outcome of games in high schools.
If relatively rich (because of the resource that their past students represent, because of their campus etc) established, tradition laden, accomplished schools begin siphoning off the stars from the other schools, how will they be able to compete? How will they be able to establish themselves even in the area where they may have a slight chance — sports? Will this not lead to an even more unfair oligarchy type situation in sports? What will happen to the hopes and aspirations of the young men in those affected communities? Doesn’t winning do the same thing for their schools and supporters that it does for the richer High Schools?
Usain Bolt attended William Knibb High School. Can you imagine what his success has done for his school, his community? Can you imagine how it has inspired youngsters in the area? What if he had been imported elsewhere? We are certain that attempts were made to import and “help” him.
On the other hand, a high school which has made it to the semi-final stage in the Manning Cup Competition, and which is trying desperately, against all odds, to get a football programme together, had two of its bright stars imported elsewhere. One of these youngsters, who is potentially one of Jamaica’s great players and who had already made the Jamaica youth team while at the high school, was numbered among the most outstanding players in the competition. Can you imagine what the presence of these two players could have done to that high school’s team?
The same type of hard luck, hard times stories that apply to the stars apply to hundreds already in the school, who have legitimately satisfied the admission requirements of the school. Let us find ways to help them. Sports can play a major role in this area. Let sports help the young sports students understand that a hero lies within them, that they can dig deep and come up with solutions even they never knew they had, as they will have to do in life. Let it teach them that they can soar.
Importing undermines the integrity of sports in schools and we need to be careful that it does not damage the integrity of the school community itself. It is even being said on the road that a number of these “imports, transfer students, recruits” and their families are associated with “packages” of cash or kind offered by those linked to the importing entity.
If importing provides high schools with their stars and a number of their “fringe” players as well, we must confess — winning or not — we have a great unease with that situation. It strongly suggests that importing has become a major factor in their success and that schoolboy sports has reached the stage where, it appears, the best importer wins. It is indeed a sad day if the person who triumphs, is the one who can assemble the best all-schools group.
Our high schools need to refocus where necessary and take stock. Otherwise, this cancer called — the importation of readymade stars and potential stars to influence sporting outcomes — will so consume us that we will lose track of what should be the purpose of sports in schools. The nexus between Education and Sports will be severely weakened if not severed and our dear country Jamaica will continue to thrash about in the thick of thin things.
Editor’s Note: Dr Lascelve ‘Muggy’ Graham is a former Jamaica, St George’s College Manning Cup, All Schools, All Manning Cup football captain, as well as St George’s College cricketer and track athlete, and also House Captain, Prefect, Headboy, Headmaster Medallist, Student Council President and Valedictorian at St George’s College.
Related Links:
