Chuck Adults… Put Kids in Charge

I have a great idea to affect cultural change in the USA and Canada and it won’t cost a billion or even a million, can you believe it? I figure that all of the failed social and educational programs implemented by the compassionate Liberals over the last fifty years have cost taxpayers billions of dollars with no tangible results. So let’s take the first step and start with children’s sports. Number one must be the removal of all intellectual elites who feel they have the answers for everything and are immersed in theories regarding child psychology. Secondly let’s dismantle the rigid infrastructure set up to control every aspect of the sport whether it be hockey, baseball soccer or any other game that was originally developed for …wait for it….FUN. Let’s use baseball as a start and rewind our time tape to the days before umpires, strict and regimented rules and well groomed diamonds that rival the MLB minor leagues. Toss in a park, a couple of bats and two or three baseballs and that’s it. Let the kids themselves organize a crowd of young eager players who will meet at the park bringing their gloves and mitts with them. A funny thing will then happen. The kids will find a couple of pieces of old cardboard or a rock and a newspaper and make the bases. They won’t be spiked into the ground but of course everybody knows this so care will be taken not to slip or knock them off their moorings when running out a hit. Next comes the rule discussion where a couple of the leader types will lay out some rules and the rest of the crowd agrees or disagrees until a consensus is reached and believe me this won’t take very long. The rules, of course, can be changed from time to time as different and unanticipated situations arise. The game then starts and carries on until one of the players is either called in for a meal or bedtime whereby everybody disperses and heads home. The only hard and fast rule that never must be compromised in my new world of kids sports….”NO ADULTS ALLOWED”. I believe several amazing things will happen over time. There will be little time spent arguing about anything, plays, rules etc will happen and accepted either immediately or with a brief few seconds of discussion. There will be no yelling from the stands, no berating of umpires, no screaming parents wondering why their kid isn’t involved as much as they believe they should be and most importantly no child caught in the middle of adults who have no idea of what the game is really about. Gone will be the coaches, the managers, the conveners, and the umpires for ages 0 to 12. Once puberty starts to set in then some structure and rules will be needed for safety and some other natural things that start to creep onto the scene. I will bet however, there will be much more civility and true enjoyment of the game if they have spent the preceding years under the new (old) culture of children’s sports that I have espoused above. Unfortunately this idea will be seen as too simple and not complex enough to fit the template required by the “over educated” doers of good things. Alas it’s the children that end up suffering for all these adult structured programs designed to satisfy some adults vision of utopia. Too bad.