The Bryce Harper/Jeremy Tyler Effect

Bryce Harper is a 16 year-old young man from Las Vegas, NV. He has recently decided to drop out of high school to pursue a career. On paper, this sounds titanically risky to the point of insanity. But there's just one thing: Bryce Harper could conceivably be the number one overall pick in the 2010 Major League Baseball draft and stands to make a fortune....in the neighborhood of $20 million.

Harper is not the first pro prospect this year to take such a risky move. Jeremy Tyler, a junior at San Diego High School, also announced his intention to drop out of high school. Tyler, a projected top pick in the 2011 NBA draft, is going to play professionally in Europe next year.

Both of these young men have compelling reasons for doing what they are doing. I don't judge them for that. But I do have several questions that, as an educator, just gnaw away at my conscience. Have either of these young men considered the very real possibility that they could get hurt sometime between now and their projected payday and never be able to play again?

More importantly, have the adults in either of the boys' lives considered this? If. God forbid, something like that did happen, has anyone considered what to do then? Will either of these young men be prepared for life beyond high school?

The road to professional glory is littered with the broken dreams of players who were cut down by injuries.
I'm pretty sure that both of these young mens' parents have considered this, but I still have to wonder.

The fact that these young men are leaving school early is not what really bothers me. Of greater concern is the copycat effect. We live in a society of delusional people with fanciful dreams of money, fame and glory. Any casual viewing of the first few weeks of "American Idol" will confirm this. There are a lot of young people out there who think that they are the Next Number One Overall Pick in Every Sport They Play Or Everything They Do. This is not unusual. Young people have, and have always had, idealistic fantasies about how they will go out and conquer the world. This hasn't changed. What has changed is that where children used to have parents that would temper their fantasies with hard realities, or simply allow hard realities to educate their children, we seem to have lost that. Many parents now also think that their children are the Next Number One Overall Pick In Every Sport They Play Or Everything They Do. Knowing that these people are out there, it is feasible to believe that these parents will encourage their children to do likewise, especially if unscrupulous agents get involved. The potential for scams is limitless. But more importantly than money, the young people themselves will suffer. What happens when little Johnny and his momma decide that he's just the cat's meow and could surely be an all-star if only his school coach didn't have a personal dislike of the child or his momma, or was biased in favor of someone else's little angel? Little Johnny and his momma decide to follow the trail blazed by Bryce Harper and Jeremy Tyler and go for broke. An agent swindles them into signing over their lives and goes out to allegedly find a buyer for Little Johnny's services. After twelve tons of reality settle on Little Johnny and he comes to the realization that he's been had, what then? Little Johnny is just another High School dropout with no clue as to how to better himself. He has been set-up for failure by the very person who should have done the exact opposite. He will very likely end up on drugs, in jail, dead, or all of the above. Just another statistic.

The problem is that we seem to have lost the ability to tell "probability" from "possibility." A lot of people assume that "can happen" automatically equates to "will happen." We have sheltered ourselves and our children from reality to the point that many of us have completely lost touch with it, and I'm afraid that news of Bryce Harper and Jeremy Tyler will only perpetuate and worsen this condition. So what is an educator to do? When children come back to school this fall demanding to now why they should have to learn Calculus or Shakespeare instead of sitting at home and waiting for the phone to ring and a professional sport team's GM be on the line wanting to talk about contract terms, what do you tell them?
Personally, my spiel goes like this:

"Yes, you are right. One guy dropped out of high school to go pro and he might make it. Good for him if does. But you know what? For every Bryce Harper, or Jeremy Tyler, there's a thousand or more kids who are NOT Bryce Harper or Jeremy Tyler. You've got a better chance of walking out the door and having a big bag of money fall out of an airplane and land in your backyard."

But we all know students learn by doing, so...

There's a lesson you can do that I find helpful. Ask the class who the best basketball player in the room is. When you pick your "all star," have him or her stand as far away from your trash can as they can get. Now blindfold them and tell them to shoot 3 balled-up pieces of paper into the trash can. Explain to the class that they might make it all three times, or they might not, but chances are, they won't. Once they complete the task and remove their blindfold, have the same player get right up next to the can and put three more balled-up pieces of paper in it. Now ask them to tell you honestly which was the easier shots to make. More than likely they will say the second three. Then you go in for the clincher. Tell them that success in life is a lot like shooting paper balls into a trash can, the fewer handicaps you give yourself, the greater the likelihood of success. Going out into the world without an education is a lot like shooting blindfolded from across the room. Tell them they might make it, but chances are, they won't. To increase their chances, tell them to stay in school and get closer to the goal, where they can take their shot with a higher chance of making it. Education is no guarantee of success, but it does tilt the odds in their favor.