by David Morris
No pass no play is one of those things, at first we are shocked by how horrible it is, but then after a few decades we start to get used to its odious stench. Long ago, when Reagan was sucking the education system dry to give money to terrorists in Afganistan fighting the Soviets, an elixar salesmen named Ross Perot came up with what he said was a solution to the “real problem” with Texas schools. The monstrocity of No Pass No Play was invented , and a collosal war of egos ensued between the right-wing crackpot who headed EDS and a coterie of right-wing crackpots who had coached championship high-school football teams. The nutcase from Texarcana won the war, and everyone who was at the periphery of the education system was now forced to get their self-esteem from other places. Some joined gangs, some got pregnant at 15 and some went on school shooting rampages. Perhaps with the election of W. Bush we may see educational failures move toward more ambitioius social ills, like cocaine addiction and war crimes against Iraqi children.
No Pass No Play was actually part of a bevy of Texas reforms started during the 1980’s that had much bluster and no research to support them. The idea was that if we could just criminalize accademic failure, people would try harder and vault into acheivement. At the same time, the standardized tests were gaining ground tumerously sucking time and recources away from the rest of school, what we naive bystanders call “teaching.”
An appalling change in the attitude towards children has taken place in the last 100 years. Long ago, we thought of children as people, not future workers or bystanders in a process towards giving a school “exemplary” ratings. We justified football or drama because they were fun. Alas, the new f-word is now seen as unneccesary on these times. We understood that sometimes one student might not do as well as another, and there were reasons for that, and you didn’t bring out the whips and the chains because a child wasn’t learning.
This is not to say that we should never reform education. Its good to lower class sizes and change schools to adapt to children with learning disabilities. But you didn’t criminalize the “dummys”. (Not that we ever did that in a totally fair way, when shall our current president, Mr. ‘is our children learning’ going to recieve 40 to life?)
They evidence of No Pass No Play’s failure is so obvious its not worth debating. Are kids who get bad grades really doing it because they are insolent and needing a spanking from the schools?
Granted, there is an argument to be advocated by the Devil here: Perhaps, one might say, the idea of being a high acheiver is considered “uncool” in certain poor urban neighborhoods. So now the school steps in and decides to make it “cool” by attaching football playing time to passing grades.
The problem is, No Pass No Play is not a measure designed to help the top 20% of accademia, but merely to attack the bottom 20% of accademia. While it is often true that some schools have a social structure which enforces a nerd penalty, there is no place on earth where being the stupidest in a group is considered as a key to popularity. If a person is in the bottom 20% of an educational group, then the best we can do is give them more resources and hope they do better. But there will always be a bottom 20%. Why make it so harsh and difficult?
A certain right-wing junta atmosphere will always attempt to infect our educational system and every level of our government. As liberals we can
try to vaccinate democracy with the truth.