You’re wrong and strong, Oral Tracey
ORAL TRACEY’s most recent article raises an important point which is being ignored – a large number of our secondary-school students are not achieving their best, and they are allowed to travel on to the next stage of the conveyor belt of poor performance in a manner that suggests that it is okay.
However, where Mr Tracey goes wrong is in suggesting that because non-athletic students are not being held accountable (or at least we do not know if they are), then somehow we should be content to have students who cannot satisfy a minimum 40 per cent average requirement in secondary schools.
This is wrong, Mr Tracey, as you are really supporting a dumbing down of the system for our young people with their talent. A thinking player is a better player. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to accept that fact.
At the highest level of sports, talent is never enough, as you are placed in game situations where your ability to analyse a game is more crucial than your ability to hit a cricket ball out of the park. If you don’t believe me, ask the former West Indian fast bowler Tino Best.
A HIGHER STANDARD
Further, these student athletes are looking to compete on the international stage against players who have been taken through structured academy programmes, some of which have organised academic sessions for their young charges for the period prior to the person becoming a professional. They are not competing against themselves in the long run. They are competing against a standard that is higher than the low standard that Mr Tracey wants to set them.
Sports historians can provide us with the names of international personalities, all of whom have distinguished themselves in both sports and in the classroom. Mr Tracey, in his quest to retain his ‘Maverick’ title, has advanced an attractive but misleading argument, as we should be tired of seeing the same script.
Why not advance a doctrine where we encourage our students who compete on behalf of their schools to take advantage of the learning opportunities presented? This will only serve to enhance their game and, ultimately, make them more attractive. What sells better than success, Mr Tracey? Maybe a sex scandal, but only if it is about a successful person.
The capacity for our student athletes to be posed to different cultures is limited and so the best way for them to have their minds exposed is via education and any additional reading that they do. When you are at Barcelona’s academy, you are meeting youngsters from all over the world and this in itself is an education. We don’t have that in our system, and thus to support a student athlete going through school whilst not recognising the importance of academic part of his/her education is to rob the child of his/her right to a true fulfilment of potential.
Then, of course, Mr Tracey, with no empirical data for his views, says that the push to lift the standards of our student athletes is premised on some form of jealousy. He did not provide the empirical source for this rather curious view.
MATRICULATE INTO COLLEGE
I do not know about you, but I am tired of seeing talented student athletes being unable to matriculate into college and university because of the Tracey doctrine. That should not be, as being able to matriculate into a college is equally another phase of that athlete’s development. This is important in a country where our highest standard of football/cricket is still way off that of our competitors.
The Maverick is partially correct, as we should be concerned with the high failure rate in our secondary schools. However, in his attempt to bring about equality of treatment, he forgets the importance of having high standards and in advancing this view, I must make the point that I do not subscribe to the idea that all student athletes must become medical doctors, etc.
What I subscribe to is every student athlete being encouraged and supported to graduate with at least five passes in their final year external exams. The choice of subjects must be their business, having had guidance. To have it any other way is to sell them short. The Maverick, I am sure, does not want that.