MTV's "Two-A-Days" and Hoover High School

I should begin by saying I am an avid football fan. I played it as a boy growing up, and I now have three sons, each of whom play and each of whom I’ve coached in youth leagues. I attended every home game while an under-grad and graduate student at Notre Dame, and have missed very few home games at our high school in the 22 years I’ve been there. I believe that football can teach young men important virtues: perserverance, discipline, putting the team first, learning how to handle winning with class and losing with grace.

And yet, I was sick to my stomach after watching “Two-A-Days”, a production of MTV chronicling the Hoover, Al football team’s 2005 season.

Hoover’s football program, led by their egomaniacal coach, Rush Probst, has won 5 of the last 6 state championships in the highest classification of football in Alabama. They are unabashed in their desire to be the #1 ranked team in America, and they are well on a path toward that goal in 2006, currently ranked as #1 by USA Today.

I don’t begrudge Hoover’s desire to be the best. But after watching an episode of “Two-A-Days” (You can view a trailer of the program by clicking here), I'd observe the following:

First, it is deeply disheartening that the superintendent and Board of Education would give MTV unfettered access to Hoover High’s campus, allowing its students to be used as a tool to advance MTV's commercial interests. Without listing all the ways in which MTV both exploits and advances values incongruous with the mission of ANY school, I will simply reference a 2005 study completed by ParentsTV.org entitled "MTV Smut Peddlers: Targeting Kids with Sex, Drugs and Alcohol". Is it callous indifference or merely our impotence as adults that we would allow such a network to wander the classrooms, hallways and lockerrooms of our school? Is our judgment so blinded by our pride in a successful high school football team that we're OK with made-for-TV soap operas starring our children?

Second, though there is some idolization of cheerleaders and football players within the culture of every high school in America, “Two-A-Days” advances the celebrity status of both exponentially, confirming with the program’s younger viewers that good looks, athletic prowess, and popularity are all that truly matters. I can only hope that the faculty and parents of Hoover High are now embarassed by such a depiction of their school and their children. I suspect that they are.

Finally, despite my admiration for teams that strive to be successful, I believe that Coach Probst and the Hoover program have confused the “ends” and the “means”. Ultimately, the “end” (or goal) of our schools and athletic programs are one and the same: to create people who are both educated and virtuous. Winning games is a means to an end, not the end in itself. When we build competitive, winning programs, we can challenge our children to demand more of themselves, fostering the virtues that football can teach so well. However, when high school football teams rent hotel rooms for home games to "focus" the night before the game, when cursing at players is so commonplace that coaches think nothing of it, even when they know the cameras are rolling (and what happens when the cameras are off?), when a head coach chastises a mother whose son was sick and missed practice, even with an excuse from a doctor, and then defends his position by saying “Other programs don’t win like we do”, or when this same coach says to his players, after a loss, that he holds their future in his hands and that if they don't put out more for him, he'll nix their chance at a scholarship, or when a "team chaplain" quotes scripture in a pre-game devotion and then tells the players not to embarass their jerseys by losing, then I would suggest that winning has become THE end and not the means.

Winning at all costs--placing aside the values we want to teach our children-- is simply too expensive.

The Philosophy Underlying Catholic Education

Editor's note: These are my notes for orientation on August 7, 2006 for all teachers in our K-12 school.





What does it mean to be a Catholic educator? I believe at the heart of Catholic education are four underlying beliefs:

1. Our students are children of God—worthy of being educated, loved, listened to, cared for and (I think significantly) believed in.

There is tremendous cynicism about youth today. Recently, I was talking to a colleague who launched in on a tirade about the terrible state of “kids these days”.

But you know what? If there is any basis for the cynicism, it’s our generation’s fault, not the teenagers’. It’s not 18 year olds who are responsible for high rates of marital infidelity, lack of commitment, corporate greed, political scandal, or sexual deviancy.

IN fact, I believe that kids are naturally idealistic. But our society tells kids it’s impossible to lead a moral life, that it’s impossible to abstain from sex for example, and people who try to do so are either prudes or (worse) naïve, so practice sex safely. Television stations like MTV aren't created or produced by 18 year olds, but by 40-somethings—and there is something very sick about corrupting the natural idealism of youth in order to sell products for profit.

Catholic schools MUST be a powerful antidote to such cynicism--when kids enter our room each day, they should almost FEEL the hope and FAITH we have in them.

Especially, our most troubled students! They are likely our most troublesome students because they have been least well cared for, and as a result, the ones who are least convinced that they are worthy of being loved or believed in. So much of their acting out is a test of US, to see if we can confirm in our reactions what he despairs about himself: that he is not worthy of love, that he feels little hope for his future. We cannot give in to despair for these kids! We must be, rather, people of the resurrection in their lives.

A challenge for everyone in this room: I’m guessing by the end of the first day of school, each of you will know who the 2-3 kids are that will be most in need of our attention this year! I challenge you to look at these kids not as your biggest burdens, but as the chance for your greatest successes, an opportunity to make a life-long impact on these kids'lives.

There's a teacher on this faculty, who by about November had just about had it up to here with a certain boy who shall remain nameless. To be blunt, this boy was really acting like a horses’ rear end, and to make matters worse, I think she taught him for two classes/ day! But I remember her saying, deeply frustrated, almost in tears, “As much as I want to, I will NOT give in, I will NOT write him off. I will NOT become cynical about him. He WILL be better behaved eventually, and we WILL get along, but on my terms.” I remember being very edified by her toughness and attitude. I asked her, several months later, how things were going with him, and she said something like “Well, there is the occasional bad day, but we’re getting along pretty well now. He’s actually becoming a pleasant person, most of the time”. What made the difference? The teacher did--despite the boys' actions, she refused not to love him.

The real truth that we must never forget as Catholic educators is: LOVE is redemptive. If we bring Christ’s love to our students each day, even our most annoying, troubled student, Christ’s love can redeem them—and redeem us in the process.


“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love him.” (I Corinthians 2:9)



2. Education is a moral endeavor, undertaken by a community of adults—I’ve spent lots of time on the web, recently, looking at other school web sites. Schools have a tendency to measure success in terms of test scores, college scholarships, graduation rates, A.P. test performances. And yes, we do some of that too. We brag when our kids score 800’s on SAT tests, as a senior did on 2 out of 3 of the subtests, or when 4 of Mr. Petrof’s A.P. American History students score perfect 5’s on the A.P. exam. Those are good things, and we’re right to be proud of them.

But let these stats not obscure the true measure of our success—the Ockham’s razor by which our school should be judged a success or a failure is simply this: do we help children become the people God wants them to be? Our ultimate aim: cooperate with God’s grace to help them become these people. In so doing, we know they will be happy.

“Glory of God is man fully alive” St. Irenaeus of Lyons

Are our kids “fully alive” when they leave us after 13 years of K-12 schooling?

This isn’t just a responsibility of the theology department, but of the entire community of adults: teachers, coaches, office staff, and parents.

(Jon Moline, “Classical Ideas about Moral Education”, in Character Policy: An Emerging Issue) “As Aristotle taught, people do not naturally of spontaneously grow up to be morally excellent or practically wise. They become so, if at all, only as the result of a lifelong person and community (emphasis mine) effort”

So yes, it takes a village.

What a profound effect Tim Trokey or a George Forhan or a Jill Clark can have on the attitudes our athletes have about themselves, about being people of character, and about their faith in God. None of these 3 are Catholic, but each plays a profound role in the mission of this school. And when adults paint side by side with students in the gym as they did this summer, or when teachers go out of their way to correct a student, gently, about some behavior a kid is doing wrong—they all take part in this fundamental mission to help kids become what God wants them to be.


3.Parents are the primary educators.

Now we have to be careful: I’ve heard this line used by teachers in this room as an excuse to get out of work:

A kid hasn’t done his homework in 4 days. “Oh well, the parents are the primary educators…if they’re not going to do their job, how do they expect me to do mine”…. And then, you see, the teacher absolves himself from that kids’ failure. “Not my fault”.

In Catholic educational philosophy, parents ARE the primary educators, and we ASSIST parents in that role. In other words, we’re a team, and I think that means three very practical things for us:

--first, we trust parents to make the right decisions for their kids (Mardi Gras, parents write a letter, child will be out for 2 days, husband off work—do we give them permission to go?)

--second, we try and foster good communication with parents—in both directions. On Back to School Night, you should give your school email address and voice mail number at school to every parent. Maybe even have a business card, and invite them to call you whenever they have concerns. You should similarly CALL THEM, not just for concerns, but for praise. Open lines of communication. Especially in the case of a kid doing poorly, we should do much more than take the contractual, minimalist position “Well, I informed you through the report cards and you never contacted me”. That’s simply unacceptable.

--third, I think being on a team (and I think every married person in this room understands this) means forgiving and moving on. Parents aren’t going to always respond as they should. We have to forgive them for that, insist on a professional working relationship, not let it affect us the next time we should communicate with that person, and move on. We must remember that when we’re talking to parents about their child, we are treading in an area where parents are MOST vulnerable, and often, they don’t respond as they should. Let us tell the truth with love, forgive if responded to inappropriately, and always remember to put the needs of the child first.


4. We make no compromises, no excuses.

I’m not sure that this is really Catholic educational philosophy so much as the legacy from the Sisters of Loretto who founded our school, if not all the sisters who began our schools around the nation.

Catholic was founded in the 1870’s, by the Loretto sisters, a hearty band of women from KY. They moved into Montgomery, Al, the“buckle on the bible belt”, into the land of the KKK and in the middle of a deep suspicion and misunderstanding of Catholics to start a Catholic school for girls.

They purchased an antebellum home, Gerald Mansion, with the intent to live upstairs and teach downstairs) right across from St. Peter’s Church downtown, where now sits the courthouse and jail (I’ll let you create the joke here!)

Just prior to opening the school, there was a yellow fever epidemic, and the school’s opening was delayed for several months—instead of a school, the mansion became a hospital, and the Loretto sisters earned instant respect for their care of the sick of the city.

They had very little money. But they had grit and determination to make that school work. These were well educated women, but they VERY poorly paid, no “benefits”, and they worked, by today’s standards, in deplorable working conditions.

Sr. Martha Belke, the last Loretto sister to teach here, who taught Chem and IPS for 35 years (Our Belke building is named after her), told me her first class (at the age of 19, before she had graduated from college) had 51 students in it: 25 first graders and 26 second graders.

(People have wondered why the sisters are “mean”!)

But those kids were WELL educated. The sisters didn’t complain about their working conditions, their salaries, how underappreciated they were. No compromises, no excuses!

This is our legacy here. The mission of this school comes before all else—before any of our needs, before any convenience—more important than winning games, test scores, college acceptance rates. We will do whatever it takes for a student to be successful, and we will NOT give in to the temptation to write some kids off because the majority is doing fine.

All students in our classroom will learn. And if they aren’t learning, we will intervene, first as teachers, then as the school itself, to demand they will learn. The mission of the school is first.

Parallel this to “defiance” of teacher. Just as everything stops until the defiance is challenged, so too if our mission is being challenged, everything else stops until it’s addressed.

We are not rightful heirs to the legacy of the Sisters of Loretto unless we embrace this challenge directly.

In summary then, as Catholic school teachers, we believe that

All students are Children of God;
That education is a Moral Endeavor undertaken by the Whole Community;
That we are Team-mates with parents;
That the Mission comes first, no excuses, no compromises.

Five Cures for Common "Problems" with our Teens

As a long time principal and now president working in a Catholic high school, one of my unwritten responsibilities is to serve as a repository of good advice from parents, so that I may share this wisdom with other parents. In my 21 years here, these are the 5 best "cures"to common teenage problems I have heard from other parents:

1) The "My teen is always on the telephone" problem.

A parent once described the telephone as the "teenage umbilical cord", and indeed, the telephone is often more a distraction from homework than the TV. Also, there is nothing like calling your spouse at night and getting a consistent busy signal to stoke family frustrations!

"Not a problem", a parent told me once. "We got rid of all the cordless phones in our house, and placed our only phone in the family room. You'd be amazed how much shorter those conversations are between friends when they must be done in public." As a variation of that theme, another parent told me his rule was the cordless phones could never leave the family room after 6 P.M. If they did, the father would simply hit the "page/find" button over and over until finally his exasperated daughter would return the phone to its rightful home.

And cell phones? Ahh, there's the rub. One family I know has a designated spot in the house where all cell phones must be charged, and it's required that on school nights, they are all being charged by 9 p.m.


2) The "I'm going to my friend's house to spend the night" shell game.

Ask your teenage son in a more honest moment and he will tell you the best way to do things without you knowing is to play a kind of shell game: He says he is going to a friend's house, his friend tells his parents he is going to your home, and together they go do whatever they want for the evening.

Suspecting this, you'd like to confirm the arrangements with the other parents and make sure things are properly supervised, but you are worried that the other parents might take your call the wrong way and that your teen may resent you don't trust him.

A wise mother I once met had the solution: "I always called the other parents and asked them if my daughter could help out by bringing something with her, like some chips or drinks. By their response I would learn everything I needed to know." "After all", she smiled, "Who could be offended by an offer of generosity?"

3) The "My teen drives me so crazy fussing about chores that it's easier to do them myself" dilemma.

This one speaks for itself. But one father of 3 teenagers licked the problem by doing something very simple.

Every Sunday night he would list the chores he expected his children to accomplish over the course of the next 5 days after school, on the family bulletin board.

If the chores were not done by Friday afternoon, all "weekend activities" would be forfeited. How did he limit the whining? At the bottom of the list of chores, big and bold, were additional chores for those who whined or complained. "What really gets to my kids" this father commented, "is when they think I'm making up chores as I go along, in a kind of ad hoc fashion. Putting things in writing in advance creates the sense that chores are a matter of routine family responsibilities.

4) The "I don't have any homework" dilemma.

It's amazing that even though your child "doesn't have any homework" night after night, his teachers tell you he "isn't doing his homework" at report card time.

The problem for parents is you don't know, one night to the next, whether your children REALLY DON'T have homework or if they are just avoiding work. They hold all the cards.

Again, one family seemed to have the solution. "Every night at 8 P.M. the rule in our house is that our kids must be at the dining room table doing their homework until 9 P.M. minimum. It doesn't matter to us whether our kids tell us "they don't have any". They must still be at the table either doing their homework, or looking blankly at the desk for one hour. Those are the only two choices. Given the sheer boredom of doing nothing, even Algebra becomes interesting, and we've found that they begin to "discover" work they didn't know they had. And if the phone rings for our kids, we tell them our children have previous appointments and to call back at 9."

"Why the dining room and not the bedroom?" I asked. "There are too many distractions to pass the time in the bedroom" said these parents, "magazines, pictures of boyfriends, stereos, whatever. Also, we found the dining room is better because we can 'check up' on our kids without appearing to do so, as we do dishes in the nearby kitchen, for example. Our kids hated for us to peer into their bedroom to see if homework was being done, so we simply removed that problem."

5) "My child hates to read" syndrome.

Experts will tell you that your child's reading ability will be the most important indicator of his or her future academic success. But how do you breed a love of reading?

One mother I knew did two important things. First, when her children were younger, she made it part of her regular weekly routine to go to the library twice a week and check out books, which she read to her younger children each night. Younger children love to be read to by their parents!

Second, when her children became younger teens, she would continue to go to the library, but instead of reading out loud, she would give her children two choices: Either they went to bed at 10 P.M. lights out, no exceptions, or they could go to bed at 10 P.M. and read for one hour. Given that choice, her children became avid readers throughout their teenage years.

Final thoughts:

Five years ago I remember asking a mother of five girls, on the occasion of her last daughter's graduation, what she had learned about raising teenagers after all those years of doing so. I'll never forget her response. She thought for a moment, then said, "Well, teenagers are like bucking broncos. If they think you are trying to ride them, they'll buck you every time. So the best thing is to build fences which lead them in the right direction. Then they think that they're the ones making the decisions as they trot along. "

Amen. May all of us become good fence-builders!