According to NPR [ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102591978&ft=1&f=3 ]:

A soccer coach says he was joking. But when parents didn’t get it, Michael Kinahan resigned from a Massachusetts youth soccer league. He sent an e-mail saying “losing is for losers.” He said the team would be known as “Green Death,” and that parents should cheer instead of sitting there “sipping mocha-latte-half-caf-chinos.”

…Honestly, I’m not surprised. Today’s soccer-parents (and many adults their age—that being slightly younger than the baby boomers) are children themselves who stare blankly into space, then throw a fit when someone breaks their meaningless concentration. The fact that just an email can escalate to someone loosing one’s job is the least surprising aspect of this story. These unengaged parents can throw quite a fit; and they’ve been doing it all their lives… they are the ones who will sue you for anything, paint over the arts, and raise a nation of undereducated brats, i.e. these parents are the modern manifestation of evil in our society (in line with other evils of western culture in recent history a la the Nazis, the KKK, the Evangelicals-in fact some may even fall into these groups).

The best part though is that one person who I assume is the only enlightened parent supporting the soccer team and felt she needed to comment on NPR’s website [ same link as above ]:

Red Hake (Red99) wrote:
To be fair you have to read his e-mail, keep in mind that the letter is written to the parents not the kids. The letter does have a sort of disclamer note alerting the reader that he is long winded and that they might need a sense of humor to read on. He has also written an e-mail resigning from his volunteer coaching position, this and the original can be found at -barstool sports-.

He explains that he is poking fun at the very same mentality he is accused of having. The entire second half of his letter is written in jest, some of if a little bitting if you have thin skin but in jest never the less.

He has coached many of these girls before and year after year thay want to be on his team because thay have fun. 

It all comes to end (apparently) when Mr. and Mrs Thurston Howell III (yes – this is a Gilligans Island reference)get offended.

The blow up of this from e-mail to the parents to someone (not him) posting it on the internet to local and reagonal papers and news stations to NPR picking up this story is a testament to our overal compleat lack of a sense of humor, the revolting level of political correctness and the apparently shallow uninteresting lives we lead that allows us to get somting this far out of proportion.

Now, while this parent has some spelling and punctuation issues, the last paragraph is dead-on. Behold another example of failure on a human level.

As I was listening to NPR this morning, a story came up about algebra. Now, when I was in school, I remember many of my fellow students having difficulty with algebra, but I always found it incredibly easy. I always got tripped up on the simple math: adding together two two-digit numbers to this day still requires a calculator.

This story on NPR suddenly made it all make sense. The segment’s focus was why so many students struggle with algebra and the subject’s practical application in the real world.

The segment’s host asked the expert asked their on-air math-expert why, if the letters in algebraic equations represent actual numbers, is it such a stretch from basic arithmetic?

Their expert explained that it’s not the same thought process: which basic arithmetic, the student is dealing with valued quantities; e.g., in 2 + 3 = 5, the student is mentally combining a quantity of two with a quantity of three which results in the sum quantity of five; whereas in an algebraic example, 2 + x = 5, the student has to switch to a logical thought process to come up with the answer x = 3.

The expert went on to respond to the typical student nagging “when am I ever going to use this in the real world?” with a simple answer: spreadsheets. He said that spreadsheets are used for nearly everything these days, from finances, to sports scores, to even video games (he used some Warcraft example here that I still don’t get). The point is, though, that spreadsheets do the arithmetic for us, all we need to do is understand the logic to create what we need.

Now while I’m sure this is very useful to that 6th grade teacher listening on his way to work as a way to help his students connect with the material; or to that student finishing his algebra homework in his parents’ car as he’s driven to school as a new way to look at that equation that frustrated him all last night. For me, however, a different lightbulb came on: I had never consciously thought of numbers as having value.

To me, basic math had always been memorization, not quantitative equations. So when I got to algebra, there was no new thought process for me; the letters in the equations were just as valueless as the numbers had always been. I spent my whole schooling unaware that math was anything more than logical theory… which perfectly explains why I always found it both easy and incredibly dull: it was only meaningless puzzles.

As I lingered out of bed this morning, I heard the familiar meter of the voices of National Public Radio beating from the alarm clock in the corner. The woman begins listing the stations currently broadcasting her voice, and I am reminded how odd it is that, while I’m a good 45 minutes by car from West Virginia, it is West Virginia Public Radio that reaches me on the mountain. Occasionally, I can pick up WETA 90.9fm (Washington, DC Public Radio—a good 45 minute drive in the other direction) from my car in the driveway, but that’s really only on a good day. I am saddened a bit that of the public radio available to me in my new home, I have only West Virginia and Washington, DC; nothing more local.

Just when I cross through the doorway to leave my bedroom, our radio lady announces “…and at 11:42am today, the sun crosses the equator and autumn officially begins.”

My mood quickly shifts from being a bit disappointed with the world around me to excited for the changes to the world around me. Very soon I will begin seeing the trees start to don their harvest colors. I look forward to discovering which of the trees around me will color first, which will carry more bright yellow, and which will elegantly flash orange and red. I delight in the fact that our local supermarket may even carry some local produce in the next few weeks. I think about making soups and chilies. Fall is only a few hours away, according the the soft-voiced woman on the radio; and I’m excited. Continue Reading »