Jack Johnson's Story

Athletes, Academics, and Assessment

Sports is one aspect of The Ann Arbor News’ reportage that has always had an edge to it. This otherwise conservative publication has produced some fine maverick columnists who eventually moved on to work in bigger markets. One thinks of Chris McKosky at The Detroit Free Press, Mike Downey at the The L.A. Times, and Jason Whitlock of The Kansas City Star to name a few.

Now comes Jim Carty. I for one find Carty’s work a breath of fresh air. In a town filled with “homers” who see the “Big House” as a kind of athletic Vatican, and dissent from the Bo doctrine as tantamount to blasphemy, Carty tells it like it is. His columns on Rich Rodriguez’s duplicity in taking the Michigan job, and his troubling conclusion that the commodification of the head coaching position has become ubiquitous in Division I college football are right on target. Tradition, the intangible aura which once surrounded programs like Notre Dame and Michigan, has been replaced by market forces; potential coaching candidates know that nowadays a school’s loyalty to a coach is contingent on wins and losses. The shelf life is short, and the memory of a coach’s success usually extends as far back as the last victory. Carty rightly points out that universities and coaching candidates alike take the attitude of consumers, not loyalists, to any particular alma mater or philosophical principle. Thank you, Jim Carty.

My comments here, then, should not be taken as a disagreement with Carty’s, Heuser’s, and Fenno’s four-day series on the state of athletics and academics at U-M as much as the perspective of a university insider who wasn’t one of the 87 people interviewed.

As an English instructor who works in the CSP (Comprehensive Studies Program) I appreciate Carty’s et al. rhetorical skills, after all this is what I teach, college writing. What’s missed in the conversation is the issue of assessment, a topic of constant debate among academics, which is as it should be, given the ever-changing nature of how subjects are taught and the ways evaluation has to be recalibrated to address these changes.

I will confine my comments to the humanities only, which would include psychology, a central focus of your investigative articles. An ongoing topic in current debates about assessment has to do with “longitudinal progress,” the question of how improvement over time figures into grading. Key to this idea is the controversial notion that rather than comparing students to other students, students should be measured according to their own progress. This is not to suggest that rubrics should be abandoned, it simply means that rubrics are one of many tools in the assessment process. The controversy arises when those students who can achieve “A’s” without really trying are outraged that less gifted students should be rewarded for attendance, effort, and improvement. The fact is, however, that these “A” students oftentimes show much less improvement than their hard working colleagues.

While Carty’s article offers one perspective on Chad Kolarik’s academic experience, for another view, one need only google an 11/17/06 piece by The Michigan Daily on his experience in my classroom, and how it influenced his decision to keep a diary as well as his attitude about writing in general.

I also had Jake Long in a Spring Eng. 325 (Essay Writing) class, and he was (excuse the athletic parlance) a flat out great student--smart, conscientious, and dedicated.

A final example from my experience is that of Jack Johnson. Too many students look at the pursuit of a degree as simply a way to make money. Seeing how Johnson addressed his university experience taught them a lesson about the value of an education that I could never impart. Although he was drafted by the pros in 2005, Johnson elected to stay in school. In 2006, however, the possibility of injury, and the offer of instant playing time and a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract made it impossible for him to hold out. At the time, he was in my Eng. 225 class (Argumentative Writing). It was late winter with about three weeks left in the semester. He came to me and said, “Dr. Tessier, I have to report to the L.A. Kings for their last six games, but I want to finish up here so I can continue my education next year on the west coast. If you’ll allow me to work on my papers for the week and a half in L.A., I’ll return to class with my completed essays and be in class for the last week.” Even though Jack was set for life financially, he was of a mindset that a degree was something with an intangible value that can’t be measured with a monetary yardstick. The students were blown away.

While I have had many student athletes in my time (I would say that Peter Vignier, now a lawyer in Arizona, was perhaps the brightest), these are just three examples of the kind of work ethic Carty’s article fails to emphasize.

Randall L. Tessier
English Department
Comprehensive Studies Program
University of Michigan