The company I work for has been strapped for space lately. So, to alleviate the problem, they've resorted to leasing some office buildings away from the main campus. I now work in a building that is near a park that has several baseball fields, which double as football fields in the fall.
I often work until 8 or 9 o'clock on weeknights, in fact, I rarely leave before 6 o' clock. Every single week night, those fields are jammed with people watching their kids playing sports. I've often left after 9 or 10 o'clock and they're still going full guns!
Part of the justification for this obsession with sports? To keep kids off of drugs.
The school district I live in also spent nearly a million dollars on a sports stadium that regularly is submerged under the spring floods.
Stadium as it normally appears
Same stadium after the June 2006 flood
Too much emphasis on sports, not enough emphasis on studying, is partly to blame for plummetting test scores.
I fellow I worked with several weeks ago, who is also Indian, told me that in his native country, children often go to tutors and stay up half the night studying. There, of course, high schools are private and getting into the right school has a great effect on the type of job you eventually get.
Of course, if a kid's parents expect him or her to do their homework and to be in bed by 9 o'clock on a school night, there will be little chance for them to do drugs, IMO.
I've argued for private schools, and I still believe that's part of the answer. But, to paraphrase the Bard, "the fault is not in our schools, but in ourselves".
I often work until 8 or 9 o'clock on weeknights, in fact, I rarely leave before 6 o' clock. Every single week night, those fields are jammed with people watching their kids playing sports. I've often left after 9 or 10 o'clock and they're still going full guns!
Part of the justification for this obsession with sports? To keep kids off of drugs.
The school district I live in also spent nearly a million dollars on a sports stadium that regularly is submerged under the spring floods.
Stadium as it normally appears
Same stadium after the June 2006 flood
Too much emphasis on sports, not enough emphasis on studying, is partly to blame for plummetting test scores.
I fellow I worked with several weeks ago, who is also Indian, told me that in his native country, children often go to tutors and stay up half the night studying. There, of course, high schools are private and getting into the right school has a great effect on the type of job you eventually get.
Of course, if a kid's parents expect him or her to do their homework and to be in bed by 9 o'clock on a school night, there will be little chance for them to do drugs, IMO.
I've argued for private schools, and I still believe that's part of the answer. But, to paraphrase the Bard, "the fault is not in our schools, but in ourselves".
