© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. When I make suggestions to public
schools I usually get two rejections: one for that idea and another for whatever
I think of next. It doesn’t stop me. In fact, here are two rejected ideas from
the last few years.
The simpler one is to add table
tennis to public schools. While teaching at Albuquerque High School in the
1970s we started an afterschool table tennis team which had about seventy
regular members. The rules had to be followed but there were no academic
requirements.
Students could play table tennis in
a sixteen team league. At the time I was a tournament table tennis player so I
was good, having learned the game at age seven in Japan.
Here’s the pitch to my local school
district: it doesn’t require language, gender, size or ethnic origins. But it
does require that participants not drink alcohol or take drugs. The eye/hand
requirements are such that participants cannot play when impaired.
I found with the team at Albuquerque
High that those students were very competitive but for behavior or grades or
lack of sufficient ability could not traditionally compete. In table tennis
they found something they could master fairly well in a few months and then could
compete with others in their same skill level.
It kept kids in high school. Years
later when I tried to get my local school district to start it in elementary school
and continue through high school, I was told it wasn’t football so forget it.
Another idea. Back in the 1950s as a
small child I was living at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. I witnessed
the Air Force Thunderbirds come over at about 500 feet and several hundred
miles an hour.
As I looked up with five-year-old
eyes I thought, and still do, flying is wonderful. Then I was able to get
deeper into this realm when America decided to put men on the Moon. John Glenn
orbited the Earth three times. I built models of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo
craft and breathlessly followed.
One of my suggestions a few years
ago to my local school district is that they start building the dream of flying
for students. Consider that we, as a nation, are running out of private pilots
because young people are not going into aviation as they have in the past.
This last weekend members of an
experimental aircraft association took several students up flying which is
great. What I have pitched a couple times and got rejected was in fourth grade to
introduce flight simulator software with inexpensive yoke and pedals to
students who are interested.
Microsoft make a Flight Simulator
that teaches flying nicely. The yoke and rudder petals are cheap so there is
not much investment in each classroom.
If students start in fourth grade,
by sixth grade they can join Civil Air Patrol where they will learn lots about
aviation and probably get some rides in airplanes. By eighth grade they can
solo in a glider and get a glider license to fly. Finally, by the time they are
sixteen they can get a pilot’s license. Wow! Almost before they get a license
to drive they can be flying.
A former squadron commander of Civil
Air Patrol liked the idea and thought that he and his colleagues would be glad
to help teachers learn the flight simulator and how to help students learn from
the program.
The people in the public schools
rejected this because flying is not on the accountability tests so it would
take students away from doing better on tests. Really? Right now many students
are bored out of their minds with the mania for testing: learn an answer, give
an answer, learn an answer, etc.
How would it change a generation of
students who want to experience flight? It would be a motivator to learn math
and other concepts that flying use. Further, no one who flies sees the Earth
the same as they did before they flew.
Both table tennis and flying would
add lots of sizzle to the school day for interested students but are rejected as
activities for not being on the accountability tests. Perhaps practical
interesting things should be.
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