Ronnie Brown's Secret

Miami Dolphin running back Ronnie Brown recently spoke at a Florida middle school about teen violence. The complete story, as reported in Yahoo, is interesting and thought provoking. What caught my eye was Brown's secret, which he revealed to the assembled students: his parents had been incarcerated when Brown was a young boy.

How a child considers and manages the unpleasant fact of a relative's incarceration is a topic suited for a writer with a Russian novelist's skill. The crime does not necessarily have to be a violent one; the charge could be embezzlement. The legacy of "guilty" goes beyond the individual into the adult family members, the children, and in some cases, the generations to come.

Brown managed to overcome this emotional impediment, and I'm assuming competitive athletics helped him do so. It's easy to forget, in the schools' test-crazy, data-driven nightmare, that character development is damn important, and often occurs through extra-curricular activities such as athletics. Young women and men are tested inside and outside a classroom, including some edgy ways for which activities such as athletics provide excellent preparation. One can only hope schools find the money to maintain these programs.