While NAIS advocates for an academic revolution in the independent school classroom — in which we evolve from teaching and learning that is individually focused to one that is team-focused (for both the adults and students) — the fact remains that, for now, most team experience occurs not in class but after class, in extracurriculars. I'm also a firm believer in the teacher/coach model of independent schools, since the techniques that work on the field or stage or newspaper room also work in the classroom, and knowing one's students in both venues is invaluable. It's not the least bit surprising to me that the research from Haverford College's Douglas Heath (Schools of Hope and Lives of Hope)2 reveals that extracurriculars track better than any other factor with later success for independent school students. Why is this? Because learning how to sublimate one's own ego for the team's benefit is perhaps the most important lesson for Americans, given that our culture so over indulges and lionizes the individual at the expense of the collective. What positions people for personal success (individual achievement) often cripples them for leadership for the common good (where teaming is more important than excelling on one's own). Of course, great teams and organizations and schools find ways to take individual talents and both liberate them and channel them to contribute to the larger goals.
Why are independent schools so able to manage this task of discovering talents and strengths and then channeling them to the common good? Partly because we're small and need to recruit all sensate organisms to be on one or more teams, be that the drama troupe, the school yearbook staff, or any athletic team. In the public domain, more than 70 percent of kids drop out of interscholastic sports by high school; no surprise here, since, in the typically large public schools, one would need to have the early makings of an NBA prospect to earn a spot on the basketball team. By contrast, in an independent school of, say, 400 (or, in larger schools, in a secondary school of 400), anyone with a minimum amount of ability and interest in a sport is welcomed and needed. Indeed, my first independent school assignment was to coach Bengal (freshmen) football at a boys boarding school where everyone was required either to play football or run cross-country, no exceptions. As a result, we had five football teams — and everyone contributed, everyone played, and everyone learned what teaming is all about. And what the NELS3 data tell us today is that a high proportion of our students continue to be on teams (sports and arts and literary and service) in college and in life. Short version: If you are a player in school, you'll be a player in college. If you are a player in college, you'll be a player in life.
So, first, let's celebrate our great good fortune (or, more likely, the natural evolution of our schools impacted by what the marketplace expects) of being compelled to offer a wide array of sports and other extracurriculars that keeps all of us, kids included, salubriously engaged, every second of the waking day outside of classes. Regarding such busyness, I know I hold a minority opinion, but it is one recently substantiated by research out of Yale4, which indicates that a packed schedule of activities is actually healthy for children, not detrimental. My experience visiting schools bears this out. Wherever I go, I find myself among happy, engaged, and highly scheduled kids thriving in independent schools.
Beyond the experience of teaming and the healthful impact of lots of extracurricular activities on setting a standard of involvement and developing the skill of managing a packed schedule, what other valuable factors are at play in sports? How about the cultivation and nurturing of the competitive spirit? Or ambition? Or a single-minded (and sometimes obsessive) self-discipline to excel? Peak performers in all arenas (sports, arts, business, the military, medicine, law, finance, etc.) exhibit these characteristics. Where do these impulses and traits come from? While their corruption in professional athletics makes us all wonder about their cultivation in children's athletics, one must concede that, in their purer form, these values often contribute to individual and collective success. One should mull over Tiger Wood's rejoinder to the aphorism, "There's no ‘I' in ‘team'": "But there is in ‘win.'" Of course, only in the Ryder Cup does teaming count in men's professional golf, and then only in strategizing pairings so individuals can contribute maximum points to a team victory. And, of course, in some sports there are exceptions, like professional cycling, where the team (think of U.S. Postal Service/Discovery Channel team in the Tour de France) sublimates itself to the goal of assisting the individual (Lance Armstrong) to victory. But, in the vast majority of team sports, the trick is to coach the individuals to function as a team, where individual strengths combine and build upon those of others to achieve a collective goal: winning.
I believe that a competitive spirit appears, from whatever source, very early. Watching a soccer game for five-year-olds, I was amazed at the variation in engagement. Most were excitedly following the action, chasing the ball if not actually making contact with it, while the real action was led by "the franchise player" who actually knew what he was doing. My grandson was picking flowers in the field. When the ball accidentally came his way and he somehow kicked it, the crowd of parents (mostly his relatives) cheered his name, which did get his attention, because he came over to the sidelines to take a bow. So entertainment clearly is in his future, but competitive team play may not be.
In contrast, his sister has been competitive from the get-go: "Nana, let's have a coloring contest, and Papa can be the judge." When I inadvertently picked the wrong winner, there was deep indignation on her part, until, wisely, I changed the call.
There is something about sports (and games we turn into sport) that brings out the competitive spirit at the youngest of ages for some, and not for others, who are guided by other impulses and pursuits. It's important to acknowledge that, for those who don't take to sports, the spirit of competitiveness is also present in other team activities: the chess team, the debate team, the yearbook team, the drama team, the robotics team. Though less physical, they can have the same impact as sports on the team members.
I'm not making the case that intense competitiveness for a team (or a cause) is not without its drawbacks, but channeled properly, competitiveness provides context and experience for many activities in life. Especially important in our schools is the value of learning how to play hard, win humbly, and lose graciously.
What worries me the most about sports at the academy are the adults. Left to their own devices, most kids invent games and play by the rules. Increasingly, however, the adults get in the way. Too often, it's the parent spectators who behave badly and embarrass their children and their school. Too often, it's our own coaches. In high school, I quit a varsity team because the coach was so harsh and intimidating that he made the experience painful rather than joyful. He didn't join the players for the team photo one year because the team had lost a single game, and, he said, "I won't have my picture taken with losers." He so ruined the game for me that I decided not to play in college.
Once in college, however, as the season started, my roommate who did go out relentlessly pursed me until I caved and came out. Ultimately, I became the team captain and the experience of playing sports at the college level was central to organizing my life and giving spirit to it. This coach knew, at least at the Division III level, that sport was still just sport. His idea of a pep talk before our biggest game of the year went like this: "There are a billion Chinese. None of them care about this game. So why don't you go out and have some fun?"
It may be apocryphal that the Duke of Wellington once quipped, "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton," but the saying is embedded in our culture and the foundation for countless clichés about school sports being analogous to contests in life. Like most clichés, there is often substantial truth behind this one, the truth behind sports at the academy being that some of our proudest, most engaged moments for kids and the adults who coach and love them happen on our playing fields.
Notes
1. See Arthur Powell's seminal study of independent schools, Lessons from Privilege. Also see the National Center for Education Statistics NELS Report (National Educational Longitudinal Study), executive summary from NAIS, Values Added: The Lifelong Returns of an Independent School Education.2. Douglas Heath's two books are based upon research on independent school graduates: Schools of Hope and Lives of Hope.
3. National Center for Education Statistics NELS Report (National Educational Longitudinal Study), executive summary from NAIS, Value-Added: The Lifelong Returns of an Independent School Education.
4. Yale Professor Joseph Mahoney's study, reported in Newsweek 10/2/06.