Former NFL quarterback, Fran Tarkenton, opined recently in the Wall Street Journal an article titled: "What if the NFL Played by Teachers' Rules".
In his piece the three-time Superbowl quarterback attempts to use the comparison of the NFL football salary structure as a vehicle to support merit pay for teachers.
However, I have a few questions for "Mr. Tarkenton"....What if NFL players had to play under teaching conditions?
What if for every five hours of game time, pro football players were only given one hour of practice and preparation time?What if pro football players had coaches who never had played the game themselves?What if pro football players had to help provide security before and after the game plus during timeouts and between quarters?What if pro football players had to structure their play based upon the opinions of pundits who had never played the game?What if the evaluations and salaries of pro football players were based only on their statistics from one quarter of one game?What if pro football players were told they had to change their playing techniques every year regardless how successful their current techniques had been?What if pro football players had to change playing positions every few years and were not notified of what position they’d be playing until the day before the first game?What if pro football players had coaches who spent most of their time in the locker room offices and only came out once or twice a year to watch them play in the game? And then from the one or two observations the coach decided whether or not a player was any good?
Ponder these questions if you will Mr. Tarkenton, go spend a year in a school watching what REAL PROFESSIONAL TEACHERS do, and then see if you still think your football player/teacher comparison has any validity.
2 comments:
You're right on Mister Rogers!
However, you forgot; what if players/coaches were told that they had to be using the exact same play, with the exact quaterback chant, at the same time of the game, as every other team in the league.
Oh, and players had to play with the equipment that they were given, even the old and broken stuff from 1973 based on what zip code they played for.
Also, some of the teams would have to come to play with food deprivation that might be partially helped by a free breakfast or lunch...oh I forgot, they play on the weekends they could would not have food after noon on Friday.
Mr. Tarkenton is like many education pundits...not working from a first hand experience and not taking the time to find out from the real experts; the educators
Jan of MI
You nailed it. Thank you for standing up for teachers and students everywhere.
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