1/11/00
COMMENTARY: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR LEARNING IN OUR SOCIETY?
The James Brooks case that recently captured the attention of the press and the general public surfaced a number of interesting and somewhat embarrassing questions. But, at the same time, it did not address other issues that are of equal importance.
The facts of the case, as reported in the news media, are as follows: James Brooks, a former student-athlete at Auburn University and a former star running back in the National Football League, was convicted by a court in Cincinnati, Ohio, for failure to pay child support for two children born to two different women. As a part of his defense or excuse for not paying child support, Brooks claimed that he was illiterate. In response to a question from the judge as to how he could be illiterate if he ³graduated² from Auburn, Brooks replied that he did not have to attend class while a student at Auburn.
He left Auburn without a degree after being drafted by the NFL in 1981. Mr. Brooks graduated from a respected high school in Warner Robins, Ga., and met Auburnıs admission standards at the time he entered school in 1977.
The reaction to the Brooks case was an all too familiar refrain. Because of his claims of illiteracy, he was portrayed as the victim and, therefore, not responsible for his own behavior. It had to be Auburnıs fault, his high schoolıs fault, or someone else was to blame. Obscured in this discussion was the fact that Brooks had made more money during his 12-year career in the NFL than most English PhDs make in their lifetimes.
But the most central question in this discussion is: Who is responsible for learning in our society? A theme that has dominated over the past few decades in this country is one that has tended to place the blame on the schools when students do not learn. When test scores at a school are low, it is the school, its teachers and administration that are held accountable. While schools do share this responsibility, principally through providing effective teachers and an environment that is conducive to learning, this does not overshadow the fact that learning is an internal process that occurs in an individualıs brain and it cannot occur without that individualıs active cooperation and effort.
Some people seem to have the naive assumption that a teacher can somehow pour knowledge into a studentıs brain. I believe that the farmers in the rural area where I grew up in Mississippi had the best understanding of this phenomenon. They said ³You can lead a horse to water, but you canıt make him drink.² You can make sure that there are adequate facilities to hold the water, you can make sure that the water is of a high quality, and you can put it down where the horses can get it, but it is the horse that has to drink. The same is true for students in school. We can and should provide the best facilities available. We should make sure that we have effective teachers and we should make sure that our learning materials are conducive to learning. But it is the students who have to make the effort to process the information and practice the skills that they will need to perform.
We also should acknowledge that a substantial portion of a childıs learning capabilities are formed before he or she reaches school. The most rapid rate of brain development occurs during a childıs first four years and is affected by the amount of parental attention (particularly the parent reading to the child), nutrition, motor skill development, and many socioeconomic factors. Schools do bear a responsibility for diagnosing learning deficiencies early in a childıs educational development and developing programs to deal with them. I believe that our schools are doing a much better job of that now than they have in years past. But a school with a high percentage of students from disadvantaged backgrounds will tend to have lower test scores than a school with a high percentage of students from high income and high educational level families. Effective teachers and better facilities can make a difference, but not fully overcome the preschool conditions.
If James Brooks cannot read, who is to blame? Is it his parents who failed to provide the proper guidance and intellectual stimulation early in life? Was it his elementary school in Georgia which should have noted this deficiency early in his educational process and corrected it? Was it his high school that graduated him? Is the university he attended at fault? One would assume that if a student cannot read, it will be detected and corrected well before he or she graduates from high school. But that is not always the case for star athletes in our society. It is one of the cruel jokes that we play on them. Because of the importance that we place on athletic achievement, we allow them to think that they can survive forever on that talent. There are a few who do, which makes more difficult the task of a teacher trying to convince a star athlete that he or she needs to understand English or algebra.
I believe that Auburn University is partially responsible for Brooksıs failure by allowing him to believe that he could survive in our society without basic skills. James earned enough credits to be eligible to play football for four years but not enough to earn a degree. I would maintain, however, that Auburn was by far not the major culprit in this drama. Brooks had teammates who came from not too dissimilar backgrounds who took advantage of the opportunities they were offered to get an education. Two examples will illustrate. Johnny Green, who was a defensive back on the same team, not only earned his bachelorıs degree, but went on to receive a PhD in political science at Auburn and is now a member of the faculty here. Willie Huntley, who was a running back with Brooks, not only earned his bachelorıs degree from Auburn, but went on to get a law degree from the University of Alabama and is now an attorney in Mobile. They went to class, put forth the effort that was needed for them to learn, and earned their degrees. They took advantage of the opportunity that was provided to them by an athletic scholarship. Brooks did not. I maintain that he bears the primary responsibility for not utilizing the time that he had at Auburn and at the schools he attended prior to coming to Auburn to acquire the skills that he would need to survive in our society. The only way that Brooks could learn to read, then and now, is by making the effort to condition his brain to process language.
One of the lessons that athletics teaches is that ³practice makes perfect.² Anything that we want to do well requires practice. Can you imagine a batter being able to hit a curve ball without hours and hours of practice in the batting cage or a golfer being able to use a pitching wedge effectively without similar devotion? The same is true for reading or writing or any other intellectual exercise. It requires practice to do it well.
When I learned of Mr. Brooksıs plight, I wrote to Judge Steven Martin in Cincinnati and offered to be of assistance to James. The offer was not made out of a sense that Auburn was solely responsible for his condition. I believe that Mr. Brooks should bear the brunt of that blame himself. Rather it was to offer Mr. Brooks a helping hand that has been extended to many other former student athletes who have contributed to Auburnıs athletic success but who have left school without degrees. A program entitled ³Operation Follow-Through² offers to those individuals the opportunity to come back to school and complete their degrees. Each must be dedicated to that task and meet admissions requirements of the University. The Auburn Athletic Department provides counseling and pays the cost of tuition for those individuals who elect to take advantage of this offer. So far, a significant number of individuals have come back to Auburn to complete their degrees. They include some well known athletes like Freddie Smith and Gerald Robinson, as well as many others who were not as widely known but nevertheless just as deserving.
Interestingly enough, these individuals are not counted in Auburnıs graduation rate for student athletes because they are beyond the six-year time frame in which those statistics are calculated. Even without the Operation Follow-Through graduates, however, Auburn had a 67 percent graduation rate for student athletes last year. This is the highest for any public university in the Southeastern Conference and second only to Vanderbilt University in the league. It also ranks as one of the highest graduation rates for a public university in the country.
Operation Follow-Through is even more important today because so many of the best student athletes leave school without degrees. They either find that their athletic eligibility runs out before they graduate or, increasingly, they are drafted into the professional ranks after three or fewer years of competition. Auburn makes a commitment to the student athletes that it recruits that it will do all that it can to help them earn degrees. We know that a few of our student athletes will go on to great success in the pro ranks, but many others will not. But, all of the student athletes, whether they have illustrious pro careers or not, still need college degrees to be successful in the world today.
If James Brooks is not able or willing to come back to Auburn to participate in Operation Follow-Through, we have offered to pay for the literacy classes that he can take in Ohio. Being able to read is a basic skill that everyone in our society should possess today. If Brooks is illiterate, Auburn shares that blame with many others. But only he can correct that problem. If Brooks is willing to devote the time and effort to acquire the skills that he needs, Auburn is willing to help him shoulder that responsibility and will applaud his efforts to become a more productive citizen with the same enthusiasm that we applauded his achievements on the gridiron.
What happened to James Brooks more than 20 years ago is less likely to occur today. The NCAA has enacted higher admission and academic progress requirements in order for a student athlete to compete. Auburn, as does all major universities, invests considerable funds in providing the academic support that student athletes who are marginal students need to succeed. That support includes monitoring class attendance, tutoring, and counseling. But the responsibility for learning the skills needed and progressing toward a degree still lies primarily with the student.
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(Muse is president of Auburn University, a 22,500-student land-grant university in Alabama)
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