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On this cool autumn night, the slow, steady drizzle steams in halos around luminous globes mounted high on telephone poles. The rain casts an almost iridescent glow on the field so that I cannot help but think of the words of Psalm 23, “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.” The two teams line the edge of the field, the gleam on their maroon and red helmets reflecting the inner pride and passion of these boy-men who their headgear like Roman centurions. The hair cheerleaders carefully labored over so each strand held transcendental meaning is already plastered to their heads, held in place only by ribbons matching their school colors. In the metal bleachers, whole families in rain jackets, slickers and wool hunting coats all face the flag at the end of the field which can only weakly flutter as it soaks up the falling drops. When the first notes of the Star-Spangled Banner cut through the air hands involuntarily move to chests with the only salute I know that projects a truly democratic fealty and loyalty.
It is Friday night across America’s heartland, these fields of dreams shattered and fulfilled, each blade of grass the keeper of memories that lie in trophy cases, leather sleeved jackets still hanging in closets, and the stories that have woven through barbershops, cafes, and bars for generations. These fuel the night’s anticipation as the last chords of the anthem drift across the darkness. Everyone believes this night will be one to add to the legends that are the Iliads and Odysseys of so many small towns.
But this Friday night is woven of fragile, even tattered threads. Football, which many see as a metaphor for America has a story to tell beyond touchdown passes, kickoff returns and tackles that crack in the night like gunshots. The story it tells is one about two Americas: one that lives as much on television screens as it does in reality; another that is struggling just stay in the game. Football is an expensive sport from the uniforms and practice equipment like blocking sleds to maintaining the field to the ever-increasing cost of insurance. Some school boards are whispering the unthinkable or combining their programs with communities that used to be arch rivals. In some inner city schools, there is no more football to speak of.
But at newly built suburban megaschools and elite private schools unbound by eligibility rules, the football program is an all-to-visible badge of their elite status. Every state has such programs with state-or-the-art weight rooms, sideline headphones and laptop computers that have crunched every possible number about the opposing team complete with film illustrations. There is little to distinguish these teams from bowl-bound college powerhouses–in fact a few actually offer more perks than an NCAA investigator would permit. Some elite high school teams don’t even lower themselves to play former in-state rivals but put together schedules that have them traveling the country along with Texas, Ohio State and USC. In Sports Illustrated I saw a photograph of a high school weight room in Plano, Texas that rivals that of my local Big Ten powerhouse. A perennial state power near where I live sports a domed practice field, while another used its booster club’s six figure fund to help hire one of the winningest coaches in the state with an offer he could not refuse. The same district also hired a speech teacher who had filled his school’s trophy case with prize-winning plays and musicals and even sent students to Broadway.
When I was head of a national school reform group I was treated to tours of some of these facilities and soon learned to gauge a school’s financial health by the state of its football program. Big time football schools also had state of the art recording studios and computer labs many colleges would envy. I had lunch with a school technology specialist in Washington state who had moved directly from Renton and brought with them a version of Windows NT that many corporations had not seen. At another school I stood in the middle of a training lab that resembled nothing so much as the deck of the Starship Enterprise. In Vermont I helped to put together the first online school board meeting. Yet in the rural, inner city and tribal schools I visited it is fair to say the entire budgets of those schools probably were less than the extracurricular budgets of the elite.
Football is a symbol for American education, but not the way many like to think of it. It quite visibly testifies to the ever-growing resource gap between the haves and the have-nots. Parents who can see this vote with their feet, leaving the poorer districts in even more dire straights. Those inequities have only grown during the Counterrevolution with its budget cuts and mandatory testing, all fueled by parents who have abandoned their dreams but now project them on their kids who claw over one another for that Division One athletic scholarship or the full ride to the Ivy League.
American education now is two cultures forming a fork in the road leading in entirely different directions. If educational equity is one of democracy’s cornerstones, it is in danger of becoming extinct. The Counterrevolution has buried it under a concerted effort to bleed public education as it has bled so many other social programs. In the future the GOP promises vouchers that fund the Ayatollah Academies of the likes of Jerry Falwell. Imagine Jesus Camp for twelve years.
While the bloggers rant about the war, education is being cut off at the knees. Maybe the children of these limousine liberals will buy their way into Harvard, but for my kid and your kid the options are narrowing every day. This country could be dead in the water not because some fool with a head full of drugs and dreams of martyrdom flies a plane into a skyscraper, but because our growing educational inequity will destroy us from within.
And so saying a prayer while looking on a football game this Friday night does not seem so far-fetched. For some students, like some teams, that is all they have.
Technorati Tags: high school football, Education, Republican, Iliad, Republican Counterrevolution, Eduction Inequities, unequal education, Football as metaphor, Ohio State, Psalm 23, A Football Prayer
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