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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2005 > December > 12 > Entry
What educators can learn from football
Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach looks at a football field 100 yards long and 50 yards wide with 22 players bunched together and asked a simple question — why? Why not spread the players out, or maybe put everyone on one side of the field? Why not try to use all that open space in a way that has never been done before?
As I was reading Michael Lewis’ excellent profile of Leach in last week’s New York Times Magazine I couldn’t help think about some of the dramatic innovations in sports over the past 25 years.
It also made me wonder — where are the radical, breakthrough innovations in education? And what can we do to encourage fresh thinking educators to turn their classrooms upside down and find a completely novel approach, one that, like Leach’s approach to football, shakes up the status quo and makes everyone take notice, whether they like the new way or not?
Lewis’ story on Leach was last week in the Times magazine. This week, the magazine did it’s annual year in ideas issue, highlighting their picks for the most innovative and interesting ideas of 2005, everything from ergomorphic footwear to the urine powered battery.
I see a parallel between sports like football and basketball, which strategically were each largely static for decades until the 1990s, and classroom teaching.
My close friends all know about my interest in the basketball innovations of Pete Carril, Princeton University’s coach for 30 years until he retired in 1996. I grew up in Princeton and watched from the stands year after year as Carril took basic basketball concepts and applied them in a new way that, especially over the last decade, has changed the way the game is played.
Even if you’re not a big sports fan, hang with me for a minute.
In the early 1980s, basketball strategy was tilted toward the inside game, with the idea that getting bigger and taller players and crushing all the action in close to the basket would be the best way to score. At Princeton, Carril’s players were not as tall and quick, so he found a different way to look at the game.
Carril spread the players out and created an offense that emphasized precision in passing, shooting and dribbling. In his view, a 15-foot shot by a good shooter who was wide open was just as good a bet as a 2-foot shot by a gigantic tall guy with three defenders banging against him. His approach emphasized smarts, allowing players to “read” their defender’s posture and react to it in the flow of the game, instead of sticking to rigidly scripted plays.
When he retired, Carril got hired on as an NBA assistant with the Sacramento Kings. That team’s success with his spread-out, precision-based offense has led other teams to try it. In the process, it’s made basketball a more wide open game, which is more fun to watch.
Leach is doing something similar with football at Texas Tech. These are big changes that took edgy innovators to think up. And it was only in the small outposts like Texas Tech and Princeton, where an absence of top talent made a strategic advantage especially useful, that this could really fly.
Which brings me back to education. Most mainstream schools don’t reward innovation. On the contrary, it’s often punished. Principals and superintendents generally don’t like to rock the boat. They want to give parents what they are expecting, which is the same classroom routine they remember from when they were kids.
I don’t think there has been a comparably radical idea in teaching that’s gone mainstream in the way Carril and Leach were able to show off their approaches, which led other to adopt them. Do you know of one? Please post a comment and tell us about it.
Charter schools were supposed to be laboratories for innovation, and some are. There are a couple of examples in Dayton of charter that really do look t the world differently. But most of the charters I know really aren’t radically different. They often use the same off-the-shelf curriculum and tried-and-true teaching methods as regular public schools.
We’re entering into an exciting time in which technology and other new tools provide the opportunity for big change. I’d love to see teaching changed and improved the way basketball and football have been. But what will it take to encourage out-of-the-box thinking?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, Sports and Athletics, Teaching and Learning
Comments
By Rick
December 12, 2005 5:10 PM | Link to this
Neither the human mind nor human nature have changed. What we need to do is use various time tested methods and adopt technology to them. Technology should never be the master. We also need to reject failed methodologies.By Mary
December 12, 2005 4:07 PM | Link to this
When as many resources (including money) and attention are devoted to the classrooms and education by the educational leadership as they devote to football and basketball, we will see educational improvements and innovations. Right now, resources are drained from the classroom to the athletic arenas at the K-12 and college level driving up the cost of education and classrooom sizes at all levels. Contrary to popular myth, these ativities do not really pay for themselves. The public is being mislead.