By Bobby Hawthorne
Academics Director
Around this time last year, an editorial writer for the Austin American-Statesman wrote a column that stated, in so many words, “The end is near. They’re even cheating in academic competitions now. Oh my. Oh my.”
The column involved the coach and students at a Chicago-area high school who stole a copy of an academic decathlon test, won the state championship and were now the subject of an HBO movie, “Cheaters.”
Asked five years later if they felt remorse or regret for their actions, all involved laughed it off. “Of course not,” they replied. “Everyone cheats, and we’d do it again.” No doubt, a pretty sad moment, and but the writer, based on this single incident, extrapolated far beyond the facts. “Integrity and personal responsibility once had enormous weight,” he wrote. “Now there is no place for them except as quaint vestiges of yesteryear.”
Well, that’s a little hyperbolic, especially considering this newspaper didn’t expend a single line of type on any academic competition in Central Texas that it didn’t host or sponsor, not that space wasn’t available. The week prior to the state athletic events, it devoted a few hundred column inches to stories and photos about shot putters and golfers, and rightfully so, but I can’t for the life of me understand why the average Austin reader would be more interested in a story about a hurdler from a 2A school 60 miles from here than he or she would about a dyslexic Austin kid who qualified for the state ready writing contest.
I’m sure the reporters and editors of my local newspaper and yours can explain why it’s more newsworthy to write about four guys running in circles with a stick than it is about the school that’s won a half dozen consecutive state academic team titles or about the blind, hypersensitive young woman who this spring qualified for region in current issues & events. It’s a life-affirming human interest story of courage and persistence that I might like to read about, even though she doesn’t live in the Statesman’s circulation area. I suspect their reasons have more to do with anachronistic journalistic formulas and milieus, and lazy reporting and editing than they do about community expectations, needs or desires.
More media bashing...
It’s puzzling to read columns by conservative commentators on the modern college campus trend of shouting down people you disagree with or stealing and burning student newspapers because they print provocative stories or editorials on subjects like reparations for former slaves or affirmative action, and then justifying the act by saying, “Their exercising free speech offends and harasses me, therefore, I’m exercising my free speech by silencing them.”
No one in their right mind would approve of such brutish behavior, but it’s ironic to read a columnist like John Leo of the U.S. News & World Report, who laments the decline in respect for free expression on college campuses and criticizes “boneheaded” professors and timid college administrators for failing to hold “brownshirt” protestors accountable.
“On many campuses, students are encouraged to think of other people’s ideas and criticism as assaults,” Leo wrote. “A whole vocabulary has sprung up to convert free expression into punishable behavior...Univer-sities tell students they have a right not to be harassed by hostile speech. Well, sure. Nobody should be harassed. But the connection between harassment and speech is made so relentlessly on campus that many students think they have a right not to be offended.”
Stop right there and think. Where could these college students, young people two or three years out of high school, have gotten an idea like that? Where have they seen and experienced such arrogance?
“Real debate fades as ordinary argument is depicted as a form of assault,” Leo continues. “In the long run, it also makes many topics too dangerous to raise. But being exposed to discomforting ideas is the price of freedom.”
Absolutely. So when are John Leo and George Will and the others of their ilk going to rip into high school administrators who reduce the content of school publications, music, theatre, debate and/or literature to pap sentiments unworthy of a greeting card? If you want 20-year-old college students to respect free expression, give them a taste of it when they’re 16 or 17. Otherwise, in time, you reap what you sow.
Repeating patterns
Of all the problems we handled this spring, the most serious and prevalent dealt with the conflict pattern, and virtually all of them could have been resolved in September had the district executive committee adopted an academic meet schedule and disseminated it throughout the district. It is shameful to ask students to practice and prepare for months for two or more non-conflicting contests, and then deny them an opportunity to compete in them at the district meet.
The League has no power to mandate that schools follow the conflict pattern. District executive committees are free to set whatever schedule they wish. A West Texas district with severe travel problems might conduct the full meet in a single day. An urban district might spread the meet over four or five days. Some don’t enforce the conflict pattern even though they realize that students may be forced to withdraw from certain contests. Others enforce the conflict pattern, even though the meet is dispersed over the course of several days, and it is logistically possible for students to compete in - for example - spelling, science and accounting.
This should remain a district prerogative. But every district executive committee should approve the schedule at its planning meeting in September and make sure that every coach and kid in the district knows what it is. If you wait until March 1 to learn that the district’s policy is to restrict students from competing in more than one academic contest, or that the district has scheduled number sense, calculator applications and math simultaneously, then you’ve no one to blame but yourself.
Better late than never?
The question arose: may a student enter a contest late? Only one contest - number sense - disqualifies late entrants. Number Sense is an intense, 10-minute contest. The slightest disruptions -teachers chatting on cell phones, public address announcements or students crashing in three minutes late - are extremely damaging.
But here’s another scenario: number sense and ready writing conflict, but at a district meet, a student wants to compete in number sense from 8-8:20, and then rush over to ready writing and use whatever remaining time the rest have. Is there anything patently illegal or unethical about this?
If a student, through no fault of his own, arrives at the regional editorial writing contest 10 minutes late, should he be automatically disqualified, even if the alternate isn’t present?
I don’t know. If at the State Meet, the young man’s coach failed to appreciate Austin gridlock and the young man arrived 10 minutes late for current issues & events, I’d allow him to compete. But I can’t imagine trying to codify such a decision.
Finally...
Our response: the point schedule is an attempt to equalize competition so that no single contest or contest area can dominate the district meet. For years, coaches complained that the school sweeping speech and debate or one-act play couldn’t lose, and while you may get an argument from Jana Riggins and Lynn Murray as to the legitimacy of these allegations, the fact remains that schools felt sufficiently strong to implement the point schedule.
Today, the overall program is diverse enough that it’s almost impossible to dominate one and only one individual subject strand and win a district title. For example, Bridgeport, which has won five of the last six 3A state championships with its powerhouse math/science program, doesn’t always win its district title.
Is it time to re-examine the point schedule, and if we do so, what should be the philosophical basis of that examination? Should we open it back up? Remove point limits? End them?
Next year, the League will appoint members to an academic advisory committee. I’m sure the point schedule will be among the more inviting topics for discussion.
Keep your fingers crossed and have a great summer.