ranger wrote:chgoss wrote:I agree that to "be a good rower" means more than your 2k time and technical proficiency (or lack thereof).
To your list, I would add that one should add value to the rowing community in some (great or small) way. Not talking about altruism mind you, just that in the process of pursuing ones own self interest, that the net impact on the broader community should be positive.
Proficiency and the interests of a community are often at loggerheads, so much so that the community lies to itself, repeatedly and incorrigibly, about what it takes to be proficient.
A sad story on this topic is Mike Caviston's move to California from here at the University of Michigan.
University education in general at the moment is an even sadder story, one that Mike didn't escape, either.
With the Wolverine Plan, Mike created a system of training that could indeed lift his collegiate rowers to high levels of achievement/proficiency.
He took the same "hard line" in the classroom, doing in good faith what he thought would make his students proficient.
As it turns out, though, neither his students nor his rowers appreciated his honesty about the relation between proficiency/achievement and what they need, and therefore should, do to earn it.
So he lost his job.
He was an instructor, not a professor.
Instructors don't have tenure, which protects the jobs of faculty at research institutions such as Michigan from such foolish maliciousness.
The end of he story is even more telling, though.
As it turns out, after Mike left, the proficiency of the women's varsity crew at Michigan fell off precipitously.
So what did the Michigan coaches and trainers do?
They put their women varsity rowers back on the Wolverine Plan, stealing Mike's ideas but without rehiring him (even if he wanted to be rehired by folks who would do such s thing).
There we have the typical actions of a community, I think, as opposed to an individual.
Which would you prefer?
The same thing is happening in the classroom at Michigan more generally.
At Michigan, we are now all being told to dumb down the material and inflate grades so that students will enjoy themselves and feel good about themselves, even if they fall far short of being proficient.
If we don't, we lose our jobs (if we don't have tenure), or if we have tenure, we lose the possibilities of advancing in our careers.
Those who make concessions to the low standards of the community, ignoring proficiency altogether, are praised and supported by the powers that be.
Societies, if at all inclusive, have never been aristocracies (social groups dedicated to the "good"), much less the type of stoic tyrannies that are characteristic of the ethical commitments of all top artists, athletes, scholars, scientists, and most obviously, I guess, soldiers.
High athletic (artistic, intellectual, scientific, scholarly, military) proficiency is all about doing what we need and should do in order earn it, not at all about what we can, and therefore might do, if we happen to want to.
ranger
:D
