Amanda Ripley has a front cover article in the Atlantic today with SEO-friendly title, “The Case Against High School Sports.” The article can be boiled down to two points. American schools devote more energy to sports than other nations’ schools. And maybe all the money that goes to sports would be better spent on academics.
We have discussed high school sports and the suburban sports culture a few times on this blog, and frankly, our discussion was more interesting than the article.
I’m a fan of high school sports (when done right). I was a high school athlete. I learned skills that extended beyond the track – leadership and stamina. Sports gave me confidence, when I was a terribly insecure teenager.
HOWEVER, (That’s a really big however.) I think that sports are an entirely different activity today than back in the olden times in the 1980s. Kids are trained too hard at too early of an age. There are unrealistic expectations from parents about the benefits for college. There is a very intense sports team culture with parents getting a really weird power rush from their kids’ successes on the field. It is an expensive activity; it’s hard to justify expensive lighting systems for a football field that only benefits the handful of kids on the field. Everybody needs to take a chill pill.
But you all have experiences that you want to share, I’m sure. Chat away.
Apt. 11d 
I think we have to think about why the sports culture is so big in the US. Comparisons to Korea, with its soul-sucking educational system aren’t particularly useful. We are not going to turn into a hyper-competitive Asian nation where kids spend 12 hours a day doing school work (some of it pure and aggressive memorization).
The system in European nations, “club sports” seem like a worthwhile one. Would we benefit from completely separating sports from HS? There was chatter on this question when the soccer development league decided that it would require their highest level players to play for them and not high school because it would mean that the highest level of hs age soccer wouldn’t be played at the HS.
A big part of the conversation was that many schools build their community spirit around sports, and undermining HS sports undermines that community building. Is the community spirit a good thing? I think it is, because I think people need communities, and HS is one of the places people can find this community (I think people can disagree with this premise, too). Could community be built without the sports? Sports offer the spectator value (people coming together in one space) and team community (among team members and their parents, who have to work together). What other activities could build that community? Community newspapers seem to provide some community functions (communication, participation in a common activity, branding). Theater productions could also provide the spectator & team functions. How about academic competitions?
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There are a couple of issues going on here –
1) The author actually is clueless when it comes to what’s going on in HS sports. With an obvious bias against football, she doesn’t realize that a lot of HS athletes are actually NOT playing for their school and playing for the clubs – soccer, hockey, baseball, and basketball all have club programs outside the school which sell the parents as the path to college sports – and in most cases they are right. If you want to write an article about HS football and how too much money is spent (again, but look at the amount colleges spend and the importance of their programs), that’s one thing. She is still wrong about football, as there are many life lessons learned by playing HS football, and not everyone can do it (my HS had 2600 students, and there were only 40 of us on the team). In the HS school I coach at, the two best hockey players don’t play for the school because they play for a Juniors team giving them better competitions and exposure to colleges. Same with soccer. It’s actually the disconnect of the HS sports programs with the kids. She swings and misses.
2). I have a problem with any article which talks about the lowering of the education standards in America, comparing us to European and Asian nations. The numbers are very skewed. In America, every child is baked into the number up to the age of graduating HS. In those other counties, they identify only the best and brightest children by age 12 or so, and those are the ones earmarked for further education. Those not meeting the standard are headed to trade and machine school. If the basis of her arguments are these rankings, then they are not normalized to a percentage of the US population who would be the ones selected in those countries. It’s an easy way to trash the education system, but at least in this country, there is an attempt to leave no one behind. Not so in China, Korea, Germany, etc.
I agree with you Laura that everyone needs to chill – I have been coaching youth hockey for 11 years, coach in HS and my favorite expression is “all roads lead to men’s league”. No question some parents are reliving their childhood (the ones who either never played or were poor players) or have delusions at a young age to project future stardom (as seen by Tiger Moms too who project their kids in Harvard while in Kindergarten). I have seen Darwinism take hold, the best athletes rise to the top, and the world eventually returns to the status quo.
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1) In our state, the teachers’ contracts are a matter of public record. Even if some students play for club sports, the coaches of the teams the schools do field receive stipends. The assistant coaches receive stipends. The athletic directors receive stipends, as do the trainers. The teams need transportation. Fields need maintenance, etc.
I don’t object to coaches receiving stipends, but such sums should be balanced by stipends paid for academic extracurriculars, such as math teams, science teams, debate, robotics clubs, model UN, etc. It’s an injustice to the student body as a whole when a few “star” athletes are permitted to consume a school’s extra-academic budget. Such injustice is compounded when it eats into the money available for academics.
2) We leave many kids behind. The dropout rates from high schools is astounding. 30% of our high school students do not graduate. (http://chronicle.com/article/High-School-Dropout-Rate-Is/65669/)
Some American states post results on TIMSS which would put them among the top countries overall: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/science/expecting-the-best-yields-results-in-massachusetts.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
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I haven’t read it, but will asap. But the problem is not, primarily, about the spending (though that is ridiculous). It is about the absorption of the culture of athletics into the culture of the leadership of schools. It leads to the wrong kinds of people wanting to become leaders, and the wrong kinds of people being picked for leadership (because they are like the people already in leadership who are the wrong kinds of people) and those kind of people waste their time (which is, of course, money) attending to sports rather than to things that actually affect children’s learning. It is toxic. If you want the state to subsidize athletics, that’s fine by me — let the government pour money into training players of and audiences for commercially successful sports, and you can even take that money straight out of the public schools budget. But keep the budget separate, and more importantly keep the leadership separate.
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I think with a lot of these education discussions, we’re really talking about completely different systems of education (urban school with high needs kids, suburban schools, selective privates, catholics) with different educational pressures. Generalizations always seem to break down, and I find it dangerous to talk about the role that sports plays in a system I’m really unfamiliar with (say, schools in Lubbock, Texas or rural Nebraska).
I do note that the selective private near us seems to devote a lot of energy on its website to reporting sports. But, I do not think that’s because it values sports above other activities or because its leadership is enmeshed in the sports enterprise.
so why is so much of their public information sports? I think because sports is public, while other events are seen as being private. Posting pictures of kids playing sports (basically a public event, and if not public, at least shared between two schools) is acceptable, but other activities are deemed as community activities (the school newspaper for example, which is not public, or the drama productions). The school does send competitors to music competitions, and I am perplexed at why these outcomes & performances aren’t part of the public face on their website — they are, afterall, performances (maybe copyright concerns actually limit the publicity?).
I also think that for these selective schools, celebrating sport is a way of embracing competition that they are not willing to endorse in the activities that define their actual mission (i.e. education).
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I think much of the public information for some schools consists of sports because it appeals to parents who fear their children will not have a chance to play sports in high school.
Many parents start the whole team sports for little kids thing because they want to preserve the option of playing for a high school team for their children. Paranoia reinforces itself. It is also hard to look at a 7 year old and say, “wow, he’s a future band geek!” Or, “I bet she’ll take states in debate.” No one gives babies onesies with drama masks.
oops, ok. yes they do: http://www.cafepress.com/+comedy-and-tragedy-masks+baby-bodysuits. On the other hand, it’s a ratio of 164 to 191,000 (http://www.cafepress.com/+sports+baby-bodysuits).
On the private school side, there’s a real balance though. If the teams are too successful, parents will assume it focuses too much on sports, not enough on academics. It will be known as a “sports school,” which is not as attractive as a “well-rounded school.”
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I think the biggest fault of this article is that it criticizes our society’s emphasis on sports relatively late in the life of the child. The problem starts with parents who place excessive value on sports, so much so that little kids (5, 6 7 years old) are playing a sport (sometimes more than one sport) every single season. Spring is soccer and tennis, summer is swim and diving team, fall is football, winter is basketball and hockey. And I wish I was exaggerating– I know several families who do this sports thing for very young children year-round.
So of course, by high school, we are sports obsessed. Why wouldn’t we be? We signed them up for 200 sports teams when they were young.
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Jonah has been involved in sports since Kindergarten. I’ve had him almost year round activities. Even Ian does swimming once a week and I sign him for special ed sports whenever they are available to him.
For the last three years, Jonah was involved with travel soccer. It was a serious time commitment for Steve and myself. Lots of driving. We had to deal with crazy parents and coaches who yelled at kids.
Why did I have him in sports activities? 1. Jonah started walking at 9 months. He always needed some organized activity to burn off extra energy. 2. Also, what’s the alternative to sports for boys? Hours and hours in front of a video game. Many of his friends who don’t do a sport are over weight. Kids don’t play outside anymore. 3. And he liked it. He wasn’t good enough (or big enough) to be the star player, but he held his own on the field. Now, he’s on the high school cross country team and is very happy. I’m delighted that he’s learning about the joys of running, which will serve him well for the rest of his life.
Given the realities of the new parenting world and the needs of boys, sports are a fine thing. I just think that sports need to be put in perspective. They should be seen as a place to get exercise and learn team work, but parents shouldn’t live through their kids on the field. Parents need to understand that sports end in high school. Very, very few kids are able to balance a college course load with a varsity sport. Sports should be more inclusive.
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For the first time in my parenting career, I’m getting enmeshed in the school sports world. E tried t-ball and soccer but wasn’t ready for team sports back then, and then we lay low a while, with him trying tennis and basketball and hockey on a club/non-school basis, but nothing really stuck. But this week, he made the middle school cross country team, and HERE IT STARTS. OMG, I can’t handle this. Practices. Nice clothes on meet days. Meets where he doesn’t get home till 5 maybe he’ll call when they’re on the way but wait he doesn’t have a phone AAAAAH. It doesn’t help that the coach is very sweet and very disorganized. I sent him an email this morning offering to help him get organized, and he hasn’t replied and he will miss his opportunity because I am only free on Fridays. Meanwhile, on the HS level, my 14 yo doesn’t play sports except dance (which she does competitively, but it’s not a high stakes kind of environment in her studio–best of all worlds) BUT she is in marching band at the HS this year, and that involves (*shudder*) going to the HS football games. I had hoped to avoid that in the 15 years my kids would be in school in our town. Ugh. Can it be winter yet? I can’t believe I’m even typing that.
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“Parents need to understand that sports end in high school.” Not in our family.
My husband and I were both college athletes at small schools, as were our fathers. My husband played in the NCAA Division III, and I ran cross country and track at a college that was then in the NAIA (which gives college athletic scholarships.) We were never stand-out athletes, but college sports were important to us for all of the reasons high school sports are (life skills, fitness, friendships, mentoring, confidence, the opportunity to represent your school, constructive energy outlet.) My husband has played on rec leagues as an adult, and I’ve been a serious runner and marathoner as an adult, as have all of my college teammates. My brother turned his high school football career into a position as student manager for a Big 10 football team, and his adult career is working for another Big 10 football team.
That said, all of our high school sports happened through the public high school. Practice/games/meets were right after school, and we caught the 6 p.m. late bus home in time for family dinners. It didn’t cost our parents much. None of us had a ton of sports experience before high school. Today the crazy suburban sports train involves high expense private leagues with practices and games at all hours that parents have to drive long distances too. $$$ sports camps in the summer, too. It dominates family life, often year-round, for a decade or more. There’s a sense that if your 5-year old doesn’t get in on the ground floor of the best league, he’ll never be have a hope of playing at the local high school.
I’d love for our children to play in college. But I think we’ll aim for the less-crazy sports that are largely confined to the high school years (no soccer, football, swimming, basketball, or lacrosse). Fencing, shooting, cross country, golf, crew, and sailing are all NCAA scholarship sports, too.
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I was going to post the same list as Laura has for why my boy child does a lot of sports (though we are not sports obsessed, have no desire to relive our glory years, and don’t even like sports very much). He usually does two at a time (soccer, low level, year round, hockey, baseball, and, this year added swimming). He is amazingly fit and in constant motion. It is a big investment on our part, and one that I question at times.
I’m aiming towards getting him some practice in sports he can do without having to be a part of a team (’cause i think that increases the yelling and having to deal with the other parents who care more than we do).
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Biathalon?
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Well, I was thinking tennis. But, he’d probably be excited about biathlon. I think I’m not going to tell him about it (kind of like the mutton busting at the state fair, though, he’d fortunately aged out of that event before we heard about it).
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It’s just amazing to me how so many families just kind of mindlessly drift into these big commitments to kids’ team sports, such as soccer, which around here requires a lot of time, money, and travel logistics. It’s like a lemming effect. Then, in the case of soccer, none of the kids ever play after high school or even watch it on TV. We now know about the serious long-term brain health effects of multiple concussions from playing sports like soccer and football. So why take such a huge health risk and make such a huge investment when they could take a page out of Bruce Feiler’s book “The Secrets of Happy Families” and say, start their own mult-age family soccer game with friends? I don’t get it. Everybody does it so they assume it must be right.
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