Article 8 Section 1 of the South Dakota Constitution explains our founders’ commitment to public education:
Uniform system of free public schools. The stability of a republican form of government depending on the morality and intelligence of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature to establish and maintain a general and uniform system of public schools wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all; and to adopt all suitable means to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education [SD Constitution, Article 8, Section 1, 1889].
The Schott Foundation for Public Education explains that the republic-underpinning morality and intelligence that public education stems in part from the unique inclusivity that our founders demanded (“equally open to all”) of our public schools:
The required inclusivity of the public school setting provides more opportunity for students to learn in culturally, racially, and socioeconomically integrated classrooms and schools, and that promotes a variety of social-emotional and civic benefits for students. At a time when there seems to be more emphasis on community divisions in our social and political settings, attending a public school can provide students with more opportunities to encourage relationships and friendships across group lines, thus eliminating false barriers of separation [Schott Foundation for Public Education, “Grading the States: A Report Card on Our Nation’s Commitment to Public Schools,” June 2018, p. 2].
Private schools cannot knit together a republic; they unravel the pluribus that public schools unumize to favor a privileged few:
Although privatization advocates claim that private schools advance the quality of education, this is a tenuous argument to make in the face of the reality that too often there is little to no public accountability, fiscal transparency or maintenance of civil rights protections for students in privatized programs…. The proliferation of privatization programs in the states and the redirecting of public resources for the benefit of a small percentage of the student population belies this principle of equality of opportunity for all students. Privatization in public schools weakens our democracy and often sacrifices the rights and opportunities of the majority for the presumed advantage of a small percentage of students [Schott, 2018, p. 2].
The Schott Foundation report finds South Dakota performing better than many states in resisting privatization. We join five other states in receiving an A+ for our charter school laws… or in our case, the absence of any laws authorizing charter schools. (We had a statute authorizing a pilot charter school for American Indian students, but that was just an effort to help the GEAR UP scammers spend more federal dollars, and we know how that worked out.)
However, South Dakota joins Illinois in having the worst (i.e., no) public transparency on its “stealth voucher” program (Schott calls it “neo-vouchers”). We launder subsidies for religious schools through insurance companies but get no accountability for how effectively or fairly that money is spent. Still, by dint of the low cash value and impact so far of our stealth vouchers ($290,000 to 481 students reported last school year; that’s 0.05% of FY2018 state aid to K-12 public schools used to reduce public school enrollment by 0.4%), we still come out with a B+ for mostly avoiding privatization by voucher programs.
22 states still rank better than South Dakota for resisting the undermining of public education by vouchers, including our neighbors Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.
The Schott Foundation calls, as I do, for ending the special tax credits that our insurers receive for laundering this voucher money for the state. I say drop the tax break entirely, but the Schott Foundation suggests an interesting compromise: provide the same tax break to businesses and individuals who make donations to public schools. But rather than trying to sort out what donations should qualify as truly educational and thus tax-breakable support (science lab equipment? P.E. uniforms? Pepsi scoreboards for the new gym?), we should focus on Schott’s main suggestion:
Instead of diverting resources, we should invest in public schools to make them better for all students. Evidenced-based and immediate actions steps include reducing class sizes, improving teacher training and recruitment, supporting pre-K education and increasing parental involvement [Schott, 2018, p. 18].
Let’s bring South Dakota’s grade up to an A+, the way our founders wanted. Let’s end our subsidies for private schools and focus on the schools that serve all of us by building a smart, moral, and inclusive republic.
Our SD founders said nothing about private schools Cory.
They would be in favor of vouchers if they were alive today.
Glad to see Jason off and running: making comments without reading the article.
Jason is correct that the SD Constitution says nothing about “private schools.” However, it does say, “…it shall be the duty of the Legislature to establish and maintain a general and uniform system of public schools wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all….” That’s pretty clear. If the private schools operated that way, they wouldn’t need vouchers. If there are private schools that operate “without charge, and equally open to all” they just might, I say, they just might be a public school. I doubt the people who wrote the SD Constitution would have contemplated vouchers. For one, I doubt they considered state aid to public education as a primary duty. The system they established depended on local property taxes to fund education, and some funding from the School and Public Lands. State aid would come later, as the use of property taxes as the only source of education funding resulted in a non-uniform system of education. If your legal philosophy is originalism, you certainly wouldn’t support vouchers, or school aid, for that matter.
State aid to education became critical to maintaining adequate and uniform system of education statewide, not only in South Dakota, but in nearly every state. In states that have adopted vouchers, you have an erosion of the adequacy of public education. That is because money is taken from public schools and given to private schools. You end up taxpayers funding two systems of education, one public, one private. Public school quality degrades.
Public charters are different. They can be places where innovation happens, or where the needs of certain students can be met better.
Only in a right wing troll world can the word ‘private’ be mistaken for the word public, when denoting schools.
Then you have the state sponsored vouchers to be issued by insurance companies to pay public tax monies to private schools. Or however the trick was performed to get tax money to private schools.
I see Minnesota has an A+. Yay! There are charter schools here. In fact, I believe MN is the originator of charter schools, but they are part of the public school system. We also have the very critical Pre-K education for all. Though it’s not free, there are scholarships for every student who needs one. The DFL is working to make Pre-K a free part of universal public education in MN.
Absolutely no public tax money should go to private schools. I don’t even see how that can be constitutional.
Charter schools exist exclusively to provide a way for for-profit entities to use tax payer $ for private enrichment. In states where for-profit charters are prohibited, they make $ via charter management organizations. The charter board hires an organization to actually run the school, and this acts as a profit funnel.
AMPLE evidence shows that when charters do not “skim the cream”, when they reflect the demographics of the surrounding community, they do about the same or worse than public schools. For data check out CREDO, a right-leaning education think tank at Stanford.
Hey, here is an idea.
Get rid of sports in public schools, which distracts of from education, forces low-paid teachers to function as sport coaches, encourages sport coaches to function as low-paid teachers, and has absolutely nothing to do with building the morality or intellect. I personnaly know a South Dakotan teacher that, as a part of teaching Biology, had to also function as a volleyball coach (effectively taking more time and energy away from doing her primary job).
Divert all funding to education. Encourage booster clubs to care more about the kids succeed in life than a 16-0 record. Public schools, as they currently operate, are broken. This is one fix.
Parents don’t send their kids to private school or homeschool because of racism or denying civil rights; it’s because public schools do a horrible job of producing a moral/educated society. Prove me wrong, but I present Exhibit A: 61.5% of South Dakotans who decided to vote, voted Trump in 2016.
Debbo,
Taxpayer money going to private schools is not constitutional. Thankfully back in the 1800s, Protestants didn’t like that Catholics (especially those immigrants) wanted equality in the public schools, as Protestants were running the public schools and taught from a Protestant Bible, and they certainly didn’t want their tax dollars going towards papism. Blessedly, the WASPs also had control of government, and made it against the law for any moneys to go to Catholic education, or in the words of President Grant “…school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan or atheistical dogmas.”
Joe, in small SD schools, where I did all my teaching in the 1970s-80s, there were sometimes coaches who had no business being teachers and vice versa. There were also coaches who were very good teachers and teachers who were forced to coach. That’s because the master contract always contained a nasty little clause, “other duties deemed necessary.” Yeah. BTW, pay for coaching sucked as badly as teaching pay but some wanted to coach for the few extra centavos.
Getting sports out of education would be great. As an athlete and coach, I guarantee you that sports, done decently at all, can offer a great deal of moral and ethical growth to students.
I’d like to see sports done at the club level. Small towns could still have their teams, but they’d be supported by the town, not the school. The local team is a vital form of entertainment, civic unity and pride, in addition to the benefits for the participants.
There is a movement to club teams happening already in larger states and I believe it’s taking place in RC and SF. The club teams are made up of players recruited by the coaches and financed by the parents. It’s the best players and, at least in some sports, plays during the high school season so the player misses school and her school team misses her. The club team must offer an educational component if the athletes are of school age.
In Minnesota volleyball, basketball and soccer club teams are common. Hockey boys join junior leagues that play in winter so they must choose, school team or junior league.
There are hockey academies in MN too. Those are schools tailored to teaching hockey skills, with academics in the morning only.
Of course in all of this, money matters.
Debbo wrote:
I see Minnesota has an A+. Yay!
Can you please link us to this?
I find studies that determine education level by the number of libraries really dumb.
I assume you would agree Debbo?
Donald nails Jason’s opening fallacy. We cannot conjure support for vouchers from the founders’ constitutional silence on private schools.
The text before us makes clear that the founders considered how to maintain a moral, intelligent, and stable republic. They decided that free, fair, and universal public education was the way to do that. They did not say private schools (which existed at the time) could do the job. They created no voucher system. They allotted no public dollars to private schools. The founders’ intent is clear: public education is vital to the republic. Private schools are optional, like waistcoats and sideburns.
The SD Constitution is clear about this. It says nothing about vouchers. Therefore, SD can adopt vouchers today.
If the SD founders were against vouchers, they would have put that in the Constitution.
Watch the series “Deadwood” sometime and you will then know that the “Constitution” written was for exploitation of the land and the indigenous people who lived here long before. Some things really never change much. Vouchers were and always have been just another way to steal from the territory.
Jerry,
How can there be indigenous people to the black hills when the Continents were connected at one time?
Debo and Jason:
It appears that you both neglect some significant issues. In my years of teaching, charter/private schools insisted that the fed and state provide financial support for their coffers but allow those schools to “pick and choose” which students those same schools would allow to enroll. Those private/charter schools would NOT allow special needs nor students with “handicaps” to enroll as public schools are required. Now, if the private/charter schools are willing (in some cases demanding) to receive public funding, they should REQUIRED to accept all students and meet ALL requirements/guidelines/times of the federal and state governments to include equipment, reporting, staff requirements and health requirements (just to name a few? Are they ready to do so?
Pladn,
Vouchers are about property tax paying citizens using their money to educate their children. When they send their children to a private school, their tax dollars are not going toward their children if there are no vouchers.
It has nothing to do with special needs students.
So which private SD schools are dyning special needs students now?
People do not pay taxes to send their kids to school. That simplistic tunnel-vision is the heart of so many false funding/right discussions. We all pay taxes so our school district can have public education for that community. When it is phrased that parents pay taxes to send their kids to school, it misses the whole point of the responsibility of the community/state (the collectors and spenders of tax revenue) to provide public education; it makes it sound like those without children ought not have to pay those taxes; and opens a false sense of entitlement for parents to choose having their tax money follow their choice (even private) of school.
“My kids” are not in jail, yet I pay taxes for jails. “My kids” do not farm, yet my taxes go to farm subsidies . . . It works the same for schools — actually even mores for schools as free access to public education is a guarantee of our constitution.
Jason,
Vouchers do not use property tax money, which is local funding. Property taxes will be paid no matter where a parent sends a student for school. Vouchers use state money, and is usually taken from or at least in competition with state aid to education funds. Since most private education is in larger cities, vouchers hurt rural schools the most. That’s what’s happened over the years with Wisconsin’s voucher program. I know our new governor would love to throttle back the voucher program here, if not end it for good.
0.
South Dakotans don’t have a problem paying property taxes to pay for public education.
Vouchers don’t hurt public schools.
Donald,
SD can pass a law saying the voucher money will be taken out of property taxes.
I solved your problem in one sentence Donald.
Jason just totally ignored the constitutions of both the United States and South Dakota.
Plus he needs the state to pass a law to make the rest of his usual caca del toro become true.
There are 4, count them, 4 private schools in South Dakota and all take special needs children because they are designed for special needs children.
Private/religious schools are under no such rules and as Paladn said, don’t have to take disadvantaged, disabled, or otherwise unruly students. And this gives them an advantage or public schools who are required to take all students. Plus these P/R schools get taxpayer money which is supposed to be unconstitutional, but you can get enough activist right wing judges and they can make elephants fly by decree.
Jason is not a creationist 6,000 year old planet dude, so there is that. But Jason is still a troll that got his paytroll check yesterday. Employment, is always good.
One thing I want to reiterate Paladn. In Minnesota charter schools are Public Schools and part of the local school districts. Charters are Not private schools in Minnesota. There are private schools in Minnesota, but they are not charter schools.
That’s what I was talking about.
Jason, go ahead and try to pass your bill, but it will not pass. Wisconsin has been the leader in voucher schools, and even they know that they could never use the property tax for this purpose. And Wisconsin depends far less on property taxes for education funding. The only way they got voucher schools passed in the first place was the state took on two-thirds of education funding. Wisconsin could do that because we have an income tax. South Dakota does not collect enough revenue to run two separate school systems.
A low income tenant received an eviction notice and went to legal aid for help. The legal aid lawyer contacted the landlady to see if the dispute could be settled out of court. the landlady, a conservative woman who supported unlimited military funding, complained to the legal aid worker: “Why are my tax dollars paying for you to represent my tenant against me?”
The legal aid worker responded, ” Your tax dollars are going to pay for another nuclear weapon for the military. It is only my tax dollars and the tax dollars of other legal aid supporters that go for my salary.”
The landlady laughed, as did the legal aid worker. They then settled the case quickly and amicably without involving the court or hard feelings.
By just reflecting for a moment, it is easy to realize that we have no idea where our particular tax dollars are being spent. Once we pay taxes, this money is no longer our money, rather, it belongs to the community that we are part of. To worry about whether your particular tax payment is being used to educate children that are not your children is a fool’s errand. As o eloquently pointed out, using tax dollars for funding public education serves everyone in our community and is a community decision.
If you are worried about where your particular tax dollars are being used, simply reflect on the community functions you support and imagine that these are the functions funded by your payments, while the functions you object to are being funded by the payments of others, and you will be a much happier camper.
and then he ran and hid, some more. Jason and his drive by jaw-jacking gets old. Cory, can you, as administrator of this blog, charge the troll with hit and run/fleeing the scene.
Wisconsin voucher program started a targeted program to solve a particular problem with education quality in Milwaukee schools. There was parent and community support to try a different approach. It was thought making vouchers and new education approaches to inner city students might turn things around. It did not start as some ideological, anti-tax effort. In fact it was the opposite. It was going to cost more tax dollars to set up new schools, which were going to compete with public schools.
The right wing mantra had been that competition would make public schools better. The idea was not to destroy public education, but to provide a reason (competition) to spur improvement in public education. As such it was just one of a long succession of failed right-wing, free-market ideas in many areas (remember “deregulation of electricity” that lead to the Enron scandal).
In Wisconsin, the voucher program no longer has educational improvement as a goal. Study after study has shown that students who move to private schools through the voucher program do no better than students who stay in the public schools system. The original purpose of the voucher program was abandoned by Governor Walker, who turned the program into just another welfare program meant to benefit a particular Republican constituency. In other words, Walker abandoned the black kids in Milwaukee so he could subsidize two different constituencies: out-of-state billionaires who establish voucher schools/programs and private/parochial schools the Fox Valley and WOW counties who now can access state funds for non-inner city students who already attend private schools.
The programs started out with good educational intentions, but there was graft and educational failure. There there was very little state oversight for these voucher programs, and taxpayers’ dollars were wasted. Many of these voucher schools failed, and public schools had to try to pick up the pieces. South Dakota has experienced similar graft, and it resulted in a murder-suicide scandal.
Donald Pay describes the problem so eloquently. Pay attention to him. He knows.
Joseph Nelson, I am intrigued by your suggestion that Trump’s margin in South Dakota is a sign of a poorly educated electorate, an indictment of the effectiveness of public schools, and support for the notion that parents send their kids to private school to seek better education and morals.
However, to pursue that thesis, we’d need some data on what percentage of private schoolers and homeschoolers voted for Trump. If Trump voting signals low education (and 538 data suggests a connection), and if private education options are better than public school, then we should see more critical thinking and less Trump voting from voters who support and graduate from those alternative settings.
I’ll take a wild guess and speculate that homeschoolers voted Trumpublican at higher rates than the general electorate. I welcome data to support or refute that speculation.
As for getting rid of sports: I’ve rejected the budgetary argument for such a drastic action before, contending that since extracurriculars, including speech, debate, drama, and other activities that directly reinforce academics, only take a small single-digit percentage of most school budgets, their elimination does not provide all the cash necessary to fix our lagging salaries.
However, Joseph adds something to the argument: he points out that we lose not only money but instructor time and focus. Imagine this prospect: imagine if, at the 3:15 bell, instead of half the teachers and 60% of the students rushing from their classrooms to the gym or the field for practices that now last an absurdly long two hours or more, they all hung around the school for one hour of tutoring, lab exercises, or other academic enrichment activities.
The Noem administration will surely fail to find any additional money for public education. So maybe Joe’s suggestion allows to find an equally lacking and equally valuable resource: time.
The club model for sports that Joseph and Debbo discuss would separate teaching and coaching. Coaches could focus on getting jobs with the clubs and coaching; teachers could similarly focus on teaching. Perhaps the quality of both teaching and coaching would improve (not that coaching needs improvement, because, really, all we need is a kindly mentor to supervise the kids and give them some gentle direction while they experience the simple joy of play for play’s sake, not for winning, right?).
I think sports are a valuable part of the extra-curricular buffet offered by public education. The customers (students and parents) want sports programs, and anyone who studies it finds such programs are cheap after-school activities. Run on doing away with sports, and see your school board or state legislature campaign go down in flames. I’ve heard this for 40 years. The people who suggest this idea never follow through, probably because they never learned any lessons in sports, debate, drama or anything else. It’s always just a few tax whiners and get-off-my-lawn types who write letters-to-the-editor, but don’t have anything but hot air to actually give to the effort.
From ProPublica 2016- Another reason vouchers for homeschooling haven’t been successful is because current homeschoolers actually oppose them. They see them as a vehicle for more government regulation. Government, after all, isn’t in the business of handing out money with no strings attached.
The Home School Legal Defense Association, which has long fought against homeschooling regulations, is opposed to vouchers. “HSLDA opposes vouchers as they are not a free hand-out from the government and will regulate parental freedoms,” the group says on its website.
The organization has successfully lobbied against bills in Nevada and New Jersey that would have given homeschoolers money. It even called out then-presidential candidate Ben Carson when he hinted at his support for vouchers.
https://www.propublica.org/article/another-unrealistic-trump-policy-proposal-homeschool-vouchers
So to make things more equitable, we have advocates for making all sports private? I can see a rationale for eliminating football for health reasons though. I would like to see it phased out. Set a date (10 years from now?) and let people decide if they still want to participate.
Competitive sports in school may have some social drawbacks.
First and foremost competitive sports could contribute to an “us v. them” mental attitude in young people that now corrupts relationships in our political quadrant, and could contibute to developing hostile attitudes towards “others” who mean us no harm, such as people seeking a better life in the US, thereby undermining the development of empathy for others.
Second, competitive sports in schools could contribute to social rejection and isolation of those who are unsuccessful in sports or incapable of participating, thus creating a “jocks” vs. “nerds” environment. This can lend itself to bullying and mistreatment of others, especially the opposite sex and those perceived as weak or different. The kids so bullied and rejected may have difficulty adjusting as adults and potentially act out in anger.
These potential problems seem worth considerong when weighing the benefits versus the costs of high school competitive sports.
If you privatize sports won’t that draw away from schools numerous athletes who are not good students and deprive them of the education they sorely need?
I hear people talk about college athletes should just skip college and join professional farm team leagues because they won’t get anything out of college education. One year and they jump to the NBA where most of them won’t be signed and then are ineligible to return to schools.
There was a time when our communities stepped forward and volunteered.
When I was in high school at Holy Rosary Indian Mission, now Red Cloud, in the 60’s we had volunteer coaches for both football and basketball. Back in those days there wasn’t much in the way of girl sports.
Naturally your grades had to be up to par to participate in sports.
I don’t know that using volunteer coaches is feasible with school and state guidelines, but it would be worth a look and wouldn’t take away from classroom time for teachers.
Don said, “probably because they never learned any lessons in sports, debate, drama or anything else.”
Wrongo Don. Sports has been a backbone for my life. I’ve always competed, sometimes at a very high level (Played in 2 College World Series), coached at a variety of levels and greatly benefited as a person.
I still want sports, just not as part of the school. I’d like to see communities fund sports programs so everyone can play like they do summer sports. I’ve come to this conclusion because I’ve seen so many instances where sports’ parents have corrupted schools and compromised educational institutions. Sports do indeed have valuable benefits and I want children to have an opportunity to enjoy those benefits — divorced from schools.
BTW, I’d like the schools to continue with nonathletic extra curricular because I don’t see the likelihood for parental interference as strongly there. I have a hard time imagining 2 dads at the local bar coming to blows over whose daughter ought to be first chair trumpet. Music and speaking competitions have a great deal to offer.
Oh, Debbo, music and debate are very competitive. It can ever be more stressful, because there is no ability to physically release the tension during competition. Yeah, parents are usually not going to be as obnoxiously involved, but I could tell you stories about one debate mom.
I would like to see more emphasis on sports, actually, for students who aren’t necessary good at them, but need the physical exercise.
No argument about their competitive nature. I know, and I never said otherwise.
Sometimes I think you read things into, or out of, my comments. I try to write what I mean.
As for the last part, that’s what a good physical education teacher is for.
Don wrote:
Jason, go ahead and try to pass your bill, but it will not pass.
Why wouldn’t it?
I’m curious why Democrats are against the poor and middle class having school choice?
[Jason, your constant efforts to misrepresent reality in favor of GOP propaganda degrade the conversation. Knock the Trumpism and speak honestly.]
Jason,. There already is school choice in South Dakota. What you want is to shovel taxpayer money to create two school systems, when the state can barey fund on adequately.
You haven’t proposed a plan with funding. Taxpayer subsidized school choice strips money from public education. It particularly would harm rural school districts. Let’s see your bill.
My comment about the potential downside of competitive sports in schools has drawn no DFP responses so far. This suggests that I may be way off base and such a comment should simply be ignored, which seems a sensible way to respond to nonsensical or frivilous comments.
But it appears similar thoughts have been researched by experts with greater knowledge than I, and some progressive educators actually seem to agree with some of the points I tried to make. This includes Alfie Kohn, “an American author and lecturer in the areas of education, parenting, and human behavior.”
Here is a link to a short essay by Kohn, along with some excerpts that seem to support my earlier comment:
https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/case-competition/
So many of these purported negative consequences of promoting competition in sports among our youth seem to be reflected in the current Trumpian way many view the world.
Among other views (such as Trump’s so-called nationalism, antipathy towards democrats, demonization of the free press, frequent lying to create artifical images of winning or success, etc), many Trumpists’ behave as if they think that:
– Immigrants are losers, enemies, and people to fear, resulting in overt hostility – our military is used to threaten people seeking help;
– Children should be ripped from parents as a deterrence;
– Children and families who have committed no crime, other than to ask for help or seek a better life in the US, should be arrested and locked in cages or internment camps;
– Compliance with immigration rules requiring “papers” must be demanded and those out of compliance deserve extreme punishment regardless of their personal circumstances, but we also should make it extremely difficult or impossible for people without papers to comply with our immigration laws and obtain whatever papers are demanded; and
– There should be no room in Trumpist’s minds and hearts for empathy for people without papers who seek our help in escaping violence and poverty.
Kohn’s essay is eye-opening and seems distressingly accurate in today’s Trumpian America. It makes one wonder if promoting competitive sports and activities in school has been a well intentioned goal that has over the years yielded terrible long term unintended consequences in forming attitudes of many of our formerly impressionable youth who have become Trumpists as adults.
If I’m not mistaken “compete” originally meant “to strive together”. Think of rivalries where the opponents brought out the best in each other. I can agree that competitive culture can become toxic, but so can stress. Educators should be as well positioned as anyone to model healthy competition.
Also, my understanding is that Alfie Kohn isn’t just referring to athletics when criticizing competition. It actually makes more sense to do away with any kind of academic competion (i.e. Honor Rolls) because everyone is forced to participate. Competitive activities are optional.
Ben, Thanks for your input! I think you are right about Kohn’s focus going well beyond sports, as his linked essay makes clear.
While competitive sports may be an optional activity in schools, what is the likelihood that we unintentionally harm children by providing an option in schools with the potential to cause the negative results identified by Kohn?
BCB and Ben, I believe the value in competitive sports lies less in the outcome and more in the striving, although the 2 are sometimes linked. This is connected to Ben’s comment about the word, “compete.” I’ll give you an example and one of my favorite coaching memories,.
My small town girls basketball B team had a poor year as mostly 7-8 graders. They only won a couple games, but they tried hard, listened and wanted to be better. I urged them to practice over the summer, then I left town.
When I returned in the fall it was like I had a brand new team. They had grown physically and emotionally. They had practiced — a lot! They were a close knit bunch and they decided they were willing to do the work to get better. That year they won every game and I made sure they understood why.
Also, as a coach I never ran up the score on another team because I wanted those young opponents to feel good about themselves too.
Those kinds of things happen in sports regularly, especially if the coach isn’t in it to feed her own ego. It’s really mostly up to the coach, although really obnoxious parents who are trying to play out their own thwarted childhood dreams through their children can make a mess of it.
I nearly always coached lower levels because my ego was fed by seeing young ones master a skill and be excited and encouraged by that. It’s the best thing ever! So fun. 😁
I did coach adult softball and it was a similar experience. The players had physical skills, but their previous coaches weren’t really very good and didn’t know how to coach. I do. I taught them strategy and helped them refine a few skills, use the talent they had. They went from mediocre to winning the league. It’s so gratifying to see a team improve like that and learn to believe in themselves.
Empowering others is one of my favorite things. So exciting and totally fulfilling. Ahhhhhh. 😊😊
(Sorry. I think I got off track.)
Thanks debbo! I think your experience evidences some of the extremely positive aspects of participation in competitive sports. That raises a couple questions: (1) do such positive results outweigh whatever harm competitve sports might cause some children; and (2) what steps, if any, should public policy adopt to mitigate such potential harm?
In the late 1990s there was an effort made to push charter schools and voucher programs in South Dakota. Several bills in sequential years were introduced, and failed. There just wasn’t the funding available, and there was resistance from the Department of Education, the SDEA, and the Associated School Boards.
I was open to the charter school concept, but not the voucher program. Several parents in Rapid City were very much involved in the charter/voucher ideas. The Rapid City district, along with these parents, developed a pilot project for an on-line learning program. The district didn’t have money to put forth, but Gov. Janklow came through with about $100,000 in seed money. The pilot project met with mixed success, but it was enough for us to hope for a second year and some additional state money. The district was hoping to develop the program into an on-line learning project that would let us serve rural students in districts that didn’t have, for example, teachers for calculus classes or advanced placement classes.
That second year of funding never came through, I think because Janklow wanted to funnel that money to his pets in the education co-ops. So, that project died. The district felt it couldn’t afford to fund the project by itself, and there didn’t seem to be grant money available.
BCB, I think we’d need to see some type of study done to quantify the positive and negative outcomes of sports. Well first we’d have to define positive and negative!
Minnesota has tried to create some safeguards for coaches. Anecdotally, the problem seems to be overzealous parents nearly always and here the most contentious sport is boys’ high school hockey. It’s seems like about every 5-7 years there is a big blow up where a coach quits and goes public about the harassment and stress he’s endured over playing time, etc. We’re due, so I expect another big blow, maybe this winter. If it happens I’ll keep you in the loop. 😊
Don, in my 6 years at Newell, 2001-2006, I also served Immanuel Lutheran. It’s about 14 miles north of Mud Butte on a gravel road. There are a couple country schools out there that church members attended, Maurine and Union. They had some traveling teachers who served various rural schools, but I’m pretty sure they got some instruction online. I’m thinking it was most likely neighboring schools that videotaped classes, like Faith, Lemmon, Harding County, etc.
I’m not sure how that worked, where it was from or what classes. It has been awhile.
It occurs to me the push for charter schools might be like the push to create a new opposition party in South Dakota. In principle, it sounds great, but in an environment of limited resources, we can’t really afford to make both the new alternative and the established system work well, so we’ll end up both starving and failing. If there is an impulse to reform, can’t it get just as far put into practice within the public school system, with the help of the experts therein?