Posted on 09/19/2013 12:40:31 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
The United States routinely spends more tax dollars per high-school athlete than per high-school math student—unlike most countries worldwide. And we wonder why we lag in international education rankings?
Sports are embedded in American schools in a way they are not almost anywhere else. Yet this difference hardly ever comes up in domestic debates about America’s international mediocrity in education. (The U.S. ranks 31st on the same international math test.) The challenges we do talk about are real ones, from undertrained teachers to entrenched poverty. But what to make of this other glaring reality, and the signal it sends to children, parents, and teachers about the very purpose of school?
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Sports ain’t the problem.
Cough cough..... teachers unions.
In life, there are brains, brawn, looks, and character.
Brains are important, to be sure. But I can tell you after spending over two decades in electronics, that the kind of people you get when you solely focus on brains won’t be there to help you when the chips are down.
Sports are essential to physical and mental toughness, and to character, and to maintaining your corporeal self.
All four are needed for us to fulfill what God had planned for us when He made us.
You wanna know who brings home the most moolah at your local high school? More than a 20 year teacher? More than even the principal? Often a six figure salary? Hell, even some assistant coaches earn more than the principal.
FWIW.
You tell ‘em, Coach!
Sorry Amanda. You can’t blame this on sports. Take a closer look at the “programmers” that we force our kids to be brainwashed by and get back with us. IMHO, we need to go back to hiring TEACHERS at our schools.
they can master math and science and still be good athletes...
I think we just need another crisis to occupy us...then we'll go and be forced to give teachers and their students several more days off, throw more money at the "never can be fired" teachers, and call it a day...
If high school sports were abolished, consider the consequences:
* MANY more obese youth (turning into diabetic adults, right?)
* Youth spending another 15-20 hours per week online, texting, watching TV, drinking, and doing drugs
* Youth who do not develop a sense of giving their best effort and coming back to try again the next day
* Youth will lose opportunities to see the results of successful team-building/team-playing
I am sure I have just grazed the surface with these observations.
* everyone cannot be in the drama club
Purpose of high school sports: to keep the boys and girls distracted enough that they are not all screwing each other.
Before we discuss rankings, let’s separate U.S. students by demographic.
Then we’ll talk, teacher unions.
If that was said with sarcasm...
...then you can go over into the corner and give me 20 push-ups!
Doesn’t seem to be working...
She offers only the standard leftist solution: i.e. an endless ever increasing flow of dollars. They ever forget that it is not the role of schools to promulgate social engineering concepts but to to discipline a students cognitive abilities. The schools need to rigidly segregate the able from the mediocre and unable. To focus the able and maybe the mediocre student on cognitive tasks. We need group cohesion and an us versus them mentality a belief that we students are the bright ones, the happy ones, the glorious ones and we will someday make the laws. If interscholastic sports help to achieve the aforementioned then they should be kept.
Doesn’t seem to be working...
I'd trust the brains of a good mechanic over a academic any day of the week...
Actually in my HS, it was the teachers and the coaches who kept me from finding myself.
I spent all my time in the electronics lab because it was the only place I could learn anything.
The coaches were total idiots.
Don’t think that’s working out too well. I found out that several of Texas A&M’s football players have kids. They players are only like 18-20 years old.
It’s sad.
The US spends more per capita on education than any other developed country. The sports money is irrelevant. Throwing money at education in the US doesn't work.
The Fremont district was threatened with shutdown due to mismanagement and failing results. They completely retooled their program and curriculum. That, I submit, had a lot more to do with Fremont's improvement that shuttering sports.
Sports teaches people about hard work and also how to relate with others. It also kept me off drugs. I would not be where I am today without sports.
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