Maybe you haven’t noticed several posters looking down their nose at the very idea that someone would want to go to a high school game even if their kids weren’t playing.
Our concerts drew less people than the football games too but we always managed to fill a significant portion of the auditorium. I was in the orchestra too and if I looked out and only saw that big auditorium with 19 spectators it would have been pretty damn depressing.
I find that rather sad, actually.
As an orchestra geek, I have to say the analogy breaks down a little. In high school we’d have maybe four concerts throughout the year (five if you counted stuff that happened off-campus). How many football games does a school have? A lot more than four or five, right?
My parents didn’t attend all of our concerts, but they were there for most of them. Because they were so few and far between. I’m pretty sure they would have not been able to keep up with a weekly commitment.
Many, yes - but probably not most and certainly not all trying to live below the poverty line.
My husband grew up poor, along with many of his friends (many of his friends he’s known since second grade). In their cases, poverty was for a reason - single moms. Their Dads took off when my friends were 10-12 (in one case earlier) leaving their ex-wives with multiple kids. Those women weren’t lazy - they worked full time, sometimes held two jobs. The kids did run wild, there wasn’t any choice but to leave the little ones with the older ones after school and into the evenings. There weren’t adults home in the neighborhood - or not adults you’d want to have watch your kids.
Its been 25 years since my friends graduated high school (more now) and I still know their moms. They were (and are) some of the bravest, hardest working people I know - living in one of the poorest areas of Minneapolis.
I don’t expect every parent to be able to make it to every single school event. But if only 19 people were at the game I doubt it was the case that an unhappy series of coincidences prevented so many parents from being able to attend that one particular game. I bet most of their other games have an equally dismal attendance.
I was a high school theater geek. My mom would attend our opening night performance, but probably not the additional performances. In schools where football is not a major community event, I imagine the equivalent is to attend major games (season opener, homecoming, etc.) but probably not minor away games.
All they are doing is pointing out that attending football games isn’t necessarily everyone’s priority, like the OP’s flabbergastedness would imply. They’re not “looking down their noses.” They’re simply pointing out that different people might have different priorities.
You find it “rather sad” that a 16-year-old no longer feels the need to have his parents personally witness every single extracurricular event? I don’t believe you. My parents were not uninvolved in my childhood or in my education. But at a certain age, it is natural for teens to start pulling away from having their parents’ presence. It makes sense to me that at some point in a kid’s teen years, parents would at some point stop, as a matter of routine, attending every single orchestra or band performance as well as every single athletic event.
Plus, theater and band concerts are performances meant for spectators. No audience defeats the entire purpose: otherwise its just a rehearsal. Games have spectators, but they have a purpose even if no one is watching (standing in the rankings, getting into playoffs, win-loss records, personal stats like RBIs etc). So, there might be additional motivation to go to a concert over a game, all things being equal.
Oh, I don’t know about that. My father came to every single athletic event that I was involved in. I didn’t always really want him there- it seemed to me that a lot of the time that he might have been more interested in say… a JV track meet than I was.
Now, 20+ years later, I think it was more of a familial duty sort of thing to support and cheer for me, combined with being a sports fan in general. Plus, I think to a lesser degree, he hoped to stand in a little for all the other dads who couldn’t make it. He did end up being a sort of mascot for the teams I was on; all the other boys knew him and were always happy to see him- when he had back surgery recently, I was surprised how many old teammates came out of the woodwork on facebook to wish him well.
I think that’s a lot of what pullin is getting at. I don’t think he’s berating or bitching about poor people not attending games because they’re poor or lazy, but rather I think he’s rather incredulous about how the parents are so unsupportive of their children, no matter what the activity, and I can understand that.
I think everyone is thinking about this on an individual level, as if individual parents are being chastised for individual failures, when there’s a big picture issue here as well. It’s not just “Does it hurt little Johnny that no one cares enough to drive out and watch him play football/march in a band/cheer”, it’s “Does it help other little Johnny that when he plays football/marches in a band/cheers, five hundred people are excited to go see him? Does it help him that his school is a community, where people–parents, teachers, students, and administrators–gather socially and celebrate not just their own kids, but the experience of the school as a whole?” I think it does. It helps even those–especially those–kids in the middle-class school who don’t have anyone in the stands, because what they are seeing is that they belong to a community: school isn’t just a job, a place they go because they have to be there, either to satisfy the law or get an education: it’s a place they belong to and that claims them. Communities are important: they are groups that band together and support each other even if every individual doesn’t like every other individual. Belonging to a community involves really complicated social skills because you have to learn how and when to go along and how and when to negotiate things to get your way. Communities provide a safety net if your more personal relationships become strained, because you are still part of something. Communities have to be maintained by there members, and it’s great for kids to see how that happens.
Now, in a poor urban school, plenty of the kids will belong to other communities–their churches, their neighborhoods. But, IME as a ten-year teacher in an urban school, lots won’t. They don’t have any larger group that they feel they have any claim on. They may have a strong family (and may not) but that’s not the same. A family is a much higher-pressure sort of relationship. It obviously can be much more supportive, but it can demand a lot more too, and is much more likely to collapse on you.
Now, a school with 18 fans at a home game may still be a strong community. If it’s 100% Hispanic, it’s quite possible that football is seen as something for the soccer players to do in the fall, and that the soccer games are a really different thing. But if every activity is like that? If all the kids and parents feel about their school the way a 35 year old feels about the junior college where they take a couple night classes a year? Then yeah, I think that’s sad. I think those kids would be better off if they had a community to be part of. I’m not blaming anyone, but I think it is a real loss.
I was as well, as well as All Conference in Speech. My middle class parents never came to a speech meet (and almost no parents ever did).
My sister was All Conference in something like five sports over her college career. My mother made it to a few of her matches/games/meets.
Hell, I went to State in Speech (missed placing finals by 1 point. 1 fargin’ point; and yes, I’m still bitter about it 20 years later.) and I don’t recall my mom ever coming to a Speech tournament in four years. Some tournaments were during the school day and we get to do them as a field trip but most were on Saturdays. She’d drive me to school to catch the school bus to wherever the tournament was at ODarkThirty in the morning, and pick me up again at 10:00 at night. She’d take me shopping for clothing for tournaments, help me run lines; she was very supportive, she just didn’t come to tournaments because that wasn’t part of the Speech Tournament culture.
Plays Mom would come to, but one of the 6 performances per show, not all of them. Again, she’d drive me early, pick me up late, take me shopping for stage makeup, etc. I would have been disappointed had she not come to the show at all, but I certainly didn’t expect her to come to every performance.
She was a schoolteacher herself - were we “low income”? I have no idea. Probably, by the numbers - low middle at best. My school was the public middle class school in a middle class suburb.
(Dad lived in another state, so needless to say, he didn’t come to anything.)
Thought of another way to say what I think I poorly explained above:
This isn’t about whether or not the parents are supporting their kids: they may or may not be. The issue is whether or not they are supporting their kids’ school, or even see that as something they would do. We have parents who go to games for sports their kids don’t play, who build sets for musicals their kids aren’t in, who buy subscriptions to newspapers their kids don’t work on, who donate to organizations their kids aren’t part of. Not all the parents, by any means. But there seems to be this idea in this thread that that sort of parent is some sort of over-indulgent helicopter parent. They aren’t. They are saints and they make the school a more rewarding experience for everyone. That some schools have lots of these parents an some schools have none goes a long way to explain some of the persistent gaps in performance between these schools. Making a school a community helps. That doesn’t mean anyone is to blame–it may not even be a fixable problem–but the phenomenon is real.
I remember those parents. These are the ones who started as room parent when their child was in kindergarten and then just kept on “boosting” even after the kid graduated and went off to college. The PTA moms and field trip drivers and cast party hostesses.
What I remember most about them was their complete inability to extend any sort of welcome to the rest of us when we were able to participate in school activities. The single working moms or low income parents who simply could not help out during school hours or afford the “suggested PTA donation” every year (at our school usually $200 per student).
We’d show up when we could and get the cold shoulder-Oh- Hiiiii! Great! Why don’t you…um…maybe take out the trash when it gets full or…something? And then not one word of conversation for the rest of the event. Well, not direct conversation, although they’d talk all around you like you weren’t even there.
This is why I stopped even trying to participate in booster activities. And I’m not alone, I’ve heard this same story from many other parents as well. So maybe it looks to you like I’m not interested in my kid’s education, but I did try to get involved and it just wasn’t worth it, those mean girls are still hanging around the school I guess.
This kind of makes me ill. I certainly hope that every science lab in every school in that district has full equipment, every textbook is top of the line, and no teacher ever has to pay for class supplies out of pocket. None of that could have been spent on a state if the art mechanical diagnostic lab or a planetarium?
I also hope that every parent who helped to paint the ferris wheel for the band competition (!!!) put a little sweat equity into the school itself - where the learning takes place.
I mean, really… I am nowhere near a liberal, but that kind of money and time spent on a school activity that’s not education related makes me angry. Is there not a school nearby where that effort could into something that might actually benefit a student who is in need of real help? Where it can be used to add to the opportunity some low income student might need?
The term is “boosters”. Parents, businesses, alumni and others with an interest in supporting extracurricular activities conJust one data poi NYTtribute to these programs. Ticket sales provide revenue. Sock hops, bake sales, tag sales and all manner of fund raising activities kick in a portion.
A huge new soccer field was just completed at my old high school. It was funded entirely by two wealthy families whose soccer prodigy kids have already graduated. The box seats on the football field built in a recently deceased coach’s honor by his family.
Excuse the typo; missed edit window. Recreation is an important part of academics. Exercise, teamwork, an extra incentive to keep grades up are benefits of participating in extracurricular activities. People can and do learn skills and hobbies they may enjoy their whole life. Some make a wickedly good living playing music or sports.
cough “Grammar.” cough
Some of the post are liked that, yes. Others are not.
You’re shifting the goal posts on me. It wasn’t a matter of your parents being unable to make it to every single one of your concerts but the fact that they elected not to go at all. Here’s what I replied to.
Yes, I find that rather sad and I don’t know why you find that hard to believe. When I was in orchestra concerts were a big deal. If my parents couldn’t make it for some reason then that would have been unfortunate but we all face disappointments and life goes on. If my parents just decided they couldn’t be bothered to come to my concerts for the next two years I don’t have any problem admitting that my feelings would have been hurt.
You know, I had never really thought about it, but it was the same way with me. I was involved in a good number of extracurriculars in high school (ran track, did some quiz type things, played piano and was basically the musical director for the high school production of “Pippin,” etc.) and I don’t think my parents attended a single one of those events. They had other things to worry about, and I never expected them to come out to watch. We were just a run-of-the-mill immigrant working class family. Even in grammar school, when I played soccer, they would just drop me off at the games, or I’d get a ride from someone. And that wasn’t unusual. I don’t recall the other kids parents being there, either, for those games. That was just something we did on our time.
Went to dinner with Mom tonight, and she claims to have been to two tournaments* in four years, but she did verify that there were not a lot of parents there, nor did most parents go to very many tournaments.
*“What was that one? With the weird girl?” “Um…The Bad Seed?” “RIGHT! And the one with that boy?” “Days of Wine and Roses.” So that would be Freshman year and Senior year.