Missions Are Meant to Be Completed
By Youssef Talaat
The mission of the Schutz American School family is to empower all our students with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to fulfill their life-long aspirations and to act to better their communities. They say actions speak louder than words. If that is true, then we are certainly not following our school mission. Surely the school’s administration encourages its students to grow academically, but there are other things to life than just academics. People can excel educationally, athletically, or even socially. Schutz’s mission clearly states that it will empower all its students to fulfill their life-long aspirations, even when it comes to the most minute hopes and dreams.
Unsurprisingly, people have careers that completely diverge from academia. People can become journalists, actors, athletes, or even cooks. If we ever want to move forward, we must learn to think “outside the box.” We should encourage people to be creative and excel in all fields and professions. If a student wants to become a tennis player, then we should, by all means, support him or her, because there is nothing shameful about becoming a tennis player. However, forcing a student (through school policies) to make a choice between a potentially career-altering occurrence and a school event is not support, it is obstruction.
Sport giants like Mohamed Bassiouny, Tatsuya Mizutani, and Ahmed Metwally rarely exist in our school anymore, and when they do, seldom do they actually play in our tournaments. It has become increasingly difficult for students to understand their administration’s wants; students do not know whether their school wants them to excel in areas that are not related to education. There would be a devastating effect if students began to think that is a misuse of time and energy to participate in school sports.
Recently, one of the school’s most skillful athletes faced an extremely unfortunate predicament. He was captain of the school Varsity Soccer Team, and he was completely committed to the team. He was also part of the Sporting Club Tennis team, and he was also completely committed to that team. He knew that the school had a policy against skipping days of tournaments, so he did everything he could to prevent that from happening. He planned ahead of time, but a severe emergency came up and he had to skip one match of the soccer tournament. He had two choices: either to act sick and go to the tennis match or to be honest and tell the school the truth. He chose to say the truth because Schutz has always taught him to have integrity. As a result, the school told him that he had to make a choice of the two; it forced him to either commit to the school team or to his tennis team.
Surely, there are rules that must be obeyed, but if rules are flawed, they must be changed. What is the difference between a student going to take the SAT and a student going to play a tennis match? Our school supposedly encourages a well-rounded student who excels in as many areas as possible. We are naturally talented in different fields; one may choose to excel academically by going to take the SAT, but another may choose otherwise. The decision to excel in a certain area should be made by the student, not by his school.
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