The Atlantic uncovers "chronic truancy" amongst today's surfer stars!
The Atlantic is a very fine magazine/website filled with interesting, well-researched stories. Two days ago they turned their editorial gaze toward our fair pastime with the piece “Ditching Class to Hit the Waves: How talented teenage surfers struggle to balance homework with travel and commitment required to become pros.”
It features interviews with Conner Coffin, Carissa Moore, Eithan Osborne and others speaking to the rigors of pairing education with fabulous surf careers. Let’s read some!
Osborne’s latest battle, though, isn’t in the ocean but in the classroom. Recently, he was forced to leave the public high school he has been attending in his hometown of Ventura, California, a coastal suburb north of Los Angeles. His often-grueling travel schedule requires him to miss class, sometimes for two or three weeks at a time, to fulfill sponsor obligations (like filming surf movies and participating in photo shoots), attend training camps, and compete in contests. It’s a romantic existence, traveling the world, living the itinerant, Endless Summer-inspired lifestyle. But while Osborne said he has been diligent with completing homework packets and communicating with teachers from the far-flung locales he travels to, over the course of the school year thus far, he has accumulated enough absences to be in violation of California law. The law mandates that students who are absent three times or more, for more than 30 minutes, without a valid excuse are considered truant. Students are considered “chronic truants” if they miss 10 percent or more of school days in one school year.
Chronic truants! How good would that be as a surf brand? But also maybe not very interesting and especially when those in the profile are all successful-ish. I wanted to read about the failures. The children whose parents yanked them from school but then they failed as surfers and had no education etc. Who did those children become? Are you one of them? If you were, say, good enough to be pulled out of school but not good enough to make it as a pro where would you turn? Crime? What sort of crime?
If I flunked out of school can I still be a white-collar criminal?
tfw when a story publishes that you just know will show up at the ‘grit.
i’m not super worried about their brains, i just think all the kids should go to school all day so i get more waves. the end.
Jen, we’ve discussed this before. You’re better and stronger (mentally and physically) than the children. Take their (read: your) waves by force. The end.
but if they were all in schooly, i wouldn’t have to bother with all that. it’d be easier and stuff. i like easy.
Being a violent criminal is never as difficult as you would expect. When the clock strikes 3 and the hordes of pimply faced gimps descend the sand dunes of your favorite spot I hope you will heed my advice.
Our rule is home school kids get burnt during school hours. No questions asked. Besides when all the kids get out of class, those home school superstars are the grom kings anyway. Thats when they get their choice considering all the rest of us are posted up with Beers shit talking from the peanut gallery by that point.
this is a pretty good rule, dude.
Getting pulled out of class for surfing wasnt a thing when we were groms. They arent special, just burn them, if they bitch tell them why you did it. They need to learn the respect. Its something a lot of lineups in the states lack and something they are going to run into when they travel anyway.
yes, older guys with no or menial jobs are the perfect people to teach kids the ways of the world.
sorry I forget how much of a bubble I live in… where I live and work everything revolves around surfing, almost everyone I surf with is either a current pro or former pro, at the least, competitive QS level guys. Its not that we dont have jobs, its that being out in the lineup is part of our job. I do completely forget I dont live in the real world sometimes
They should have interviewed Medina. I’m only going by his recent ramblings in that Search video but it appears he didn’t even go to kindergarten. Charlie is still holding up cards with colours and animals to educate the poor boy. He has so far mastered the colour “blue”.
They should interview him in his native language, of course.
Stop being so reasonable Trogan!
If one never tries, does one never fail?
Singed luke davis.
This is ridiculous. The whole point of surfing is using it to avoid a fucken education.
really? And what about after you’re 18? Is there no point?
I’m being a bit facetious, but not that facetious. Fact is that with rare exceptions, every super good to great surfer you’ll ever have heard of will have had a crappy formal education record. They’re not all Carissa, almost none of them are even close. This is because if surfing really fucken bites you, hard, as a kid, and you know you have something special in you to do with it, you’ll chuck everything else away to pursue it. Surfing becomes the education. As a general rule, people who excel at something do not lead balanced lives, at least not when they’re young.
“surfing becomes the education”
oh dear … you can see the results of that in the petri dish that is STAB.
Lulz. Parents are the home school decision makers, not the kids. I’ve never met a 12 year old grom who was really capable of making the “hmm, I’m an excellent surfer and I’ve weighed the pros/cons and believe it’s in my best interest to pursue pro surfing full time” decision. Surf parents are worse than soccer moms.
That article is kinda boring, I wouldn’t recommend reading it! You kinda summed the whole article up quite succinctly! Back to your question Chas, I would be more interested in guys who gave up an education and became the best at a sport that imploded – like professional bodyboarding or rollerblading (is that the term, haven’t heard it since about 1997)!
The ones who gave a shit never quit, its why with bodyboarding its still insanely popular outside of the states, multiple magazines and online media outlets built entirely around a solid core audience. Mike Stewart still charges pipe and owns a boogie brand, jeff and dave hubbard are sustaining/prospering with Hubboards. Theres just no one trying to shove it down your face for a fat paycheck from a huge corporate sponsor anymore. Dont worry in a few years you may know the feeling, dont think surfing is immune.
Too bad they missed the glory days of the early 2000’s when companies could afford to hire uneducated, unqualified, washed up “semi-pros” in their marketing departments (Quik).
Doesn’t this still happen? the ultra retards get stuffed in warehouses to pack boxes, and the ones with the most chromosomes get to go out on the road as a sales rep.
maybe a few warehouse jobs, but no more cushy overpaid marketing gigs.
I know a few guys that missed a lot of school to go surfing. Surfing didn’t quite become a career for them and they are now fitness trainers and work in construction, which is probably what they would have been anyway…
ya gotta chase your dream but also prepare not to succeed along the way.
Good choice!