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Ordinarily I love letters to the editor. But lately there has been a rash of letters, and comments in other places, on how "all we see in the newspaper are stories about the bad kids. We never hear about the good kids."
OK. As education editor for the Times-Union, I have a few things to say about that.
Just to see how many page one stories we print about "bad" kids, I looked at our Internet archives, which chronicle all the local stories we do on page one of each day's edition.
Going back to the first of September, the beginning of the school year, and counting only news stories - no sports or stories about school corporations - this is what I found: five page one stories showing kids in an unfavorable light. They were: Sept. 15 - "Student Sues To Fight Suspension" and its later companion piece of Nov. 20 - "Color Guard Practice OK, Not Competition"; Nov. 17 - "Wawasee Eighth Grader Faces Charges"; Oct. 5 - Suspect Leads Police On Chase, Crashes Car"; and Nov. 23 - "11-Year-Old Suspended For Threatening Teacher At Tippecanoe Valley."
So in three months we had five stories about kids doing not-so-good things.
In those same three months we had 15 page one stories on "good" kids, stories such as: Sept. 8 - "K21 Announces Scholarships"; Sept. 15 - photo of "Prayer at the Pole"; Sept. 22 - "Area Students Finalists In Merit Scholarships"; Oct. 11 - photo of "Young Authors Conference"; Nov. 9 - "Middle Schools Present Veterans Day Programs"; Nov. 12 - "Kennedy Carves His Niche At Grace"; and on and on.
Plus each week, a part of Tuesday's regular edition is delivered free to many non-subscribers in the county. That section contains at least four, usually more, pages that feature almost all news and photos of local students. In fact, we are probably one of the few newspapers around to print individual names of all the kids who make honor roll each grading period or are chosen as citizens of the month.
In November alone, we devoted almost 700 column inches to education information, photos, honor rolls and citizens of the month. (For comparison purposes, there are 126 column inches on each newspaper page.)
And that's not even mentioning the hundreds of column inches of local stories and photos each week we devote to sports, another recognition of the "good" kids.
It could be that the stories about the bad kids are on the front page because it's not the norm, because it's unusual and therefore news.
I'm sure we miss some stories about the good kids, and ones about the bad kids as well. But we don't deliberately try to make kids look bad by putting the bad-kid stories on the front page. Most of us have kids of our own. Why would we want to make kids in general look bad?
And one more thing, while I'm spewing ...
Enough already about how important athletes are to the school and the community and why they should get more coverage than they already do.
What is it with this community and its sports mania?
While I believe Warsaw and the surrounding communities have every reason to be proud of their school teams and athletes, I can't believe there is serious talk among sports parents and other groups about building a high school football stadium.
Doesn't it strike anyone else as strange that Warsaw Community Schools has only one auditorium, at Lakeview Middle School, that is used by all the schools in the system?
Isn't it odd that the high school has two gyms and no auditorium - and a band and no orchestra?
I agree that sports are important; there's no disputing the benefits of a good, well-rounded sports program at any school.
However, to promote sports at the expense of academics or lifelong skills (you may still be playing a violin at age 80, but I bet you won't be playing tackle football then) is pretty much defeating the whole purpose of an education, isn't it?
I'll believe the community supports academics as enthusiastically as sports when I see the same number of fans at an academic superbowl or a spelling bee as those at a Warsaw basketball game.
Warsaw Community High School's band and wind ensemble will perform at 7:30 Dec. 14 at, of course, Lakeview auditorium. How full will the auditorium be? As full as the WCHS gym at a Tigers game?
