Reasons why you do not want to coach UIL academics this year:
• It takes a lot of time.
Time before school. After school. During lunch. Weekends. Nights. It’s relentless, spending all that time with young people who actually want to learn something, who agree to pore over the Handbook to Literature or newspapers and newsmagazines, who are even happy to apply what they learn.
These kids are glad to surrender their weekends to rehearse scenes from The Grapes of Wrath or The Diviners until every line, every costume, every blackout, blueout and fade down is as perfect as they can make it. They’re willing to put on a coat and tie and stand up in front of a bunch of strangers and speak with confidence and authority about a topic that, one month earlier, they knew little or nothing about.
Really, who wants to devote a lot of time to kids like that?
• Lousy pay.
You most likely won’t get paid a lot to coach UIL academics. You might not get paid anything. Let’s face it, schools are not exactly awash in money these days, and what little was available has already been spent to make sure that no child is left behind and to cover unfunded federal mandates so your school won’t appear on the front page of the daily newspaper as an example of the general crisis in public education and the concomitant need to spend tax dollars on private school vouchers.
So if you’re planning to coach one or two UIL academic events in order to pay off the new Hummer a year or two ahead of schedule, well…let’s just say that it’s a good guess you’re not coaching UIL mathematics.
• Travel.
There could be a lot of it. On rickety, old yellow dog school buses, to invitational meets and tournaments and festivals. All that coffee and Krispie Kreme donuts and Saturdays spent with other UIL coaches in the crowded home economics room, munching Triple Layer Cookie bars and Fritos and reading The Lovely Bones while the students compete, and for what? Just so a sophomore girl in hip-hugger jeans can win a medal in feature writing, the first time she’s ever won anything. Just so you can stand by and watch as she screams “Oh my God, I can’t believe I won third place,” into her lime green Nokia to her mother back home.
• Smart kids don’t need help.
Hey, they’re smart. They’ll figure it out by themselves. Why do you need to spend your time working with them? They don’t need to be inspired or motivated. They don’t need mentors. And if they did, well they can catch a Tony Robbins video or surf www.govspot.com or watch the E! channel.
• Administrators don’t care.
It’s true. Some don’t value academic competition, and not just UIL, any and all academic competition — Math Counts, ThinkQuest, Quiz Bowl, Geography Bee, you name it. They spend all day dealing with problem kids and the problems that problem kids cause. Why would they want to devote their time and energy to their best students and most dedicated teachers? I can’t help but believe that the young man arrested for unleashing his variation of the Blaster Worm on the world this summer might have benefited from a little encouragement and attention from a teacher or administrator who could have directed his obvious talents toward a more useful purpose.
• UIL rules are ridiculous.
The 8-hour rule. The Sunday rule. The eligibility rules. No pass, no play. Who comes up with these wacko rules? (Well, actually, no pass, no play is state law, not a UIL rule. And the UIL rules are passed by a Legislative Council consisting of superintendents representing every region and conference.) But that doesn’t change the fact that you may disagree with one or two of the rules, and it’s a lot easier to sit on the sidelines and grouse about stupid rules than it is to work to change them or the academic conflict pattern or the Spring Meet point schedule through various professional associations and standing committees.
• Academic competition is expensive.
Why, if you ordered one item each off the High School Academic Study Materials form, it would set you back a whopping $256. That includes an extra C&CR, the huge CX debate kit and the exquisitely written Journalism Contest Manual. And then, there are the medals and trophies and ribbons, which these kids really don’t deserve anyway, given all the publicity they’ll receive in the daily press.
• Conflicts.
UIL academics conflict with other activities, specifically athletics and prom, and Lord knows we don’t put enough emphasis in this society on entertainment and celebrity. And there’s no way to work with music directors, athletic coaches and other teachers to minimize conflicts. Why even bother?
• Judges are flighty.
They’re temperamental, arbitrary on their best days, incompetent the rest of the time. Unless, you win, of course. But if your kid or your play doesn’t advance, you can pretty much rest assured that the judge was a nincompoop. And do you want to take that risk? Sure, Martin Scorcese has never won an Oscar for best director or best picture, but that’s different. He’s paid millions of dollars and doesn’t have to spend his weekends on an old, rickety yellowdog school bus, and if “Raging Bull” loses to “Ordinary People” as best picture in one of the great injustices of all time, well no one asked him to keep making movies, and that doesn’t mean that you have to subject yourself to incompetents. You’re bigger than that.
• Competition isn’t really all that healthy.
We should be cooperating, not competing against one another. Life isn’t competitive. Why prepare young people for a make-believe world in which people will compete for jobs, contracts and such? In the real world, everyone is a winner. Everyone takes home the blue ribbon.
Besides, competition stirs up volatile emotions. If kids don’t win, they may get their feelings hurt. Oh sure, you might argue, “No, they’ll learn from their mistakes and work hard to improve, and next time, they’ll do better, and if the stars are properly aligned, they’ll win, and if they don’t, they’ll rededicate themselves to again working harder and improving, and if in the long run they never take home that gold medal or blue ribbon, well look how far they’ve come, how much they’ve improved, how much they’ve learned that they can take with them to college or into a job or the military,” which gives you some idea how delusional I am.
• The Leaguer.
Add it up, the time you’ve wasted reading this column alone. Multiply that by Jana Riggins, Luiz Munoz, Randy Vonderheid, Dick Floyd, Charles Breithaupt and the other UIL directors plus the Official Notices this month times six, and you could have learned Finnish with less effort.
• Generosity.
It’s so relative. Look, we can pinch pennies with our top academic students, the kids who are destined to be our doctors and lawyers and accountants and computer wizards and school teachers of tomorrow, and they’ll understand because, well like I said earlier, they’re smart. They got brains. They know the financial mess we’re in, what with the economy, Robin Hood and leaving no child behind and all. And one of these days, when we return to them and ask them to support a bond election to build more schools and provide higher salaries and decent benefits to teachers, we can only hope they’ll be more generous and more broad-minded with us than we were with them.