CoffeeSaint
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2005
- Messages
- 1,088
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- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
CoffeeSaint said:As a high school teacher, and the instructor for a core subject (Language Arts/Speech), my belief is that the priority of public schools should be academic achievement; I believe we do a reasonable job of teaching students the basic skills, but a terrible job of teaching higher level cognitive development: high level reading and writing, logic, critical thinking, high level math skills, etc. Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that schools focus much of their time and attention, and especially much of the institutional encouragement and praise, on athletic accomplishment, rather than intellectual accomplishment. Since I believe that, I think competitive school sports should be eliminated, in favor of PE within school, and independent club teams totally separate from school for after school and summertime activities.
However: I recognize that I am an absolute non-athlete. I never played school sports, and I don't coach school sports or even attend, most of the time. So I'd like to solicit opinions: what do you all think about sports in school, specifically public high schools? Are they valuable, and why? If not, why not?
bandaidwoman said:I think school sports complement academics, although some allow it to ditract from the academics. In America, I believe sports like football also generate a lot of needed revenue for the schools no?
My first question here would be about causality: did your brother learn focus and fortitude from sports, or did the focus and fortitude he already had make him a stand-out athlete? Unanswerable, I know, but I still wonder.bandaidwoman said:I'm an athlete scholar so of course I advocate both. I believe in the greek philosophy of sound mind and body. I was educated in the Far East and we had rigorous excercise curriculum for everyone, non athlete to athlete alike. I was on the track team for most of my high school years. I went on to become a chemist, then grad school, med school, research etc. so I felt my higher learning was not compromised and my years on the school athletic team ingrained good health habits and discipline I still practice today. My brother was educated in the public school system in New York ....star varsity baseball pitcher, went to graduate Princeton a valedictorian. He attributes his ability to focus and come through at times of adversity to his years playing varsity sports. (he also played basketball in the fall since he was 6'5").
I think school sports complement academics, although some allow it to ditract from the academics. In America, I believe sports like football also generate a lot of needed revenue for the schools no?
CoffeeSaint said:My first question here would be about causality: did your brother learn focus and fortitude from sports, or did the focus and fortitude he already had make him a stand-out athlete? Unanswerable, I know, but I still wonder.
I see the value of good health habits and discipline, but I am not sure that the good health habits can, or should, come from school-sponsored sports; school should teach physical education, which should include promotion of these traits, and they should then be reinforced by the family. Does intramural competitive sports serve this purpose in a way that phys. ed, club teams, and family involvement could not?
I watch my student athletes leave class early, or miss class entirely, at least once a week, and most of them never think twice about what they are missing; I watch my classes get shortened every month for pep rallies; I listen to the students fret and complain about raising their grades, not so they can graduate, not so they can improve their future opportunities, but so they can play in the big game. I see, of course, the motivation that participation in sports brings, but it is a temporary motivation, and a misplaced one, in terms of academics. These kids should want to learn so they can be educated, not so they can play. I also think the push to use sports as a motivator for grades cuts two ways: teachers are tempted to alter grades, or water down curriculum, to allow students to play sports; schools are tempted to lower academic standards, or to allow loopholes, for athletes, especially star athletes in competitive schools. And, of course, I can't help but wonder how much of our country's fascination with sports, our idolization of athletes, and the growing trend of professional athletes skipping college entirely, is attributable to the weight given to athletics in high school.
Girls who play sports are more likely than those who don't to be virgins.4 They wait longer before having sex for the first time5, have sex less often, and have sex with fewer partners, than female non-athletes.6 And, as noted above, female teen athletes are far less likely to get pregnant than their peers who are not athletes.
Male and female teen athletes are less likely to use drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin and hallucinogens.7 This is an important finding because almost a third of young adults (age 18-24) say they have "done more" sexually under the influence of drugs and alcohol than they planned while sober, and more than one in five sexually active young people (age 15-24) report having had unprotected sex while intoxicated.8
When girls in poor neighborhoods participate in sports or other physical activities, they report higher levels of self-esteem and wait longer before having sex for the first time.9
Young female athletes in grades 9-12, particularly African-American girls, are less likely to combine sex with drugs and alcohol than are their non-athlete peers, a key risk factor in becoming pregnant and contracting sexually transmitted diseases.10
Female high school athletes of all races and ethnicities tend to have higher grades and significantly higher graduation rates than non-athletes, and this academic performance is powerfully linked to avoiding teen pregnancy.11 For example, about half of teen mothers drop out of school before they become pregnant.12 The positive effects of sports on grades are especially pronounced among Latinas, the ethnic group with the highest teen birth rate.13
Of course I don't understand the benefits of sports; that's why I asked. But in my experience, while there are scholar-athletes who excel in both athletics and academics, the students who get all A's are not the athletes. The athletes are the ones who scrape by with C's and a D or two, because they are the popular students, which means they are the students who are socializing instead of paying attention, hanging out and going to practice and games instead of studying and doing homework. You say that a lack of interest in academics is the parents' problem? I'd say obesity is the parents' problem. The schools are supposed to educate the children, and while we cannot ignore the health of the kids, that is not our primary focus, and I don't think it should be. How many obese kids actually play sports? How many obese kids become less obese in order to play sports? Sure, there are certainly students who are in shape because they play sports, but why does this have to be associated with school? Is that where the habits begin?liberal1 said:It would be unfair of me to say that anyone who hasn't played sports doesn't understand what benefits athletics offers (for there is no rebuttle to such a statement), but it's true. Anyway,taking sports out of schools could further deteriate the crisis we already have, obesity in children. Now, I'm not saying that school ssports could solve all the problems of diabetes and all the other weight related problems, but it is a start. True, like the Romans, American society is putting too much importance in athletics, but to eliminate sports in schools altogether is a much worse move. A sport can give someone confidence, or a purpose, or a way to relax, it teaches students to balance their time better (if they want to be successful in academics, and if they don't, that is a problem aimed toward parents rather than sports). In fact, I've often round that usually the all A students are those that participate in after school sporting events.
CoffeeSaint said:I happen to think that if schools did not support competitive sports, those sports would not vanish from our society. If schools do not teach students how to read and appreciate Shakespeare, however, that would vanish, and that loss would be more serious for our society than the loss of baseball would ever be.
P.S: How many people, in reading this, immediately thought that I was a geek/dork/loser in high school, and that I'm just jealous of the jocks? Doesn't that show something about our priorities?
doughgirl said:So what do we do?
Couldn't we find ways to make it work?
Maybe limit how many hours a sports team can work out a week? Play a week? Travel a week?
Maybe limit how many sports a child can play at one time?
Not letting kids in sports leave academic classes to go work out or play?
If conferences made rules that all teams had to abide by, so that one team did not have the edge against another....wouldn't this work?
(So many games a month, grade point etc...)
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