SPECIAL REPORT : Coercion Claim at Dorsey High : COMMENTARY : Sad Truth Is That It Goes On All the Time
The sad thing about the story regarding some curious grade changes for a basketball player at Dorsey High School is that, if the allegations are true, it won’t surprise many people.
The Times, while satisfying a journalistic mandate that it be a watchdog, among other things, is merely putting into print an old story that many in sports know and talk about all the time.
If this case turns out to be the same old story, the elements are:
--Pressure by one adult teacher is brought to bear on another to keep a teenager playing basketball, even though his academic showing should not rightfully permit that.
--The adult teacher accused denies it. School officials side with the denials.
--The school’s image seems most protected and cherished when athletics are the issue, rather than schoolwork.
--And the defense of this cart-before-the-horse approach to education is, as it always seems to be, that it is justifiable because it goes on all the time and is justifiable because these kids would be out on the streets involved with drugs if they weren’t in sports.
Readers have heard all this before, both the story line and the defense. Reporting it is like writing that the Dodgers wore blue.
Yet, there should be some outrage. Somewhere. Sometime. By somebody. Maybe even by somebody who counts.
A young teacher, Mike Liskey, spoke out about something he says happened and he felt was wrong. An assistant principal in charge of athletics, James Alther, decided to take the situation seriously enough to investigate. Yet one would guess that neither will be greeted like a hero when school opens session again next week.
They should be.
Athletics on the high school level are supposed to be about learning. Matter of fact, everything on the high school level is supposed to be about learning.
But what is the lesson learned when continued athletic participation is allowed, even though the academic requirements established for that participation are apparently treated like a joke? The lesson is that adults, occasionally even those given a special public trust as educators, speak with forked tongues.
And who is the eventual victim of this faulty lesson? The student-athlete, of course, who very rightfully can feel that the most important knowledge he has acquired in school is not what is right or wrong, but what can be gotten away with. And how.
I suspect it is easier sitting in some high-rise building in downtown Los Angeles, typing words of great high moral and ethical fabric, than it is teaching 17-year-olds in South Central, or anywhere, for that matter. But as difficult as the educational mandate is in our schools, it is too important a mandate to shrug aside for the sake of a couple of basketball wins or a new trophy for the case.
If this story surprises nobody, that’s expected, although sad. If it triggers no response in all the educational quarters where such things should be sacred, then that’s even sadder.
