A writer in this month’s
The Atlantic thinks American schools
would be better off abolishing sports. “Imagine,
for a moment, if Americans transferred our obsessive intensity about” high
school sports “to high school academics.”
All right, let’s.
Michele and I have five
college degrees between us. It’s safe to
say we raised our child in a learning-rich environment. Guess what?
She still ended up a jock, smart, but a jock nonetheless. There was this one time, either spring of sophomore
or junior year high school, with an essay due on “Julius Caesar.” I happened to look in and see my daughter,
notebook at her side and a bat in her hands.
What are you doing? “I’m breaking
in my new bat.” Oh.
The Atlantic story is playing on memories
and stereotypes of high school—dumb jocks, jock cliques, jocks pounding goths
into lockers, jocks as prom royalty….Once upon a time, I was susceptible to
this kind of appeal; maybe I got pounded once or twice. All I know is my daughter was (is) an athlete
who defied most if not all such stereotypes.
Among other things, she graduated eighth out of a class of eight
hundred.
The story cherry-picks information
on the cost of athletics, schools that cut academics ahead of sports and enlightened
schools that have abolished all or part of their athletic programs. What a waste of space. Nobody wants to send their kids to a school
run by quarterbacks and cheerleaders.
But a school without sports? Get real,
and explain away the benefits of Title IX while you’re at it.
What really ticked me
off is that this was an argument for the status quo masquerading as a bold call
to change. At the end of the day, the
size of the school budget stays the same; only the names of the winners and
losers change. What about a more equitable
system for funding American education, something other than the property tax?
On that, the author
had nothing to say.
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