School Should Be About Learning, NotSports
Amanda Ripley, anEmerson senior fellowat the New America Foundation, is the author of"The Smartest Kids in the World — and How They Got That Way."She is onTwitter.
UPDATEDOCTOBER 22, 2014, 10:18 AM
In the world’s smartest countries, school is about learning. Full stop. There is no confusion about the academic hurdles kids must clear to have full and interesting adult lives. Kids play sports, of course, but outside of school, through recreation centers, club teams or pick-up games on dirt fields with no adults in sight.
When these same kids come to the U.S. to live or study abroad, they are surprised by the Olympic villages they encounter in our high schools. Here, school is about learning, but it’s also about training to compete in games that the majority of kids will never get paid to play. It’s about pep rallies, booster clubs, trophy cases and cheerleaders decorating football players’ lockers after they fill them with brownies.
Those messages shape kids’ priorities. When I surveyed former exchange students about their impressions of America, 9 out of 10 said that teenagers here cared more about sports than their peers back home. “Doing well at sports was in the U.S. just as important as having good grades,” observed one German student.
This mash-up makes school more fun, without a doubt. “The biggest difference was definitely the school spirit,” one student from Finland noted. “It was amazing to see how school wasn't just about the grades. In my home country, school is just for learning.”
The problem is the dishonesty. By mixing sports and academics, we tempt kids into believing that it’s O.K. if they don’t like math or writing — that there is another path to glory. Less obvious is that this path ends abruptly, whereupon they get to spend 50 years in an economy that lavishly rewards those with higher-order skills and ruthlessly punishes those without.
Kids notice when they have a sub in math class because the football coach (I mean teacher) has an away game. It is not lost on them that their local newspapers devote an entire section to high school sports and say nothing about the trials and travails of the AP English class. This hypocrisy eats away at the focus and integrity of our schools.
Imagine if medical schools dedicated hours of every day (and a chunk of their budgets and staff) to the culinary arts — to perfecting tiered wedding cakes and artisan breads. We could argue that this approach keeps med students from dropping out, but we would sound insane.
Competitive sports is not about exercise. If it were, we’d have the fittest kids in the world. It’s about a fantasy with a short shelf life. If we want to build school spirit and teach kids about grit, hold a pep rally for the debate team. Those kids are training to rule the real world.
Turn Down the High School FootballVolume
Buzz Bissingeris the author of “Friday Night Lights” and “Three Nights in August."
UPDATEDOCTOBER 21, 2014, 10:14 PM
I primarily spend my time in a remote corner of southwestern Washington. There is a small town nearby called Ilwaco. Several towns feed into the high school there. They have a football team called the Fishermen, which surprised me at first. The school is small with about 400 students. They just recently ended a 17-game losing streak.
Then I met a young man on the team. He was selling merchant discount cards to help raise funds for the program. You could tell from his size that he had no aspirations of football beyond high school. You could also tell that he loved playing.
There was a lovely innocence to it all. The team does what a high school football squad should do — become the focal point of team and town and wider community.
Most high schools play football this way. But then there are the high-powered programs that mimic the major college ones. There has to be a better way.
But getting rid of high school football is a terrible idea. What is needed is a turning down of the volume — not such an easy task given how competitive sports are ingrained into our culture. It is shocking that the head coach of Sayreville War Memorial High School in New Jersey spent little time in the locker room. The community of Allen, Tex., should never have built a high school football stadium for$60 million(which subsequently needed$2 million in repairsbecause of cracks).
Football is now being watched with a high-powered telescope because of the spate of recent scandals at every level. Fanatical coaches cannot hide anymore. Players are no longer immune from punishment.The effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy is not some left-wing conspiracy. As long as the heat continues there will be changes. Maybe enough to make high school football just a game.
Make Sports an After-School Activity, Not a CompetitiveTeam
Earl Smithis a sociologist and the author of "Race, Sport and the American Dream" and co-author of "African-American Families: Myths and Realities," which includes a chapter on sports.
UPDATEDOCTOBER 21, 2014, 10:15 PM
No, high schools should not have competitive sports teams. And especially not in under-resourced inner city high schools where academic programs are often sacrificed to finance sport teams. And not in their current form. Like in colleges and universities, the once “extracurricular activity” of an after-school sport (especially football) has gotten out of control.
High school teams going to preseason sport camps (often out of state); coaches that have no academic connection to the school; the building of huge, expensive stadiums; the opening of the sport season before school even starts: these are all indicators that the primary mission of high school has been supplanted and replaced — especially for those young men playing football and basketball — by sports. Even the student bodies in many high schools have developed cultures that glorify sports at the expense of the scholar, as in theJocks vs. Puke mentalitythat sports columnist Robert Lipsyte has written about.
And, for those who defend this system by invoking it as a route to a college scholarship, the social science research has shown (over and over) that the chances are slim to none,especially for young women, who are often dismayed to find that even when they are talented enough to win a scholarship, it is usually afraction of what they need. Even in football and basketball, only2 to 5 percentof young men playing on their high school team will earn a college scholarship.
Let's return high school sports to the simple after-school activity it once was, like the drama club or the science club. Give young men and women an opportunity to develop holistically, in moderation, and with realistic expectations for their college and professional lives.
Sports and Education Work WellTogether
Jay P. Greene is the 21st century professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas. Daniel H. Bowen is a post-doctoral fellow at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University.
UPDATEDOCTOBER 21, 2014, 10:15 PM
Athletics have always been an essential component of a liberal education, but recently sports in school have come under attack. If, because of that, athletics are cut or eliminated from schools, the quality of education would likely be harmed.
There is arelatively consistent body of research showing thatstudents who participate in athleticstend to fare significantly better both in school and in later life. Participating in sports, like playing in the school band or competing on the debate team, are cognitively and organizationally demanding activities that help convey self-discipline and leadership skills. This isespecially true for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
In addition,our own researchhas found that schools that offer more sports and field more successful teams produce higher test scores and graduation rates. So, there is no reason to believe that schools that emphasize sports do so at the expense of other educational goals.
What is the case against sports in schools? People sometimes cite the bad behavior of some student athletes, such as recent incidents of sports-related hazing in New Jersey. Quite often they refer to fictionalized accounts of sports corrupting education, as in the movie "Varsity Blues." But selective anecdotes and fiction do not constitute generalizable evidence.
Others refer to the fact thatcertain high-achieving countries, such as South Korea and Finland, do not have athletics in schools. This may be true, but then again many low-achieving countries also lack school sports programs. There is no reason to believe that the academic success of students in South Korea or Finland has anything to do with the absence of school athletics rather than with some other feature of those countries.
It is strange that as many education advocates are seeking a “broader, bolder” approach that expands the responsibilities of schools to include social work, medical care and food provision, supporters of that vision are also often seeking to shrink school activities by eliminating sports. They are also fighting to prevent cuts in school-sponsored extracurricular activities such as band, debate and the arts. Why are sports on the chopping block when these other elements of a well-rounded education need to be preserved?
The evidence suggests students benefit from schools that offer a variety of enriching activities, including sports. Singling out sports for elimination while fighting to preserve other elements of a liberal education betrays an elitist bias that reveals more about the opponents of athletics than it says about the research on what helps students.
School Sports Provide Lessons in How toLive
Donté Stallworth, a former N.F.L. player, is a national security fellow at The Huffington Post.
UPDATEDOCTOBER 22, 2014, 3:31 PM
It was a blistering hot Saturday afternoon in Sacramento, Calif., in October 1997. I was drained and dehydrated and my team needed a huge play. At the time, I was one of the top high school football players in the nation, and I played both offense and defense. That day, I was exhausted from going against Matt Barnes, a future N.B.A. star, then a wide receiver for Del Campo high school. My coach pulled me aside. "We need you, now!" he yelled into my helmet. With nothing left in me, I made a reception over the middle and outran everyone for the go ahead touchdown.
When weighing the pros and cons of high school sports, experiences like that day in 1997 could provide a good example of how beneficial organized athletics are to children both in the moment and years down the road. Looking back, I've come to realize that the best times of my life, when I was playing high school sports, also provided beneficial life lessons.
For years my Uncle Jim begged my mother to let me play football. When I turned 11, she acquiesced. I had dreamed of becoming the next Jerry Rice. Football posters became a collage on my wall, providing me with daily inspiration.
I grew up in a rough neighborhood engulfed by gangs and drugs, but there were many who helped guide us through. Mike Alberghini, my high school coach, is responsible for much of my life's success. He knew which buttons to push to motivate his team and when to express love — something he still does today after more than two decades.
As I move beyond my N.F.L. career, I incorporate much of what Coach Al taught me as a teenage boy — teamwork, responsibility, perseverance, accountability — into other aspects of my life. Whether speaking in front of high school students, college students or N.F.L. players, I always remind them the lessons they learn in sports will carry over to any profession.
The magic of high school sports isn't about how a kid can go pro someday, or even that their team wins, but that they step out of their comfort zones and challenge themselves, a lesson they take with them wherever they go in life.
There are obvious health benefits as well. In the digital age, organized athletics is one of the best ways to combat the rise in childhood and adolescent obesity.
I recognize that there are dangers whenever kids get together, including hazing. But for many communities, including my own, sports provided one of the only outlets to avoid even greater dangers and sports taught me life lessons, at an impressionable age, that I may not have learned otherwise.
Now Women Are Seeing the Benefits of SchoolSports
Nicole M. LaVoiis the associate director of theTucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sportand the co-founder of theMinnesota Youth Sport Research Consortiumat the University of Minnesota. She is onTwitter.
OCTOBER 21, 2014
Unfortunately there are plenty of examples of bad behavior that challenge the belief that sports build character and develop life skills to help young people grow and thrive. Sports do not automatically provide contexts for youth development. It depends on the coaches, parents and the degree to which ethical values are explicitly taught.
But when done right, sports can positively affect lives. Boys and men have long known that sports can lead to social, psychological, moral, physical and health benefits, and lead to business success at a very high level.
Girls and women began to enjoy those benefits too, with the passage in 1972 of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that guaranteed equal opportunities in schools for both sexes.
Prior to 1972, 1 in 27 girls played sports. Now thatnumberis around 1 in 2.5, an all-time high.
The effect of that participation in school athletics can be seen in executive suites. About 55 percent of women in top executive jobs played sports in college – presumably after playing in high school – compared with 39 percent of other female managers, a 2013studyby Ernst & Young found.
Sports provide lessons in teamwork, leadership, performing under pressure, conflict resolution, executing a game plan and knowing one’s role. Thanks to Title IX, those lessons are available to all girls and women. Educators, administrators, coaches, mentors and parents should work together to ensure that more young women take advantage of them.
Preserve High School Sports, but Monitor ThemClosely
Mark Hymanis an assistant professor at George Washington University. He is the author of three books about youth sports including "Until It Hurts: America’s Obsession With Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids."
OCTOBER 21, 2014
The troubling reports out of Sayreville, N.J., this month offer another chance to call for the dismantling of high school sports. We should resist.
High school sports have a lot to offer. They’re a rite of passage in many ways, from playing for school pride to working hard to becoming the best you can be. It’s no surprise that7.8 million athletessuited up for their high school teams last year – a record.
Let’s preserve high school sports and monitor them closely. Let’s also seize this moment to start paying more attention to the millions of kids who enjoy tossing footballs but are not going out for the varsity. There should be an equal path in sports for them.
One of the distressing realities of today’s youth sports landscape is how it caters to the most talented, competitive players. With skills training for 3-year-olds and 70-game travel seasons for rising third graders, many of us are grooming our kids to play at the next level and the next. It’s as if the only reason for a child to play is for a letter jacket or a college scholarship. Many of us have learned that’s a recipe for disappointment. The odds areheavily stacked againstany young player. Less than 4 percent of high school girls’ basketball players play even one minute for a college team.
Most 14-year-olds aren’t cut out to be stars. They lack the D.N.A., the drive or both. They’ve played organized sports most of their lives. They simply want the opportunity to keep going. Pickup games are an option, of course. But have you seen a pickup game lately?
An executive in the sporting goods industry once told me, “When our kids hit their teens and we realize they aren't going to be stars in high school, we lose interest. Not that many of us want to be coaches and league presidents anymore.” That’s shortsighted. Youth sports are about more than letter jackets.
High School Athletes Gain Lifetime Benefits
Kevin Kniffinteaches leadership and management in sports at Cornell University as part of the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. He is onTwitter.
UPDATEDOCTOBER 22, 2014, 10:18 AM
Ask a group of healthy college students in their 20s if they know what they had for lunch three days ago and you’re not likely to see many hands go up. But ask them for memories of competitive sports they played when they were younger and suddenly you’ll hear stories about when they pitched for their school baseball or softball team. Sports offer formative and life-long lessons that stick with people who play.
Those lessons presumably help to account for the findings that people who played for a varsity high school team tend to earn relatively higher salaries later in life.Researchto which I contributed, complementing previous studies, showed that people who played high school sports tend to get better jobs, with better pay, and that those benefits last a lifetime.