Extracurricular, What’s That?
It occurred to me this evening – watching the second after school production in as many Fridays – that we really do need extracurricular activities. Of course the reasons may surprise you. I’m not a big fan of football. I’ll watch the annual final match up between teams (I understand I’m not supposed to use the term SuperBowl. Ooops) and the occasional high school game if it’s convenient – or closely related in time or space to something else I’m doing. But I’m not really a sports fan per se. Football is a brutish sport that serves to maim and cripple its most ardent players, many former players suffer from lifelong aches and pains, obesity, heart problems and even early onset dementia from head trauma. They also suffer from fast burnout, cash depletion, inadequate retirement and nearly no marketable skills (unless they become a coach or sports announcer of some kind – but those jobs are limited).
But even football is important. Football, like other activities, inspires parents to be involved. Drama productions and concert band performances and student art shows and chess competitions all inspire parents to be involved. And this, I believe, is the secret. Parents don’t show up to watch their kids conjugate verbs, write their proof to the Pythagorean theory or write essays on the meaning of the Bill of Rights. They show up to watch their kid think through the bishop/knight fork or queen a handful of pawns. They show up to watch the Sheriff of Nottingham yell without blinking, “Oswald! What’s my line?” They show up to hear their child riff some zydeco, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy or even the “cantina band”.
I believe kids whose parents show up strive to do better. Parents who show up certainly seem more interested than those that don’t. Anecdotely I have been told that students most likely to be in trouble are not involved in any extracurricular activities. Students not involved in extracurricular activities are likely to have uninvolved and disinterested parents, and the cycle continues.
Schools – and districts – willing to cut away all “extra” classes like physical education, art, drama and music will end up losing students interested in those classes to private and charter schools. The remaining students will be academically flat, physically flabby and decidedly “unrounded”. And the cycle repeats itself.
More reading: www.expectmorearizona.org
