{"id":111,"date":"2014-02-08T16:07:58","date_gmt":"2014-02-08T21:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/?p=111"},"modified":"2015-02-02T23:05:43","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T04:05:43","slug":"111","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/2014\/02\/111\/","title":{"rendered":"MEDIA BLACKOUT"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Will Fitzhugh<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The Concord Review<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
8 February 2014<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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In the United States, our media are not allowed to report on or discuss exemplary student academic achievement at the high school level<\/b>. For example, in the \u201cAthens of America,\u201d The Boston Globe <\/i>has more than 150 full pages each year on the accomplishments of high school athletes, but only one page a year on academics\u2014a full page with the photographs of valedictorians at the public high schools in the city, giving their name, their school, their country of origin (often 40% foreign-born) and the college they will be going to.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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The reasons for this media blackout<\/b> on good academic work by students at the secondary level are not clear, apart from tradition, but while high school athletes who \u201csign with\u201d a particular college are celebrated in the local paper, and even on televised national high school games, the names of Intel Science Talent Search winners, of authors published in The Concord Review<\/i>, and of other accomplished high school scholars may not appear in the paper or on television.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Publicity offers encouragement for the sorts of efforts we would like our HS students to make. We naturally publicize high school athletic achievements and this helps to motivate athletes to engage in sports. By contrast, when it comes to good academic work, we don’t mention it, so perhaps we want less of it?\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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One senior high school history teacher has written that \u201cWe actually hide academic excellence from the public eye\u00a0because that will single out some students and make others \u2018feel bad.\u2019\u201d<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Does revealing excellence by high school athletes make some other athletes or scholar-athletes or high school scholars feel bad? How can we tolerate that? I know there are some Progressive secondary schools which have eliminated academic prizes and honors, to spare the feelings of the students who don\u2019t get them, but I don\u2019t see that they have stopped keeping score in school games, no matter how the losers in those contests may feel.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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SAMPLE MEDIA COVERAGE OF HS ATHLETES<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Atlanta Journal-Constitution<\/i>\u2019s Signing Day\u00a0Central\u2014By Michael Carvell<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

11:02 am Wednesday, February 5th, 2014<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWelcome to the AJC\u2019s Signing day Day Central. This is the place to be to catch up with all the <\/i>recruiting<\/i> information with UGA, Georgia Tech and recruits from the state of Georgia. We will <\/i>update<\/i> the news as it happens, and interact on the message board below.<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

University of Georgia\u2019s TOP TARGETS FOR WEDNESDAY\u2026AND RESULTS<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Lorenzo Carter, DE, 6-5, 240, Norcross:\u00a0UGA reeled in the big fish, landing the state\u2019s No.1 overall prospect for the first time since 2011 (Josh Harvey-Clemons). \u00a0 Isaiah McKenzie, WR, 5-8, 175, Ft. Lauderdale (Fla.) American Heritage:\u00a0This was one of two big surprises for UGA to kick off signing day<\/span><\/a>. McKenzie got a last-minute offer from UGA and picked the Bulldogs because of his best buddy and high school teammate, 5-star\u00a0Sony Michel\u00a0(signed with UGA). \u00a0 Hunter Atkinson, TE, 6-6, 250, West Hall: The Cincinnati commit got a last-minute call from Mark Richt and flipped to UGA<\/span><\/a>. I\u2019m not going to say we saw it coming, but \u2026 Atkinson had grayshirt offers from Alabama, Auburn and UCF. \u00a0 Tavon Ross, S, 6-1, 200, Bleckley County:\u00a0The Missouri commit took an official visit to UGA but decided to stick with Missouri. He\u2019s signed. \u00a0 Andrew Williams, DE, 6-4, 247, ECLA:\u00a0He signed with Auburn over Clemson and Auburn. He joked with Auburn\u2019s\u00a0Gus Malzahn\u00a0when he called with the news, saying \u201cI\u2019m sorry to inform you\u2026.. That I will be attending your school,\u201d according to 247sports.com<\/span><\/a>\u2019s Kipp Adams. \u00a0 Tyre McCants, WR-DB, 5-11, 200, Niceville, Fla.:\u00a0Turned down late interest from UGA to sign with USF.\u201d<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, of course, in the coverage of high school athletes that goes on during the year. I hope readers will email me any comparable examples of the celebration of exemplary high school academic work that they can find in the media in their community, or in the nation generally.<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cTeach by Example\u201d<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
Will Fitzhugh [founder]<\/div>\n
The Concord Review<\/i>\u00a0[1987]<\/div>\n
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]<\/div>\n
National Writing Board [1998]<\/div>\n
TCR Institute [2002]<\/div>\n
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24<\/div>\n
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA<\/div>\n
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007<\/div>\n
www.tcr.org<\/a><\/span>;\u00a0fitzhugh@tcr.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
Varsity Academics\u00ae<\/div>\n
tcr.org\/bookstore<\/a><\/div>\n
www.tcr.org\/blog<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Will Fitzhugh The Concord Review 8 February 2014 \u00a0 \u00a0 In the United States, our media are not allowed to report on or discuss exemplary student academic achievement at the high school level. For example, in the \u201cAthens of America,\u201d … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,31,32,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college-prep","category-education-policy-2","category-k-12","category-will-fitzhugh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113,"href":"https:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonpartisaneducation.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}