I knew I’d go to Jefferson High School. I didn’t have a choice and I was okay with that.
My friends and I walked a few blocks each Friday to Kingston Stadium to see the J-Hawk football team compete. At Christmas, my mom would take us to the school’s show choir performance each year.
So, by my freshman year I knew the rhythm of the school fight song, owned more Columbia blue (our team’s colors) than any other shade and had memories of the players on the “Hall of Fame” just outside of the gymnasium.
I always belonged to Jefferson’s community, and, long before I was an actual student there. I was proud to be included.
Today, though, my kids wouldn’t understand the same sense of community. Sure, I take them to games at the local high school and an occasional play in the auditorium, but they do not have the same sense of communal pride that accompanies a big win on the field or standing ovation from the crowd.
Like many of their friends, my kids are free agents – during this time of year, every year.
I hate it.
Each March as we begin the annual family ritual of planning for next year’s sports and school activities I feel this way. The process, to me, should be simple – my kids should play and learn in the community where we live. In practice, though, the choices aren’t so easy.
Kids as School Free Agents
This year I have another 5th grader, adding a vetting process for the middle school my son, Lynden, will attend to my to-do list.
For us, this decision isn’t one, really – Lynden’s brother already goes to the local school so he’ll follow. For most of his classmates and friends, though, the process isn’t as easy.
Some of Lynden’s classmates will be attend the “Gifted School” in an adjacent town about 5 miles away. Others have elected to take a bus to a charter school several more miles to the south. A few others will go to a private, faith-based school that is nearby.
One things is certain, the room of familiar faces that surround him today will be divided into, at least, three groups next school year.
But, alas, 5th graders aren’t the only young people making such choices at this very time. Graduating 8th graders are now selecting their high schools of choice – primarily, I think, based on specialized programs and/or opportunities to earn early college credits. This tells me that the familiar faces in the halls of 8th grade will splinter in all directions, yet again.
The results of these years of division is a divided community of kids and parents. And, whether in middle or high school, forced and premature decisions made my kids who could care less – even with good intentions – are the jack hammers of communal withering.
Unfortunately, parents are providing access to the power tools in the shed.
Kids as Sports Free Agents
Not only does Lynden have middle school to worry about, competitive soccer tryouts will soon be here. And, because your kid will make a team if you’re able to pay, every kid is a free agent for every team to lure during tryouts.
There are few teams whose players and parents stick together and, as a result, each spring ushers in a dog show-like parade of parents and their little Pele’s attending multiple tryouts to assess the best coaching fit and their son or daughter’s best opportunity to grow.
This exercise has led our family to three clubs in five years of competitive soccer play. Spoiler alert – they are all pretty similar and, at the end of the day, Lynden only really wants to play with this friends.
But, this repeated, annual process has the friends he covets now spread all over the county and playing under varying levels of commitment and costs.
With each move we’ve made, Lynden’s yearning to play with his friends has not changed. Two things have changed, though, (a) the faces of the kids and coaches on the sidelines, and (b) Lynden’s diminishing perception of loyalty as a defining characteristic of virtuous people and communitities.
Whether in school or sport, the free agent existence that parents, like me, are feeding each spring is killing our kids sense of community, collaboration and friendship.
But, as much as that torments me, I’m left in a tough position, asking;
“If I refuse to participate and leave my son on the same team and make him a attend our zoned school, am I holding him back?”
I wrestle with that question a lot – too much and too often for my taste.
What can be done?
Parents are not powerless to stop his communal upheaval and, to me, the solution is easy – bedded in the use of “No.”
No, in this context, applies not to our kids, but to the organizations that are forcing us to make such decisions.
No to the too-expensive soccer clubs with far too much bureaucracy.
No to the dance teams that require weekly travel that makes a five day school week challenging.
No to the school-sponsored academic programs that force a 13 year-old to pick a major that obligates her to attend a particular school.
Like the anti-drug campaigns of the past, we should “just say no.”
If parents told school and sports “No”, so many energy-sucking drains are eliminated.
No more multiple sports tryouts, painstaking admission processes and wasted money buying equipment for a team our kids won’t make.
Our kids go to local schools where parents demand the best because there is no other choice.
Our children play sports with their friends – and LOVE it again.
The kids that will become future doctors, lawyers, teachers and engineers will not have to decide to as they enter the 9th grade.
And, in doing all of this, my community is resurrected, my kids are happier and my March calendar is suddenly wide open.
The time is right to end free agency and, truly, spring ahead.
I totally agree!