By Ron Borges

In the high school football hotbeds of Cambridge and Malden, Ma. perspective no longer exists because the educators and politicians there know what’s really important.

The parade is really important.
The buffet is very important.
Not being inconvenienced is extremely important.
Maintaining the schedule is of paramount importance.
Most of all, a timely kickoff is drastically important.

For the adult educators and politicians of those fair cities the present is important. The future of their kids? Not so important.

Why does it seem so difficult these days for adults to act like they really are? Adults I mean. It may take a village to raise a child but it only takes a high school football game to drive a child to distraction, which is really both the fear and the point of this whole messy situation.

In a nutshell (which frankly is where this controversy belongs), on Oct. 6 the mighty football colossus of Cambridge Rindge & Latin and Malden High are scheduled to collide in what is apparently the most important event in either town’s history. It is homecoming day in Malden and the 150^th anniversary of the school, which one believes was started as an educational institution dedicated to the betterment of students by concerned parents despite some present evidence to the contrary. It was not begun as the engine that drives a parade or a football program.

Yet a battle now exists between the two cities because the folks in Cambridge agreed to a noon kickoff before realizing their kids were scheduled to take the SAT test, which is an important piece of a student’s college application, that same morning. The test runs until noon with special needs students getting up to an additional two hours to complete it.

The forward thinking people of Malden apparently found a different day for their kids to take the test. The people of Cambridge, busy writing petitions to end scurvy in Madagascar and leading protests to ban almonds in Almond Joy candies because it is discriminatory to people allergic to almonds, forgot. Once they realized the problem they asked Malden High officials to push the kickoff back a few hours. Therein began a controversy that has led to a 8-0 vote of the Cambridge City Council calling for a 3 p.m. kickoff and Malden Mayor Richard Howard saying a one hour compromise made clear “We’re accommodating them as much as possible while maintaining the schedule we set a while back.’’

Howard told a Boston Globe reporter the game had to fit neatly between a parade, a marching band performance and various celebratory gatherings around the town or all would be lost. The town could never survive. Or at least he might not come election time. He didn’t mention that the Cambridge kids are not his problem but he might as well have.

And we wonder why elite athletes act the way they do? We wonder why they, and too many of their fans, seem to have lost all perspective on the relative importance, and aim, of sports? Why wonder? The stuff is bigger than the SAT scores of 13 Cambridge Rindge players. Obviously.

Numerous Cambridge Rindge players and their parents are quoted as being fearful that they’ll feel rushed to finish the test and hence hinder their chances to get into the best college available. The football coach even went so far as to say these SAT tests “will make or break whether some of those kids go to two-year schools, four-year schools or to a really top school.’’

If that’s the case then the solution seems obvious. Either forfeit the game or play with the players not taking the test that day, making clear to all on the team and in the town that one’s educational future is far more important than the outcome of a football game, even one so filled with nobility as to be the hallmark of Malden High’s 150^th anniversary.

Or, if they wanted to make a point as well about Malden’s apparent self-absorption, Cambridge could simply say, “We appreciate your trying to accommodate us but a 1 pm kickoff is too close to the end of the SAT and we do not want to put that pressure on our students so we are forfeiting the game. We accept the responsibility for the scheduling snafu. Enjoy your parade and band concert. See you next season.’’

Of course, as one of the supposedly concerned Cambridge parents said to the Globe reporter after pointing out that the Malden folks were “totally being selfish’’ it is, after all, “a league game that counts for the playoffs…They’re putting their parade ahead of the students’ needs.’’ What was that again about totally being selfish?

Should someone in Cambridge have realized the scheduling conflict sooner? Probably, but mistakes and oversights happen in life. That’s why pencils have erasers.

Should the folks in Malden have all their planning go down the drain just to move the kickoff time ahead three hours? Maybe not but guess what people, you’ll survive.

Should educators in both towns realize who they’re supposed to be educating? Yes and sometimes that process happens outside of a classroom. Sometimes it happens when the lesson is that education is more important than a football game, including your participation in it. That the future is more important than a single moment which few people will remember for very long. That there are consequences in life when you miscalculate and also hard choices that sometimes have to be made when someone does.

You don’t want your child stressed or feeling rushed about an important test? Then tell him or her that’s all you’ll be doing that day. No games. No parades. No marching band concerts. No bus rides to Malden.

You want to teach your students that the group is more important than the individual then you tell your child as well as anyone who was going to dine at the buffet that day that we’re moving the kickoff time back a couple of hours so some kids who live in another town can get their best shot at college. Who knows, one or two of them might marry somebody in our town one day?

And as for the Cambridge coach’s concern that his players might not have enough time to eat, stretch and warm up if the game does start at 1 p.m., please. They can eat and be taped on the bus. As for stretching, I’ll bet they can squeeze in some pilates while the Malden band is spelling out “M-A-L-D-E-N.’’

This is not, however, much ado about nothing despite the surface appearance of parents acting not only badly but like loonies. It’s much ado about where are values are.

Or maybe where they aren’t.