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Pay to play for student athletes - how stupid can we get?
(April 2005)

If this sounds like an angry editorial, it is. Some school districts in 34 of our states insist that students pay from $50 to more than $500 in order to be allowed to play various sports and participate in other extracurricular activities - the more sports or other activities, the more you pay. In some cases, the total for three extracurricular activities in a school year could cost more than $1,000. The predictable result is that many students reduce or eliminate their participation.

This is the culmination of several decades of persistent undercutting of spending on our local schools - communities vote down school funding and states, as well as the federal government, refuse to provide adequate support.

So, now, we will have more young people with inadequate involvement in extracurricular activities that they find exciting and satisfying. That means more time to do very little and, as a result, be bored and restless. Some are going to become easy prey for drug-using peer groups; others will get involved with peer groups carrying out anti-social activities.

Extracurricular activities are often as important as the curriculum itself. They prepare young people for their subsequent adult lives. They can increase the chances for success in getting into colleges of their choice. They can be an antidote to the drug scene. Yet, increasingly, communities by their actions say, in essence, that they are of no real importance or are too expensive. Surely, it is true that schools and school boards sometimes make some bad choices or spend monies inefficiently. Although they are sometimes at fault, I place most of the blame on communities and government at all levels for lack of vision and inadequate support.

Everybody decries the drug scene and yet, inexplicably, these same people and politicians, while shouting to the skies about the horrors of drug use, short change our students, reduce their opportunities and, in so doing, guarantee an increase in boredom and resulting drug use. Additionally, these silly and counterproductive actions are likely to produce more young people who, lacking extracurricular activities, spend their time watching television, being sedentary, growing fat and becoming unhealthy.

How stupid can we be!?!