No Child Left Behind 3: The Left Behindnining
In a recent article on military recruiting in public schools, it was pointed out that a requirement of the NCLB act or the "Complicate an already complicated problem to the point of no return Act" is that schools receiving federal funding must make their students known and accessible to recruiters. Congratulations US military, you've now joined professional sports. Why is it that high schools and colleges have football and basketball teams? To promote unity and team whatever? No. Because the NBA and NFL are too cheap to set up proper developmental leagues. Why do many colleges not have baseball teams? Because MLB has already set up a minor league system where players may be drafted directly out of high school and get paid (albeit not very much) to develop. So for many high school athletes, football and basketball give them access to scholarships, and a way in to otherwise inaccessible universities. But what of those students not quite athletic enough, or smart enough to get other types of scholarships? Enter the US Army (Marines/Navy/everybody else). For a scant couple of years enlistment, you too can earn up to $40,000 for college! Doesn't that sound great. Of course there is some fine print (this is the army you may get to travel but most likely only to meet the opposing army and kill them but you dont care youre an army of one so join up and well send you to school or quite possibly that big war thats going on over there). But you're so excited by the possibility of getting money for college you completely ignore the fact that
- We're at war
- The army fights wars
- You're joining the army
- The money for college comes most likely after you serve in the war
- People die at war
But ignoring those facts, the army is a great way to get scholarships. And Ohio State spends so much money on their football stadium to promote "unity." Suuuuuuuuuuuure I'm well aware that the GI Bill brings an oppurtunity to people who otherwise might not be able to get such chances, but ... it's important to me to point out that dying is a distinct possibility.
Comments
NO NO WE WON'T GO! BRIAN DEWOLF IS A BIG HO!
Posted by: Bud-dy | May 23, 2005 9:14 PM
two things:
a) the newer, more casual tone (it's shorter) of your blog gets rave reviews from your half-retarded readers (me). keep it up.
b) i get a tingly in my pants every time i think about those books. any word? i'll pay for you to ship them to me.
c) i will soon be working for abercrombie & fitch. irony surrenders.
Posted by: Matt | May 24, 2005 7:19 PM
Consider the military a prospective employer. Dewey Cheatem and Howe is going to tell every pre-law student that they'll make sixteen gazillion dollars in their first few years, get to hang out with a bunch of excessively cultured people at golf courses and live in penthouses in Manhattan. They completely leave out the sell-your-soul part, the work-80-hours-a-week part, the cutthroat-office-politics part. Not to compare these things to dying in Iraq, but that's how society works: if you're trying to recruit someone to join your organization, you don't spend a lot of time stressing the drawbacks.
Neither you nor I is a member of the military, and I would suspect it's for the same reason: we're liberal-arts types who don't really fancy a dress-uniform burial at Arlington. That (and learning that the military makes you wake up at 5 a.m., or whenever the bugle sounds) kept me out of the service.
Today's kids can watch TV. They've very good at it. They see people dying on the news. We've been at war since Afghanistan, and that's plenty of time for the bodybag message to have sent in. Even in peacetime, anyone who joined the military knew what he was getting into. Most of them join up with the stated purpose of lending their hand to the fight.
On a side note, your analysis of the NBA/NFL-vs-MLB approach to player development is interesting, although it bears noting that the blame for this state of affairs should be placed on the sporting public, or fate, and not on the major league management of each sport.
Baseball, the original national game, is the granddaddy of all American sports and spawned a multi-city National League as early as the 1880s, with outposts as far west as Missouri. Against this backdrop, circuits of lesser quality were established in the nation's smaller cities.
Those other leagues -- including the original A.L. and the forerunners of today's minor leagues -- established a tradition of player development in a time when the college game was the province of geniuses and bluebloods -- i.e., the only people who went to college in those days.
Professional football and basketball, on the other hand, only came to rival baseball's hold on American imagination in the mid-to-late 20th century: 1940s-60s in the case of the NFL/AFL, and 1960s-70s in the case of the NBA. Before these leagues rose to prominence, the height of competition in football and basketball was between state universities, which had been transformed into a tertiary public school system by the G.I. Bill.
Simply put, college football and basketball were already a public spectacle when the majors were established, so they survived as developmental leagues for the pros. College baseball enjoyed its moment in the sun decades before the other sports, and thus was supplanted by small-city leagues that eventually, in the 1960s, became the MLB-affiliated Minor League Baseball we know and love today.
I apologize for the long-winded post, but you haven't heard from me for awhile. :)
Posted by: MB | May 24, 2005 11:01 PM