Monthly Archives: February 2014

An Olympic Observation

I read and enjoy Seth Godin’s blog nearly every day and have read a few of his books, I think he’s smart and prolific. This week, he posted about the Olympics and surprised me a little. Not with the fact that it may be time for the model to change, I could support that. It’s his opening phrase that threw me a little “I confess that I don’t watch the Olympics…” I guess he’s busier or cooler than me because my family has watched every night of prime time coverage and DVR’d some things as well. Heck, I even ordered an upgraded cable package so we could see more Olympics coverage on the “Networks of NBC.”

As we look ahead to the closing ceremonies, here are five observations and their corresponding hashtags from two weeks of winter Olympics coverage:

  • I viewed the results online before watching nearly every event covered in prime time. Does that make we weird? It was hard not to pay attention to all the headlines during the day and wait for prime time TV. I didn’t share what I knew with others so as to ruin their experience like my son did one night. My wife and daughter were settled in on the couch with popcorn with hope to see the first women’s bobsledding medal for the U.S. in like a hundred years. In seeing this when my son came around the corner, he looked up at the TV and said, “oh cool, they get silver.” #Spoiled
  • It’s hard to have a daughter who is interested in sports. The Olympics are one of the only times you can watch girls participate in sports at a high level. My son also likes sports and because of cable television, there is literally always a game on. Often my daughter hears sports on television and comes around the corner only to be disappointed to see Sports Center or the PGA, NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, etc. Not during these two weeks, there are girls on TV participating and winning medals! You can debate whether luge or ice dancing or sitting in the back of a bobsled is a sport but because of them, girls are on TV and the front page of the newspaper and that doesn’t happen every day. #Roar
  • The pressure on athletes at an event that only happens every four years is incredible. It’s not just the fact that years of preparation, perhaps your life’s dream, comes down to a hundredth of a second or less. It’s also quotes from people who didn’t succeed that I heard in almost every sport, “You know it’s (fill in the sport), and anything can happen.” Some competitors like our our ice dancers Davis and White, practiced together for 17 years and finally won gold. Skaters and snowboarders fell and skiers and sliders lost by a hundredth of a second. But, some athletes proved that it wasn’t about medaling but more about just being there. One great example of the spirit of some of these athletes is a skier named Heidi Kloser, who fell in a qualifying run, asked her parents if she was still an Olympian, and limped her way through the opening ceremony. It almost makes me cry just writing about it. #Winner.
  • Sports with judges, not clocks or scoreboards, are really hard to watch. In several events, points are awarded based on your ability to complete tricks or “required elements” and controversy nearly always ensues. Figure skating is the toughest to watch. The judges are anonymous and the competitors are all amazing but as someone who knows nothing about the sport, it seems crazy to me. Though I’m not sure that it’s worth conspiracy theories about countries trading points with each other but who knows right?  Either way, the Russians won a team gold and a ladies figure skating gold and the U.S. won ice dancing and those who didn’t win complained about the scoring system. I was even more struck by the post-race “adjustments” to times in long track skating that initially showed one competitor winning gold but then another. #Fishy
  • What does a silver medal mean? Is it second place or is it an amazing achievement? I’d like to close with two examples in women’s sports that I will certainly highlight for my daughter. The U.S. women’s hockey team had a great tournament and was beating their arch-rival from Canada for the gold but then lost in overtime. Sure, they were disappointed to lose the game but was it this bad? On the other side of the medal, a little known skeleton racer from Utah named Noelle Pikus-Pace battled incredible adversity after finishing fourth in Vancouver to even make it to Sochi where she accomplished her Olympic dream by winning a silver medal and wearing it so proudly. #Class

Thank god for school projects

I know, a lot of parents actually dread it when their kids come home with big projects from school. Just like the class from Christmas Story groans when their teacher says those dreaded words, “I want you to write a theme.” But, I just survived two big class projects, History Day in middle school and the Science Fair in elementary school. I supposed I could fault the school district for assigning both of these projects at the same time or say what most parents said when I saw them at the school after all the projects were done, “thank god it’s over.” That would be a little too easy though, right? Say what you want about American public education. My daughter’s 5th grade teacher, who is in his first year, says that today’s 5th graders are covering the content that he learned in 7th grade. I’d probably stretch that out a few more years because I’m older than he is. Do you believe the comparisons to other industrialized nations that say we’re falling behind? Maybe that’s because we over-emphasize extra-curricular activities? The high school my kids will attend actually sponsors 30 sports and probably twice as many activities. They don’t have a high school alpine ski team or jazz band in Indonesia for example but they are the happiest school kids in the world. Check out this study published in the December issue of the Atlantic which draws a reverse correlation between happiness in school and how are good you are at math. Did you see the best country in the world at math – Korea – also the most unhappy. The U.S. was much closer to Korea on the list than Indonesia. I’m sure we still need more focus on STEM – science technology engineering and math – so that would make me favor the science fair over history day.

 

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But I’m here to advocate for them both. Kids need to learn how to learn, that’s why projects like these are important. My son studied World War II but he researched an often forgotten aspect of it – the fact that the U.S. put Japanese Americans in internment camps because we were afraid of them after their country bombed Pearl Harbor. He learned that a young man named Fred Korematsu actually fought the U.S. government and lost. He also learned how to work with two other kids on this project. They actually let other kids do their projects by themselves, which I think should be penalized. They also let some kids’ parents do their projects for them but whatever. The bottom line is that my son learned something and taught me something. And, when it was over, he was happy.

 

 

 

ImageMy daughter learned the scientific process. She wrote a hypothesis, which she proved wrong. She ran an experiment and documented the results and told her story to lots of other kids and parents in a packed elementary school gym. She learned something and taught me something. And, when it was over, she was happy.

 

So, thank god for school projects and for kids learning. Not learning how to take tests or score better against other countries. Learning how to learn and then being happy when they are done.