Sunday, April 27, 2008

Sports or Academics?

I was talking to a lady from home that teaches high school biology, and I thought it fit in nicely with our ethics discussions. She has a young lady in her class that is also one of the star players on the softball team. She had a paper due in the class on a Wednesday that she failed to turn in. The state softball tournament was that Friday. The teacher told her that she needed to turn in some form of the assignment before playing in the tournament because school came first, so the student just decided to not show up to her class at all for the remainder of the week. The softball coach looked it up online on the state tournament webpage that she did not have to attend school in order to play in the softball games that weekend. It creates a huge ethical dilemma because technically the softball coach is correct that the student is allowed to play, but the student also got around not turning in her assignments when she is a student first and foremost. I don’t know that I completely agree with telling the student that she wouldn’t be allowed to play without turning in the paper, but it is also wrong of the coach and principal to go behind her back.

1 comment:

joeeichel said...

It sounds like a lack of communication between the coach and the teacher. The coach should have communicated to the teacher that the student did not have to attend class if she was playing in the state softball tournament.That would have been more ethical than the student just not turning in the paper or attending class for the rest of the week. Coaches should work hand-in-hand with the teachers to make sure their athletes, who are students frist, are doing exactly what they are supposed to do in the classroom. Anything less should be unacceptable. Going behind the teacher's back really leaves her out of the loop and undermines her importance as an educator, because teachers have every right to know what their students are doing.