Jun
22
Read Article | High School Sports Graphic
Both links from Boston.com
They are players who share uniforms because there are too few to go around, players who yearn for more qualified coaches on the sidelines and a few fans in the empty stands, players who never make it to the field because of academic woes and the scourge of deadly street violence.
In a golden age of professional sports in Boston, they are portraits of a bleak reality for student-athletes in the city’s public schools.
A truly moving article about the lack of sporting programs in Boston high schools. One interesting point that really got me was that the exam schools, namely Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, and the John D. O’Bryant, are the schools that have the widest selection of sports. The students who are gifted but not gifted enough to make it to an exam school get fewer choices. After reading it, I wrote something out on my iPod:
Sometimes I wish that celebrities and athletes helped out the schools more. The state and local governments tend not to always give enough to best help students succeed in school, sometimes leading them with shoddy classrooms, shared uniforms, or poorly conditoned books. The wealthier people make millions of dollars, all of which they definitely do not need. Their money alone could bring the school system to a surplus; their money alone could keep the system afloat. They are sometimes outside of the politics, the beauracracy, the counterproduction that these kind of machines bring with them. Sometimes I wish I had the money just so I could put a smile on the children’s faces when they hear they can take a field trip to a new place and explore, when they have the materials to feel like they can succeed, when they actually feel that other people care about what they’re doing. Life isn’t all about money, but when you’re trying to fund programs, it becomes important to have it. It buys the best equipment, and more importantly, the time of the most inspirational people. In the end, the money is the instrumental value that allows the children to be instilled with the intrinsic power of good teaching, coaching, and role modeling.
I really do hope that Boston can regain some prestige in their athletic department. This is the first part of a seven part article on the Globe, and I look forward to the new updates.
UPDATE: Here are all the updates from the Globe’s report.
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