It's interesting that the author concludes that school sports are over-emphasized over club and travel teams (just to be clear, I think there are a lot of good points in the article). I played sports in high school, as did my brother and sister. My experience (and my understanding of a lot of the West Coast) was almost the opposite. Our high school soccer season was considered almost like the offseason compared to the club season, which required way more time and travel, and was also the path to college recruitment. My sister's experience with volleyball was the same. In basketball and baseball, AAU and travel teams take up much more time than school sports, most of which actually have some limits on when practice can occur (we couldn't have anything on Sundays related to school sports, but club had no such rules). Football is the only exception to this, in my experience. Maybe the East Coast is different, but when I was growing up and going through the recruiting process, school sports didn't take up nearly as much of my attention.
The Case Against High-School Sports
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Re: The Case Against High-School Sports
#22The author notes about herself, "When I was growing up in New Jersey, not far from where Jenny now lives, I played soccer from age 7 to 17. I was relieved to find a place where girls were not expected to sit quietly or look pretty, and I still love the game. Like most other Americans, I can rattle off the many benefits of high-school sports: exercise, lessons in sportsmanship and perseverance, school spirit, and just…
The problem is not sports but the undue attention given to school sports teams. In Europe every school has sports teams but nobody cares or even knows who is on the team, nor are matches given any attention or even known about outside the sports teams.
In many (perhaps most) areas of the US, school team sports serve to represent a geographical area and its community in much the same way as professional team sports. From an anthropological point of view, this is hardly negative or surprising.
If sports don't serve this purpose in Europe, there must be something else that brings small local communities together there?
Re: The Case Against High-School Sports
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is not sports but the undue attention given to school sports teams. In Europe every school has sports teams but nobody cares or even knows who is on the team, nor are matches given any attention or even known about outside the sports teams.
In many (perhaps most) areas of the US, school team sports serve to represent a geographical area and its community in much the same way as professional team sports. From an anthropological point of view, this is hardly negative or surprising. If sports don't serve this purpose in Europe, there must be something else that brings small local communities together there?
> If sports don't serve this purpose in Europe, there must be something else that brings small local communities together there?
Adult sports serve that purpose. Children play sports because competition is good, and because fitness is good.
Re: The Case Against High-School Sports
#24I was a high school athlete. I wrestled on a top-tier team, played football, and ran cross-country after a knee-injury temporarily disallowed me from football. The financial impact of high school sports aren't the issue. The real issue is their impact on high school culture. School sports, especially the big, spectator friendly, fast-twitch muscle oriented sports of football, basketball, and baseball, send a big mess…
I'm kind of torn. Played HS sports. And I agree 100% with what you're saying. The US glorifies athletics in an unbalanced way. To quote Bill James
http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2011/03/shak...
Our society is very, very good at developing certain types of skills and certain types of genius. We are fantastically good at identifying and developing athletic skills—better than we are, really, at almost anything else
However, the US is pretty darn successful. And considering sports is such a big part of the cultural fabric I have to wonder if sports doesn't have something to do with that success?
Specifically, to throw out a hypothesis ... it would be that there are benefits to the dog eat dog competitiveness that sports teaches.
Re: The Case Against High-School Sports
#25I was a high school athlete. I wrestled on a top-tier team, played football, and ran cross-country after a knee-injury temporarily disallowed me from football. The financial impact of high school sports aren't the issue. The real issue is their impact on high school culture. School sports, especially the big, spectator friendly, fast-twitch muscle oriented sports of football, basketball, and baseball, send a big mess…
Sports are good, but I agree: get them the fuck out of academic institutions. They have no place there.
The counter example is that sports are linked (hitstorically) with (very) successful Academic Institutions. The notion that "they have no place there" is historically way off the mark.
[Edit: Examples]
[1] In 1815, Eton College documented its football [soccer] rules, the first football code to be written down anywhere in the world.
[2] In 1845, the first football [Rugby?] laws were written by Rugby School pupils
[3] Some historians have argued that the primary influence on Australian rules football was rugby football and other games originating in English public schools
Springfield College [MA, USA] is ... famous as the site where the sport of basketball was invented: instructor and graduate student James Naismith invented the game in 1891
{etc}
The real issue is their impact on high school culture.
Again, this is at best culturally specific and self-referential. At best this is a political position: more time and attention should be allocated to {X} group not {Y} group. It also hinges on the false notion that (political) "merit" is correlated with "academic" merit. This is also a an obvious falsehood, and frankly the purpose of sport in schools is to teach the opposite. To use a stratup analogy: ideas are a dime a dozen. Its execution that counts. So, character is something that matters.
And rightly or wrongly "character" and "teamwork" are subjects not developed/selected for in the classroom.
Re: The Case Against High-School Sports
#26I find it amusing that in a country where so many people are obese, diabetic, etc, people are characterizing sports as the problem.
If anything, there is too much "learning" in school and not enough sports! All over the country, physical education programs are being cut to make way for more instruction on native Americans, as if that's really what society needs.
Re: The Case Against High-School Sports
#27I was a high school athlete. I wrestled on a top-tier team, played football, and ran cross-country after a knee-injury temporarily disallowed me from football. The financial impact of high school sports aren't the issue. The real issue is their impact on high school culture. School sports, especially the big, spectator friendly, fast-twitch muscle oriented sports of football, basketball, and baseball, send a big mess…
Excellent point. My much younger brother runs cross country in high school. He loves running and it's great that he found a hobby he enjoys, but the problem is that he doesn't see it as a hobby.
He thinks that participating in sports is making some kind of noble sacrifice for the greater good. At my parent's house he expects everyone else to sacrifice to enable him to participate, e.g., he is tired from running so someone else has to do his chores.
He's been taught by his coaches that what he does isn't recreation, it's a glorious pursuit that benefits everyone else.
Re: The Case Against High-School Sports
#28Athletics and after-school programs are probably some of the best thing schools can spend their money on (apart from good teachers). I agree maybe they get in the way of studies when students are forced to attend pep-rallies or something similar but that is just bad school administration and needs to be dealt with on an individual school level.
Apart from all the soft skills that are tough to test for like leadership, organizational skills, and work ethic, sports have a tangible effect on grades; that is they improve them. I would cite studies but there are literally too many to cite. Just google "athlete gpa vs non athlete" or something similar and there won't be one link suggesting that non-athletes get better grades (on average).
Athletics are also a path to a better college and give kids constructive outlets for their time and energy. Yes they happen to be pretty expensive but are totally worth it IMO because, guess what? I don't want to be like some other countries that keep their kids' noses to the grindstone all day to prep them for "a test of critical thinking in math". We should really be teaching our kids how to do their taxes, change a tire and interpret medical test results and not how to take tests.
Re: The Case Against High-School Sports
#29They should've stopped spending money on sports instead of firing teachers during the recession (recession being a relative term).
Re: The Case Against High-School Sports
#30The obsession with math education in East Asian countries is not without its cost. These countries all have a terrible gender gap in educational attainment and economic earnings. Women get marginalized before they even graduate high school. Given that female per capita earnings in the US are higher than all countries except Norway and Luxembourg, I can't help but think our system is doing something right. I am not su…
These countries all have a terrible gender gap in educational attainment and economic earnings. I call b___s___ on that, having lived in one of those countries, and invite you to produce statistics backing up your statement. The East Asian country I know best, Taiwan, has had more female than male participation in higher education for at least a generation, and generally has equal pay for equal work and plenty of fem…
You are quite right. I was thinking about Japan/Korea, and some statistics I had looked up years ago.
I can't find any information on Taiwan, but have a look a some of the gender equality for Japan/Korea. The numbers are quite abysmal. On the other hand Singapore is top of the world.
See: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GenderGap_Report_2012.pdf
p.224 Japan ,p.232 Korea, p.358 US, p.318 Singapore.
It seems the problem is isolated to Japan and Korea, and likely has nothing to do with sports, math education, nor East-Asia.