Brain, Education, and Inquiry - Fall, 2010: Session 11B

I would have a sports story to tell until few months ago when I joined Haverford's Rugby team. I have always been one of the least athletic and the smallest guys in a group. But I've always been active: climbing trees and hiking for hours in the mountains in my home village in China. At the beginning of this semester I had the sudden thought to challenge myself and put myself under the discipline of a sport. And it happened to be Rugby that I've chose. Now reflecting back on the past few months, I've realized Rugby has trained me well mentally (my physical size is quite hopelessly the way it is). The first few sessions were very rough: I didn't know the game and I was not fit at all. I made mistakes constantly but I was never told to stop. The command was always try again, no rest, don't be such a ___, the practice does not stop because you've stopped. If I've reached my limit for the day nobody would blame me for sitting down. After a short while one gets the message: the biggest mistake is stop trying, all the others are salvageable.

Obviously I'm better equipped to take more strenuous practice and more harsh bollocking, but I don't think I would have continued Rugby in an ultra-masculine-unnecessarily-harsh team. I was lucky that I was pushed hard, and often to my limit, but never beyond it.

In the classrooms, it is tricky to figure out how far we can push(or encourage if you prefer) the kids. I feel like the American classrooms are too "sanitized." It is important to ensure a safe learning environment for the kids, but even for older students there are so many things a teacher cannot say or do in a classroom. Lawsuits and complaints are so easily provoked. I taught high school students English in Vienna last semester. The classroom environment was pretty open. There were few restrictions on what a teacher can or cannot say. I freely said f*&k and s*&t when I deemed appropriate to connect to them and to make my point. When a student brought up Notorious BIG and some of the scenes, I went along with the discussion which required me to say some things no American school will allow me to say. My hope was that I could meet the student wherever they are and challenge their perceptions of the world from there. I feel like an overly sanitized environment does not allow me to do that. Going back to Rugby, all the cursing and bollocking do not diminish the potential value of the sport.                 

I really enjoyed this class and think it was a great topic/area to talk about. I’m especially glad that competition and competitiveness were brought up. When we think of competition, what comes to mind (for me at least) is winning or being better at something than others. However, I think competition is much more constructive and valuable when it is more internal. Comparing oneself to others and judging victory or success based on that seems to stray from the very purpose of competition: improvement. For example, if a superbly talented athlete has much weaker team-mates, he or she could be “the” best without being “his/her” best. I think this distinction is very important. I’ve never been very sporty at all and there was more to it than my utter lack of athletic ability. I seemed to me that it was always like being in a prolonged fight. If the focus was on improving oneself, challenging oneself, pushing your limits, we would gain so much more. Like we’ve said many times in class, individuals are all different. Why, then, should we judge ourselves relative to other people? This applies to education as well. I’m not quite sure how applicable this is, but if students could set their own goals, work at their own pace and be judged only relative to their own performance, wouldn’t things be much better. Having said that, though, I think learning to be part of a team is also invaluable, but less so for the competition and more for the lessons learned from working with other people and being part of a team. 

  There are few things in life that are greater than sports and that is my honest (and terribly biased opinion).  The repetition that getting good at a sport requires is a great lesson to learn about succeeding in other realms of life.  In Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell the author makes the point (and maybe a fairly obvious one) that practice makes people better at things, the amount of practice that he says makes people great (outliers) is 10,000 hrs.  Sports showed me that you could take a bit of natural ability and stretch it very far through practice, and that this process was often quite enjoyable.  As a very shy kid growing up, I struggled socially for a long time (I was held back in kindergarten because I was so shy and had so few friends).  Yet sports helped me a lot because I loved them and because being good at sports made one more popular at my elementary school.  In fifth grade, cross-country was the bee's knees, on the first day of practice I think I surprised everyone (including myself) by being really good at it.  Being good, and having a great coach, encouraged me to practice and get better.  It taught me that practice really does help one to improve.

  Translating this indulgent story to education, things like sports, music, dance, etc., give students more opportunities to excel and find a niche.  Education is about more than learning multiplication tables and state capitals, it is about learning to learn, forming good habits, and being a member of society.  If a kid is into sports, then he/she will probably be inclined to practice, and also learn to make a team better (admittedly, I learned more about team work from football and rugby than cross-country).  These skills are really great and translate into many skills that are not measured on IQ tests or standardized tests.

Note:  This becomes very indulgent, so be warned that the next paragraph is about my high school football career 

  Evren, I really appreciate you broaching this topic because it is one that I forgot how much I cared about.  One of the most meaningful life lessons that I ever learned came on the football field.  As a freshman, I was miserable, I did not start any games and I realized that I needed to work really hard and learn how to be good.  So for three years I worked and as a junior I started on defense as a safety.  That summer I worked out everyday and did everything that I could to be a great football player.  I learned to watch film and about reading a defense and my senior year I started as a vastly undersized middle linebacker and fullback.  I was named team MVP and a league all-star on team with a 7-4 record (a great accomplishment for a team that had not had a winning season for many years before that or since then).  Looking back, these experiences taught me that if I was not good at something now, then I could be good at it, I just needed some time and some passion.  This really taught me that if I do what I love then I can be great at it.