ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 10, 1996 TAG: 9609100042
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
TEACHERS hardly need lecturing about the purpose of school being to educate children, not to field a winning football team. Indeed, his interest in seeing children stay in school, substitute teacher Jeff Artis says, is what prompted him to launch a petition drive to bring competitive sports to Roanoke's middle schools.
The intention is excellent, but the argument is unconvincing. There are sound reasons for leaving the athletic program as it is.
In the city, whose middle schools have no football program and in other sports compete only among themselves, the dropout rate is 5.5 percent. Roanoke County and Salem, each with a competitive middle-school sports program, have 1 percent and 2 percent dropout rates, respectively. Let kids get involved in competitive sports earlier, Artis argues, and they will be less likely to leave school before they graduate.
That premise is doubtful, partly because a cause-and-effect relationship between dropout rates and sports programs is doubtful. The city's higher dropout rate almost surely has more to do with its higher rate of poverty than with a perceived sports shortage. Excellent parenting and teaching - giving children a reverence for learning and providing the basic tools to succeed at it -are the best motivators for staying in school.
Those who aren't taught respect for learning at home do need extra help at school, but not on the field. The best football coach in the world can't provide what the overwhelming number of "at-risk" kids need to break out of the cycle of poverty that otherwise makes for a bleak future: reading skills. That - not great blocking, tackling or quarterbacking - is the ticket to a brighter future.
Getting a good education does not necessarily preclude participating in competitive sports, of course. If a place on the field (or on the bench) is properly tied to academic achievement, sports can even be a motivator to encourage an indifferent student to hit the books.
That presumably is why Artis has found support for his petition from City Councilman William White, a former School Board member; from Melinda Payne, a current member; and from a coalition of community groups.
But Superintendent Wayne Harris and School Board Chairwoman Marcia Ellison make compelling arguments against competitive sports in middle school - football, in particular.
Sixth- through eighth-graders are too young to be playing competitively in a sport as rough as football. With all the gear that it requires, football is expensive. And surveys have shown little interest in the sport, Harris says. Outside activities can keep kids in school - but need those activities include middle-school football? The city's middle-school children do have the opportunity to compete in basketball, track, soccer and tennis, not to mention other extracurricular activities.
The current arrangement, some coaches complain, does not make for a good feeder system of football talent into the city's high schools, putting the high-school teams at a disadvantage. That may be true. But if we all agree that the purpose of school is to educate children, not field winning football teams, so what?
If extra money is lying around to improve the city's middle schools, expand the coaching staff - in reading, writing and math.
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