WILL THE EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT HELP UNDO THE GLADIATOR ECONOMY, OR PERPETUATE IT?

At the writing of my most recent previous post on the gladiator economy,  there was still uncertainty about whether the professional basketball playoffs would continue.  As of now, the games are about to resume, although the pregame coverage I am listening to is more about the importance of the job action to the wider society than it is about matchups or the necessity of the Bucks finishing this round and moving on.

A coaching acquaintance from long ago alerted me to an essay by Washington State deputy athletics director Bryan B. Blair that, while notionally about the value of diversity and inclusion, really says the quiet parts about the gladiator economy out loud.

My mom made sure I was in the “gifted & talented” or honors classes all the way from middle school until high school. Being the only or one of a few minorities in those settings provided a daily lesson on how different my world was growing up compared to my white classmates. Over the years, I learned how to navigate that experience, and unfortunately learned how to cope with the feelings of isolation and loneliness that came with it. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized the racial and socioeconomic disparities that led to me being one of those few.

Put another way, had he been among the run-of-the-halls students picked last for basketball, he might still have found an opportunity to shine as a mathematician or musician or scholar of German, even though he might still think of himself as on the outside.  But he showed a talent for sports, and that was where he found something in common with people of other backgrounds.

Where I grew up, the races were often separated, from where they lived to where they socialized. The one space everyone came together was sports! This reality clicked for me at an early age and remained with me as I entered a career in college athletics. Seeing people from all walks of life high fiving and hugging after a touchdown was a powerful sight. On those Saturdays in the fall, everyone of all colors, shapes and sizes comes together to worship in the house of football, but the next morning they often go to completely different churches on completely different sides of town.

Ultimately, my why is based on the transformative power of sports: its ability to unify diverse groups, to change the life of a young person that would never access higher education, but for, [c.q.] college athletics, and the way young people often look up to our athletes as quasi-superheroes.

It is to that "but for college athletics" that I wish to turn.  In the school he attended, it's likely that the students who were up to it could thrive in college mathematics, or music, or Germanic languages.  What, though, would be the fate of Toronto Raptor star Fred Van Vleet's less athletic classmates at Rockford Auburn be?  The school has a graduation rate of 63%, with a 42% chronic absenteeism rate, which in the sugar-coat-the-ills language of public instruction, qualifies it as a "comprehensive school," the category for any school among the lowest-performing five per cent of schools in Illinois, or any high school with a graduation rate less than 65%.  Among the academic performance indicators, some 23% of the students are proficient under the science assessment, whatever that is, and 43% of their graduates require remediation at community colleges.

I can't help but wonder if the weak academic performance of athletic powerhouse high schools contributes to the difficulty College Sports, Inc. has in diversifying the coaching and administrative ranks.

The thought that the only value a Black staff member has is recruiting, or any number of other roles that don’t typically advance to leadership positions, is problematic as it perpetuates a stereotype and demonstrates why we’ve made minimal progress between the percentages of Black athletes and the coaches and staff that serve them.

That, in a nutshell, is the gladiator economy. Recruit students from academically weak high schools, keep them eligible, get enough graduated to keep the academic progress rate above the sanctioning line, wish them well, but have those young women and men acquired the human capital to handle the logistics or the fund-raising or advocating before faculty or legislators?

Not if the curriculum directors have anything to do with it.  Apparently, when it comes to quantifying student capabilities, the mind-set parallels that of Our President when it comes to the Wuhan coronavirus: we have more cases because we do more testing.  (Pay attention, dear reader, he usually delivers that line in his best Borscht Belt oy vey, what can I say voice.)  On the other hand, if the administrators of the Madison schools think too many black students are being suspended, well, if you suspend fewer students, you're not reporting as many discipline problems.  Reality says otherwise.

Likewise, if you don't have many students reading or writing at grade level, simply treat the linguistic standards as arbitrary, and abolish them.

The statement argues that teachers should stop “telling Black students that they have to ‘learn standard English to be successful because that’s just the way it is in the real world.’ No, that’s not just the way it is; that’s anti-Black linguistic racism. Do we use this same fallacious, racist rhetoric with white students? Will using White Mainstream English prevent Black students from being judged and treated unfairly based solely on the color of their skin? Make it make sense.”

The document points out that “researchers, scholars, educators, and all everyday Black folx center Black Language on its unique philosophies and survivances of Black Life rather than on a set of linguistic departures from a fictional, white norm.”

It calls on teachers to “not dismiss Black Language simply as a dialect of English, and do not treat it as a static anachronism—it’s not a thing of the past, spoken only by Black people who are positioned in a ‘low’ or ‘working class.’ Recognize it as a language in its own right!”

I'd note that Mr Blair was able simultaneously to make his point that he was sometimes being judged on the basis of his skin color and to use mainstream English.  I'd also note that it's probably easier for a student who grew up hearing Black Language to code-shift into business English than it might be for a Rhinelander who grew up hearing German.

"Wall Street Institute" in Köln.  Grab shot, 3 September 2014.

That storefront language store just caught my eye, as I was walking from my hotel to the trolley stop in the hopes of working in a stop at the chocolate museum and then mach schnell to Bonn for the Beethoven sites and Remagen for the bridge.

Do these pedagogues of English really expect that employers currently expecting standard English of their employees will start doing business in Black Language, or auf Deutsch, simply to accommodate the new hires?  Rod Dreher is having none of it.

Think about those students, paying over $10,000 per year (I checked this university’s tuition) to be taught how to write good business and technical English, and instead getting this woke professor teaching them that anything goes, because antiracism. When these students apply for jobs, and it turns out that they can’t write standard English, they will not be hired — and whose fault will it be? Even the wokest businesses can’t afford to hire people who cannot write standard English. Those kids are being cheated out of the education they’re paying for.

This is happening at a big public university in a ruby-red state! If students get an A in this class, but end up unable to land or hold a job because they can’t write, they will be tempted to blame racism. They ought to blame their professor, and their university. This is infuriating. If that were me — or my kid — I would be writing to my state legislator. On the other hand — and this is where they get you — the student who wrote me is probably right that the professor would punish as a racist anyone who complained. The reader just wants to graduate and put this school in the rear view mirror. I don’t blame the student at all. But after the student gets that diploma, I hope he/she will write me back to remind me of this, and I’ll post the professor’s name, university, and the full statement. Students, prospective students, and the taxpayers of that state ought to know the fraud being perpetrated on that university’s students in the name of antiracism.

Not to mention, it's shifting the responsibility for teaching writing to the other academic departments, and it's likely reducing the pool of potential colleagues for Mr Blair.