Activities are not measured by "good enough"

Continuing with my close reading of "17 Reasons Football is Better Than High School," I am moving to Reason #2: In football, teenagers are encouraged to excel. 

This is clearly true in many performance-based activities, as coaches, peers and audiences may find themselves surprised by the student doing something unexpected or with unexpected skill.

In most standard academic areas a student does well enough for an A, and that is that. Students meet predetermined standards and they have proven their competence. The course is completed. The unit is over. The test has been finished. Now students move on to another predetermined set of requirements.

In football, there is no such thing as "good enough." Coaches congratulate players, and they may enjoy the adulation of fans, but then it's back to the practice field where they are encouraged to do even more, to be even better. 

In football, merely winning the contest is not the bottom line. It is quite common for an athlete to reflect on a performance and find that the result was lucky or the team won but the athlete did not perform "perfectly" or up to a standard.

In most performance activities, coaches, directors, advisers, etc., push students to constantly improve. As media advisers, we expect reporting and writing and design to be clearly better later in the year than those were early in the year. This is NOT true for, say, a New York Times reporter, who is expected to be functioning at the top of her game every day, every story. But I also note that professional development never stops, with feedback from editors and consultants... and opportunities to be recognized for truly excellent work in numerous awards competitions.

If a student scores a perfect mark on some test, like the ACT, that signifies an end to that activity. Why would a kid ever try that again? But a running back who scores three TDs in a game doesn't simply stop playing the sport.

The academic world claims to be encouraging students to excel, of course, but only to the level prescribed for that age group or class. If a kid gets every question right on some quiz, there is nothing more to do. In fact, most students would be upset to find that after acing the test, the teacher hands them more work to do, more challenges. A lot of school is completing requirements.

But a football player never can play a "perfect" game... and no one can even define what perfection might mean in athletics or editorial writing or singing the lead role in the musical. 

It is quite common to watch a performance and think, "That student really surprised me there. I had no idea that she could do that or I had never seen that particular action or interpretation before."

Most of school is about showing teachers (and the community) that students know the "right" answer.

Football is about striving for some undefinable excellence. Football also includes opponents who are also striving for that essence of success, providing context beyond a rubric or score sheet.

Reason #2 is a reminder that success in education is shown most clearly through demonstrations and performances, not through multiple choice tests.

And students are quite willing to take on the challenge of those performances, welcoming the extra pressure and the possibilities of failing. 

Failing is always a possibility in football or most any performance. In most classrooms, failing is disaster and some schools have basically created systems to avoid ever needing to fail a student. 

But players routinely miss tackles or blocks or drop passes. Even the stars.