If you watch movies that portray kids in high school in the 1980s you can almost guarantee that 3/4 of them are wearing a Varsity jacket. Granted, most of the movies are set up around a backdrop of the football team, but even still most kids are touting their school colors with a big letter on the chest. I think we all realize that the social aspect of school is extremely important to the development of kids and makes up a large component of school culture.
This year, I have been to about seven athletic events in four different high schools, and I have become rather concerned with what I am observing. Last night, I went to a basketball game that had around one hundred people attending when both school’s populations amounted to more than 4,500.
If this was an isolated event, or if this was happening in just one school I wouldn’t think much of it. My problem is that this seems to be happening all over, and the more people I talk to, the more people are noticing.
Is this lack of participation and attendance an indication of a failing social dynamic in our schools? If students can not display good citizenship and commitment to the students they sit next to every day in class then how are they going to be good citizens for our country?
This is a tough one for me. For one thing, I know a lot of high school kids are now working as opposed to participating in school events, partly due to family finances and partly due to wanting more “stuff”, which I think is rather sad. Another observation I have made is that kids also do very little communicating and participating in the real world, feeling connected instead by Facebook or other forms of media. I have seen young teens texting each other while literally sitting next to each other at a pool party, so what in the world does that tell me about their ability to be really connected to each other rather than the electronic device within reach? Finally, I see a shift in families and their interaction with their school community choosing instead to find other ways to be ” busy”. I find all this rather alarming being one of the “old school” where we had a commitment to our classmates and a pride in our school, and ball games were social events where we interacted with our friends, parents, grandparents, alumni, and friendly rivals. (Now rivals can’t be friendly–they have to tear each other apart over the airwaves.) We learned sportsmanship, loyalty, citizenship, and had a sense of belonging, and I still have that connections with classmates and my alma mater many, many years beyond those days though we are scattered. I certainly don’t believe school, particularly high school, is a panacea, but if there are no connections to peers on that level, where are kids learning to be committed to real people and civic institutions? Without those connections, can we expect them to take responsibility for our world as leaders who care about something bigger than themselves?
February 9th, 2010 at 4:04 pmQuote