[From Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams http://www.squidoo.com/stop-stealing-dreams]
 

The fun things that matter in school have no shortage of applicants. School government, the class play, and most of all, school sports are all about try-outs and elections.

Those who run these organizations are pretty sure they’re sending the right message—life is a meritocracy, and when a lot of people try out for a few slots, we should pick the best ones. After all, that’s how the world works.

So if you want to have a speaking part in the play, try out (even if you’re eleven years old). If you want to get any time on the field, better play well (even though it’s time on the field that may lead to your actually playing well). If you want to find out if you can contribute to budget discussions in the school government, better be preternaturally charismatic so that you can get elected (even though this creates a cycle of shallowness that we all suffer under).

The freshman soccer team at the local public school has a fairly typical coach. He believes that his job is to win soccer games.

Of course, this isn’t his job, because there isn’t a shortage of trophies, there isn’t a shortage of winners. There’s a shortage of good sportsmanship, teamwork, skill development, and persistence, right?

There are sixteen kids on the squad. Eleven get to play; the others watch. One popular strategy is to play your top eleven at all times, and perhaps, just maybe, if you’re ahead by five or more goals, sub in a few of the second-string players. (Actually, this isn’t just a popular strategy—it’s essentially the way nearly every high school coach in the nation thinks.)

The lesson to the kids is obvious: early advantages now lead to bigger advantages later. Skill now is rewarded, dreams, not so much. If you’re not already great, don’t bother showing up.

If the goal of the team was to win, that would make sense. But perhaps the goal is to teach kids about effort and opportunity and teamwork. Isn’t it interesting that the movies we love about sports always feature the dark horse who dreams, the underdog who comes off the bench and saves the day?

What would happen to school sports if the compensation of coaches was 100 percent based on the development of all the players and none of it was related to winning the game at all costs?

Malcolm Gladwell has famously written about the distribution of birthdays in professional sports, particularly hockey. It turns out that a huge percentage of hockey players are born in just three months of the year. (About twice as many NHL players are born in March as in December.)

The reason is simple: these are the oldest kids in youth hockey in Canada, the ones who barely made the birthday cutoff. Every year, the Peewee leagues accept new applications, but those applicants have to have been born by a certain date.

As a result, the kids born just after the deadline play in a younger league. They’re the biggest and the strongest when they’re seven or eight or nine years old. What a terrific advantage—to be nine months older and five pounds heavier and two or three inches taller than the youngest kids. The older kids (remember, they are still eight years old) get picked for the all-star squad because they’re currently the best.

Once picked, they get more ice time. They get more coaching. Most of all, they get a dream. After all, they’re the ones getting applauded and practiced.

The rest of the kids, not so much. Dreams extinguished, they realize they have no right to play, so they settle for a job, not their passion.

The hockey parable extends to so many of the other things we expose kids to as they’re seeking for something to dream about. Be good now, and you’ll get even better later.