Ahhh, It’s like Friday Night Lights at Jack Britt High School in Fayetteville, NC.
It is Homecoming, the kids are pumped, the Band is marching, and there’s no question that “we’re” going to win!
I know, because I’m with one of the athletic coaches at “JB” and rumor had it that the score would be around “40 to 7″
Jack Britt is an exemplary High School, though it’s larger than I’d ever seen, almost 2,000 students, above average in all sorts of areas, starting with academics.
As Assistant Principal Doris Taylor told me, “Many of our students happen to be good athletes, rather than many of our athletes happen to be good students.”
That perspective permeates the school and was brought home to me Wednesday evening as I stood at the finish line of the track meet with Coach Stoker. As some of the cross country racers who had already finished walked by, he pointed to one girl and said, “See that tall one?” “She’s all A’s… And she’s a great runner too.”
Hangin’ with a coach these last couple of days (while also going to area high- and middle schools) brought home to me the critical importance of athletics in academic endeavors. Sure, even the Greeks stressed that several millennia ago.
What I mean is that coaches teach life skills that you just don’t get in a book. Experiencing being knocked down emotionally as well as physically, and yet, getting up and going at it again. If something doesn’t work, try something else.
Accepting defeat as part of growing, but never part of quitting.
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” And teamwork, mutual respect, and leadership, and all the rest.
In a word… Character.
As several Jack Britt HS graduates came up to say “Hi” to Coach Stoker, I could see what a positive influence he was (and is still) on his former student-athletes.
Oh yes, the final score was, Jack Britt High School 60, Visitors 13.
Exactly 126 years ago today in 1881, Booker T. Washington opened the doors to the Tuskegee Normal & Industrial Institute for the first time. He had arrived a month before, but mindfully selected July 4th as opening day, holding the first class in the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion church (replica opp.).
Too Many People Go To College
Sunday, February 8th, 2009Issues & Views Editor Elizabeth D. Wright has graciously allowed us to reprise timeless articles from her Newsletter. This article suggests that it’s time to reconsider the benefits of a practical, entrepreneurial education.
by Leon Podles
Despite today’s worship of the college credential, most real wealth in our society is still gained not through education and the professions but through entrepreneurial activity. Higher education as it now exists in America simply doesn’t develop the qualities of initiative and aggressiveness necessary to succeed in business. Often it undermines them.
American education can be particularly inhospitable to males. Patricia Sexton in The Feminized Male shows how energetic and assertive boys are punished because they cannot function in classrooms taught by women wl assume that the quiet, non-physical behavior of a girl is the only type prop to school. Active boys consequently often do poorly in school. This is an especially massive problem in America inner cities, where the boys grow t with fewer civilizational restraints c their innate male natures.
Few of these overactive boys will ever become great successes in a world of conventional academic schooling They could excel and become productive citizens, however, if directed instead toward work, practical vocation and business. Consider that when teacher describes a student as aggressive or physically active, she is saying he is a problem. But if a businessman or trades employer describes a worker as aggressive, he is paying a compliment.
The most aggressive boys have always gone into business. Today, the poor ones often end up dealing drugs.
Boys who go the legitimate route, however, can end up being very productive indeed. In 1995, the U.S. Trust Company surveyed a sample of America’s biggest earners and found that less than half of them had completed college, while 29% never went at all. Instead of learning to conform to academic expectations, they were out adding value, making products, and earning money—in ways that are not taught in schools today.
(from: I & V summer ’95; orig: American Enterprise: Sep/Oct, ’95)
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