Edwards: More emphasis needs to be placed on academics

It’s exam week at Francis Marion University. Our women’s basketball team enters the break with a 4-1 record, while the men’s team is 4-2. More important, though, will be the records our players earn in the classroom this semester.

As I grow older, I grow more thankful for the education I received as a youngster in Norfolk, Virginia. I attended Norfolk Collegiate School from the fifth grade to graduation and I found high school to be more challenging than college. I was constantly challenged academically in high school.

Too many young people today do not have that type of academic ammunition when they arrive at college. Too many of my players struggle with their writing, they struggle with inadequate vocabularies and they struggle with simply compiling notes in an organized fashion.

My players are bright guys. They graduated from high school with good records and several have graduated from junior colleges. Why, then, have they not been taught to write properly?

If you do not read or write properly in college then you did not read or write properly in the fifth grade or the ninth grade or the 12th grade. Why didn’t someone say, “Whoa, partner, you are not going any further until we correct this problem.?”

I taught ninth grade English for one year, so I know firsthand the challenges teachers face.

Sadly, some parents don’t care. Many students don’t care. Someone has to care.

As John Chaney, the former Temple basketball coach, once said, “College is the fountain of life. You have to drink from it.” Some of my players are so thirsty and it breaks my heart to see them struggle so for a simple drink.

The NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, allows high school graduates with a high enough grade point average to play right away with as low as a 400 on the SAT. You receive 400 points for signing your name correctly on the SAT.

This rule has served as a fertilizer for the growth of so-called prep schools around the country. Promising basketball players are shuffled off to the likes of Boys to Men Academy or Prince Avenue Prep to receive inflated grades.

Joe might want to play right away, but the system is not doing Joe any favors. He needs a certain amount of educational preparation before he steps foot on a college campus.

Big time college athletic programs spend millions of dollars on providing basic academic skills to entering freshmen who should have learned those skills long ago. Colleges like Francis Marion have dedicated coaches and professors who attempt to do the same thing.

We all have to put a stop to this madness. Our young people must be challenged academically at a young age. It is our duty to ingrain in them the importance of education and the relative unimportance of placing a ball through a hoop.

— Gary Edwards is the men’s basketball coach at Francis Marion. E-mail him at gedwards@fmarion.edu