Every newspaper contains action-packed accounts of young student athletes — many in grade school — and the explanations their eager coaches have for their latest exploits. They also interview the kids as to what recently went down.
Now there are also a lot of other action-packed kids and students out there who interact with teachers and other adults.
Their projects and challenges could be written up in nearly the same way. Except in many cases they might have a LOT MORE CONTENT to them.
I don’t mean to ironically pump up the learning of a kid reading an enlightening book by calling it thrilling news. But a fair number of kids who read cool books quickly go on to launch a neat project of some kind with their friends — teammates — and with the help of a guiding grownup — and cool things happen. The adventures around these projects could easily be turned into thrilling reading and might even include field trips that involve running, jumping and quick decision-making of the type that makes sports reading fun.
I wonder why mere bodily motion seems to be worth so much analysis, interviewing and explanation.
Maybe the mere generic-ness of a sports game creates the thrill. –Special things seem to happen in the framework of an event that actually happens very similarly every time for millions of times in a row. How many times has there been a cliffhanger at the buzzer? And this is news? One time it’s one team, another time it’s another. …Yet that seems to make all the difference for passion and thrill. A predictable thing feels familiar and is easily known yet what might happen is captivating. Even though only a few small range of options are available.
I suppose that isolated wild body action is also a key to why sports generate spirit, emotion — and distraction. This can then apparently be used for easy money-making in betting and in ancillaries.
It doesn’t seem like there’s community content per se, other than the fake pitting of one town against another for no reason. Well, I shouldn’t underrate diversion. Whenever you get two crews doing something long enough a race of some kind is likely to set in. Styles are fun to compare. A change of pace is a valuable thing!
A friend was recently remodeling a house that I helped him remodel decades ago. He tore out some drywall and found underneath it a big chart written on the underlayment where he and I and the rest of our crew all competed and timed ourselves to see how fast we could nail down a sheet of underlayment. I recall we also had dirt load shoveling races on that job. Sport is natural.
But more diverse creativity can also generate drama, I would think.
Maybe everyone can relate to a game — they’ve played it before — everyone knows the rules. Who knows where some other kind of project might lead. The way the “players” involved handle the challenges might be hard to relate to.
Well, Quiz Bowls turn trivia into popular sport for academic kids. …And when a little school does real well many people will tune in.
Everyone loves an underdog.
Interesting school projects DO make the news now and then.
It just seems like there are colorful, standout, leader kids and projects that could easily be worth some exciting reporting. There are teachers who are as charismatic and passionate as any coach — and who could be quoted regularly for exciting reading in the news.
Remember when the Foxfire project first came out in the 70’s? Kids were tracking down hard-to-find elders and their stories in the backwoods of Appalachia and elsewhere. They had a teacher helping them along. It became a world-famous book and reporting project. From day one that would’ve made good news fodder. Maybe that’s even how it was handled. I don’t know the details of that history.
Anyway, school kids seem like they can be as exciting as sports kids.
I admit it could be made into funny reading, too. I imagine some “Onion” stories have been set up in this way. “Math student rallies from behind to nail the theorem!” “I knew he could do it,” says teacher. “He’d been doing equations twice a day all summer. He was unstoppable! The whole class lifted its game when they saw him hit that blackboard!”
