From the Front of the Room: Do Tiger's swings and misses make a difference?

In this Sept. 24, 2006, file photo, Tiger Woods and his wife Elin walk away from the 16th green as the European players celebrate on the last day of the 2006 Ryder Cup at the K Club golf course in Straffan, Ireland.

Associated Press file photo

I’m a huge Tiger Woods fan. Always have been. I can remember when he won his first U.S. Amateur Championship in 1991 when he was just 15 years old. We had him on the sports radio station where I was working at the time, and I can remember briefly talking to him on the phone prior to the interview. He sounded like a scared and shy little kid, somebody who was doing the interview because either he, or somebody else, had decided it was a good idea, but who’d really rather be smacking balls at the driving range. 

Though he’s clearly grown more comfortable presenting himself to the public since then, I still get the impression he’d rather not have to do it. He knows his position as one of the most recognizable people on the planet demands - both for his own personal gain and for the popularity of his sport - that he do more than just perform on the course, but, despite all the millions of dollars his celebrity has brought him, I still think he accepts that reality grudgingly.

Perhaps he has a point.

We only care about Tiger Woods because of his heroism on the golf course. If he couldn’t drive or putt or flail his way out of sand traps with such extraordinary skill, we’d have no idea who he is. So why should anything else matter? So the man cheated on his wife multiple times while she was pregnant and/or had just given birth - who cares?

Well, in fact, I do.

I suspect that, at least for a little while, I will root for him less than before. It’s the Bill Clinton question all over again. Even though I liked a lot of what Bill Clinton stood for and accomplished as president, I nonetheless found his personal failings distasteful and they continue to affect my overall opinion of him. But is it fair for my opinion of an athlete or politician to be influenced by what Tiger Woods termed transgressions in his personal life? I mean, if the guy gets his job done, why should anything else be important?

I guess I have to examine this issue through the lens of a teacher. Fortunately, I doubt whatever I do in my personal life will ever be as noteworthy as what somebody famous does. Still, if I were to get arrested for drunk driving, or for fighting in a bar, or for getting in a car accident at two in the morning as I left my house - a crash which ultimately resulted in my rear windshield being smashed by a golf club wielded by my wife - I suspect that regardless of my effectiveness inside the classroom, my fitness as a teacher would be called into question.

I actually think that’s fair. My role as a teacher, where I stand in front of a hundred-plus young people each day and purport to offer them some semblance of wisdom, does demand a high standard of personal behavior. Even if every kid in my classes raises his S.A.T score five hundred points directly because of my teaching, if I’m out publicly drinking, or walking around immersed in a cloud of weed-smoke, or frequenting strip clubs, or, yes, even committing infidelities in a manner that becomes public and lurid, the reality is students could be negatively affected by what I do or say outside of school. I do feel an obligation to model behavior as a responsible citizen because I think I do exert an influence on the kinds of decisions kids will make in their own lives. At least I hope I do.

That’s not, of course, to say that kids should model their religious practices or political choices after mine. If I wear an I voted sticker in the classroom on Election Day, that’s certainly not to try and influence the way students should vote, only to encourage them to vote. But, listen, the way I behave, even outside of class, is a cue for how my students should behave. If they see me cursing the officials at a football game, I can’t very well expect them not to use profanity if they get angry at me and think I’ve made a wrong call. If they see me texting during a staff meeting instead of paying attention, it’d be pretty darn hypocritical for me to scold them for doing the same in my classroom.

Perhaps for an athlete like Tiger Woods, the personal side of his life shouldn’t matter as much. While it’s arguable whether the reality is something different, at least in theory a teacher’s direct personal contact with students should result in a more enduring behavioral influence. But if that’s true, then perhaps the other side of that question needs to be explored as well. 

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan standing beside him, recently declared his intention to tie tenure-granting decisions for teachers directly to standardized test scores of students in their individual classrooms. Such a policy would seem to indicate that a teacher’s job performance should be evaluated solely on test results regardless of what kind of citizens we influence our students to become. Is that what we really want?

Is the teacher who gets students to raise test scores really more valuable, better, than the teacher who gets students to be kind to each other? To be honest, loyal, community-spirited?

Not that both things can’t happen in the same classroom, surely they can, still, they’re not necessarily related either - are they?

** NOTE ** For explorations of additional thorny questions, check out … the biggest Poetry event of the year - Poetry Night in Ann Arbor - on Friday night, December 11th @ Rackham Auditorium. This year’s show (our 10th annual) will feature the return of some of Ann Arbor’s favorite performance poets: Roger Bonair-Agard from New York, Kevin Coval from Chicago and Lauren Whitehead, a U-M alum currently residing in San Francisco. Joining these mic-rockers on stage will be terrific high school poets from the nationally acclaimed VOLUME Youth Poetry Project and the spectacular collegiate spoken word troupe Ann Arbor Wordworks. The show starts @ 7pm. Doors open @ 6:30. Advance tickets are $5 for students and $10 for general public and $7 and $12 respectively at the door. For more info or to reserve tickets at the advanced price, contact me @ 734-223-7443 or via email @ eyelev21@aol.com.

Jeff Kass teaches Creative Writing at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor and at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, and directs the Literary Arts Programs at the Neutral Zone, including the VOLUME Youth Poetry Project, which meets every Thursday night at 7pm. He will post new blog entries every Tuesday and Thursday morning throughout the school year.