| Lowered Expectations
By Charles Achampong April 15th, 2004 |
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I think back now and laugh about the simple math lesson my best friend in Grade 1 gave me some twenty years ago. Mike was attempting to convince me that somehow one plus one equaled a window. I know I know it sounds stupid doesn't it? Well you can just imagine how confusing this was for me as I was learning to do simple arithmetic with my fingers and toes. How was I going to make my thumb and index finger equal a window? Mike would begin by drawing a long stick representing a one followed by a huge plus sign that looked like a cross and then would quickly draw another number one and completed his entire exercise in deception by closing the box with a line above and below representing an equal sign. Proudly, he would show me and the other kids in the class that he was on his way to becoming a genius. Fast-forward some two decades later and I can't help but wonder where all the "Mikes" of the world are and what they're doing. If the graduation rates of some of the top NCAA Division I teams are any indication of where they could be then my guess is that some of them must be playing basketball. A couple of weeks ago I came across an article that said, "of the remaining sweet 16 teams left in the Men's NCAA Basketball tournament only four schools posted graduation rates of 50 percent or better". Now it doesn't take a genius to figure it out but that's just plain ridiculous. These schools are either doing something wrong or it's the system itself that must be flawed. Colleges being the way they are, chasing the almighty dollar that comes with NCAA division I fame, have been in no rush to get to the bottom of this problem. They say that student-athletes have practice schedules which conflict with student's courses, that the overall basketball season is too demanding, and that there are not enough hours in a day for students to commit to everything. Yeah, pity those students with a tough life.
But Assistant Coach Jim Harrick Jr. of the University of Georgia (UG) Bulldogs decided to take it upon himself to ease the many demands placed on student athletes. Harrick created a course that set high standards in student achievement. The class average for the Principles and Strategies of Basketball course was an A. Interesting thing is that course attendance and the final exam were optional. But students who wanted to waste their time writing the final exam encountered mind-boggling questions like how many halves are in a college basketball game or how many points is a 3-point shot worth. But what makes things even funnier is that Harrick can't seem to understand what all the fuss is about. He thought he deserved the Teacher of the Year award. Unfortunately, UG officials thought he deserved something else and booted him out the back door. The purpose of the course Harrick had gone onto say was to prepare students to be thriving future head coaches of basketball. Well looks like our successful coach is now out of a job for the foreseeable future.
As bad as it may sound it's not just the fault of people like Harrick who use the system to their advantage and help boost student GPA's but it is also the very people who designed the NCAA system itself. A couple of years ago, the NCAA's esteemed board of directors decided to take it upon themselves and lower SATs standards to the bare minimum score of 400. So despite partying the night before, all you had to do was get your 400 points by coming in and writing your name, if you could remember it, and then you were on your to NCAA basketball stardom. Critics charged that students from inner-city schools needed these lower standards because their schools systems failed to adequately prepare them for college. Lowering standards to let everyone into the system is not going to make the system better. Who exactly do these people think they are fooling other then the fools themselves? It's because of these very same rules that we are getting high school students who barely know how to put two and two together into colleges and many of them ultimately end up failing their way through college. Recently, however the NCAA has smartened up and changed the rules. Colleges that now suffer from persistently low graduation rates year in and year out will be penalized with a series of fines and as a final measure will be to throw them out of the March Madness competition altogether. The changes the NCAA wants to make to the academic requirements of students-athletes are nothing if schools continue to offer fake courses like Harrick's, easy programs for students to major in, and teachers who continue to buckle under pressure to pass superstar players. Unless both the schools and NCAA work together to develop a new system that will not only increase graduation rates but will help student-athletes get a real education then all these reforms will mean nothing. In the meantime we will all just continue to convince ourselves into believing that many student-athletes will actually spend four years, if not more, learning something when in fact they really learn nothing. Kind of like Mike in grade 1.
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