His education had been neither scientific nor classical—merely “Modern.” The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by: and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour to help him. He was a man of straw, a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge (he had always done well on Essays and General Papers) and the first hint of a real threat to his bodily life knocked him sprawling. - C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
Thinking of high-school, perhaps one might add music and team athletics to the possibilities. Both demand a lot of personal discipline and duty to the team. There are standards to meet. The unsuspecting student may find himself cultivating self-control, loyalty, and an appreciation for skill, and perhaps other virtues as well. When I was in school I, good at neither instruments nor sports, thought them extraneous to education. I've changed my mind since.
I only just noticed: in the story Mark (the character described above) is given a job as a newspaper columnist--a position whose practitioners often seem to know even less than reporters.
Another point about music and sports is that our childhood fantasies of future stardom are usually just that. Most of us are just ordinary, and engaging in music and sports help us accept that. They also teach us that accomplishment comes only with putting in the practice time.
ReplyDeleteMore than adult-supervised sports, kids' pick-up teams help teach self-governance. Kids set up the rules and enforce them. As one is going to be playing the next day or week with the same crowd, one implicitly learns to play fair. If you don't play fair, there are at least 2 possible consequences: the same will happen to you, or you won't be invited back. (The neighbor who killed his wife over an alleged infidelity had shown his bad temper years before in pickup soccer games.)
At a time when there was little joy in my life, becoming one of a gang that played sports every day- even football in the snow- returned a spark to my life. While I never was on a college team, I found that running 3-5 miles helped clear my mind to resume studying. Ditto for playing high school sports.
In high school I followed a certain college basketball team because a friend had a cousin who was a second stringer on its basketball team. The BB team was a good one, winning the conference most years, but this was not in the big-time college sports world. Student athletes were just that. BB starters graduated, and with real majors: English, History, even Engineering. Decades later I looked up, via the college BB website, how they had fared in life. A high proportion of them became fairly high-powered business executives. I surmise that their basketball life helped them in the business world. Such as prioritizing, as they juggled sports and studies. Such as teamwork. Such as leading.
On the other hand, there were the brothers who were stars on my high school teams. They went on to become 2-sport members of the sports hall of fame at the college they attended. They became high school coaches. Sometimes a rose is just a rose.