Sunday, June 27, 2010

Soccernomics and education

This book cover caught my eye as I was trawling the airport bookstores.  Made me reflect on rushing to print with prophecies and wish I was wearing that All White's T-Shirt  from Mr Vintage!  Australia -  king of the world's most popular sport?  History has told.
It's been a great couple of weeks of sport in New Zealand with successes in a number of codes. We can tell from the kids' blog posts that they have been captured by it, with many of them having all nighters watching sport on TV. You do have to wonder what the excitement over a series of draws tells us about the relative importance of soccer in our nation though.  The media and general public often give the All Blacks huge flak when they have had a win!  We expect them to win in style.  But our expectations for the All Whites are such that people are phoning in to talkback stations demanding a ticker-tape parade for some draws.
I know I am not the only one to draw comparisons between our expectations in sport and education.  We like to think in our Manaiakalani schools (all decile 1a) that we are not satisfied with a draw - which to us is getting our students to the national norms.  We want the wins! That's going to keep us busy a while longer.

2 comments:

  1. I am not a big soccer fan; however this post was very educational to those who watch the game and me. The book gave different stats on the teams in the tournaments. The book cover was very eye catching. If you never like soccer it made you think you did. I agree with you, Learning is part of a student’s daily life and it will always be used in all aspects. Education is a conceptual framework it embody certain values and process. Let’s think about this, industries uses amusing slogans and catchy musical advertisement or phrases to get the consumer attention. Why not try the same concept in the classroom with our students? To keep us busy a while long we must compete with everything out there that has our student’s attention.

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  2. @Della I have appreciated reading your perspectives on my recent posts. I think what you have to say about lessons from industry is very important. We have used the work of Saatchi and Saatchi to influence a lot of what we do in teaching and learning with our students. The concept of sisomo is very timely for schools and teachers and we have tried to build sight, sound and motion into as many of our learning experiences as we can. I think high school teachers in particular who use the slogans and jingles idea you mentioned really capture student interest and facilitate learning.

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