The Case Against High-School Sports • Hacker News Board

Re: The Case Against High-School Sports

#51

Post by skizm » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 5:09 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #43

skizm wrote: post #28

Athletics 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…

Athletes get better grades in high school because they are encouraged by GPA requirements to take easier classes, and because teachers are pressured to inflate athletes' grades to keep them playing. Local sports can be good; I played soccer in a non-school league. School-sponsored teams only divide students and create perverse incentives.

That is total speculation and I would guess totally false since standardized testing scores are higher for athletes also.

Re: The Case Against High-School Sports

#52

Post by mathattack » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 5:10 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #12

I 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."

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that "Sports and physical fitness are good and should be encouraged for every student"? I hear you about the problems of excess focus on a few athletes, but some schools go too far and eliminate PE and fitness activities.

And on a side note - how is it possible to run long distance on a knee too injured to play football?

Re: The Case Against High-School Sports

#53

Post by Retric » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 5:24 PM UTC

skizm wrote: post #51

nitrogen wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Athletes get better grades in high school because they are encouraged by GPA requirements to take easier classes, and because teachers are pressured to inflate athletes' grades to keep them playing. Local sports can be good; I played soccer in a non-school league. School-sponsored teams only divide students and create perverse incentives.

That is total speculation and I would guess totally false since standardized testing scores are higher for athletes also.

Athletes are by definition reasonably healthy and healthy people are as a rule both more intelligent and do better at work / school than non healthy people. Further, athletes are required to have a minimum GPA which has both a positive and dramatic impact on testing scores. AKA compare everyone with everyone with a 2.0+ GPA and you will see a positive correlation.

PS: You can correct for these factors, but it's far less common than you might think to do so as correlations are published more often than null results.

Re: The Case Against High-School Sports

#54

Post by jdminhbg » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 5:31 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #47

001sky wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anywh…

" The counter example is that sports are linked (hitstorically) with (very) successful Academic Institutions. " Some of them. Others, less so.[1] * Princeton University * Harvard University * Yale University * Columbia University * Stanford University * University of Chicago * Duke University * Massachusetts Institute of Technology * University of Pennsylvania * California Institute of Technology " And rightly or wro…

Yale won the NCAA hockey championship last year, Stanford has maybe the best overall athletic department in the country (including a current top-10 football program), and Duke is one of the five most successful basketball programs of all time.

Re: The Case Against High-School Sports

#55

Post by 001sky » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 5:37 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #38

001sky wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anywh…

>>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. That's not a counter-example because you have cause and effect backwards. It's not that sports make the academic institution successful. Rather, successful academic institutions a) receive a ton of funding and can allocate budget for…

That's not a counter-example because you have cause and effect backwards

Are you saying tha Soccer, Rugby, and Basketball invented Students? That seems rather unlikely.

Re: The Case Against High-School Sports

#56

Post by Zimahl » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 5:42 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #34

JPKab wrote: post #12

I 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…

When I was in middle school, some friends and I won grand prize at a national robotics competition. That included middle school through university level teams. We got a brief mention in the end-of-year assembly and the person announcing it apparently wasn't told we'd won anything. Meanwhile, the basketball team making the state's Final Four game got three pep rallies, excused absences to attend, huge accolades from t…

As someone who didn't play one of the glory sports (football/basketball/baseball) in high school (I played water polo and swim team), I understand the lack of accolades. Our swim team was undefeated, had won our district, and many of us were on to state and our district trophy was used a prop for what the basketball team was going after - but had not yet won. Earlier in the fall the football coach at the same school mocked my (successful) water polo team because the sport was perceived as not as 'manly' as football.

As for cost, the article mentions that the school that shutdown sports was paying $1300 per football player - which just means they have poor accountants. At my high school almost all athletic costs were covered by student sports passes and event tickets. The problem is in the South where 'football is life' and they pay huge salaries for winning coaches and cathedral stadiums. Yet the South is the location of some of the worst school districts.

Re: The Case Against High-School Sports

#57

Post by ameoba » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 5:42 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #3

The 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…

> having decided to have all four of my children involved in competitive, organized team sports through local "travel" soccer programs

There's a reason that "soccer mom" has become synonymous with out of touch, privileged, upper-middle-class, stay at home mothers. Being able to afford this shit, especially for four separate children, puts you well to the right side of the socioeconomic bell curve. If these things are important to your children, aren't they equally important, if not more so, to the children of a single mom working for minimum wage that have no other way of gaining access to sports outside of the public school system?

Re: The Case Against High-School Sports

#58

Post by gtani » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 5:45 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #47

001sky wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anywh…

" The counter example is that sports are linked (hitstorically) with (very) successful Academic Institutions. " Some of them. Others, less so.[1] * Princeton University * Harvard University * Yale University * Columbia University * Stanford University * University of Chicago * Duke University * Massachusetts Institute of Technology * University of Pennsylvania * California Institute of Technology " And rightly or wro…

This provides some insight into what the elites that are in athletic conferences are doing recruiting and admissions-wise (and the U of Chicago, MIT and Caltech, I think they emphasize ultimate frisbee as highly as football!)

http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/ivy-academic-i...

Re: The Case Against High-School Sports

#59

Post by Zimahl » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 5:45 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #37

001sky wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anywh…

High school sports only served to create social division, with sharply separated in-groups and out-groups. Some of the athletes were great people; many were arrogant jocks with an overwhelming sense of superiority and no trace of "character". Bad grades and even shoplifting were overlooked to preserve "the team."

To be fair, this typically doesn't happen for the tennis players, track athletes, swimmers, etc. Most of the time the teams that are aggrandized, like for football, basketball, and sometimes baseball, are the ones what get the free pass.

Re: The Case Against High-School Sports

#60

Post by 001sky » Fri, Sep 20, 2013, 5:50 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #47

001sky wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anywh…

" The counter example is that sports are linked (hitstorically) with (very) successful Academic Institutions. " Some of them. Others, less so.[1] * Princeton University * Harvard University * Yale University * Columbia University * Stanford University * University of Chicago * Duke University * Massachusetts Institute of Technology * University of Pennsylvania * California Institute of Technology " And rightly or wro…

No offense to America, but the modern University predates the US founding in 1776 by some 500 years.

Secondly, are you suggesting that there the set (clever, assholes) is a null set?