Sure. And a lot of competitions are more fun if you compete against people of similar skill levels. I play bridge with people who are much better and much worse than I am, but it’s best when the other players are roughly my peers. There are lots of places where it’s good to segregate participants by their ability. The non-competitive cheer squad isn’t one of them, however.
I would tend to agree. There is value in simply showing up and seeing something through until the end. Although you need to take into account different levels of competition.
In another thread, I discussed my son (age 9) who we enrolled in rec basketball and lacrosse. I initially had some concerns because he’s a bit on the autism spectrum and looks a bit goofy playing basketball. Surprisingly he actually seems more coordinated at lacrosse, which I had considered to be a more difficult sport.
Anyhow, the point is we don’t expect him to be a great athlete. But we see the benefits in terms of physical fitness, being part of a team, maintaining discipline for training and so on.
At his age, there is a pretty wide range of skills within the kids on the teams. And I can already see where they are starting to funnel kids towards more competitive teams and leagues. Which makes sense. Eventually, there is not going to be a benefit for the really competitive kids looking to win and maybe get to collegiate level to be playing with kids with a more casual interest or who are developing in the sport. That’s why they need to have different levels.
And per your followup post, it also teaches the kids that it’s acceptable to exclude and marginalize people who are perceived as inferior.
I think I indicated upthread that a friend of mine who teaches at the school and is familiar with the cheer team told me that because the cheer team includes a special needs participant, they are eligible to compete in some competitions which an all able-bodied team could not. I do not know if they compete in both “mixed” and able bodied competitions.
(She also described the track team having a relay team in which 3 of the team members were able bodied runners, and another was in a wheelchair, and was pushed by an able bodied runner. She said such a team “won” state last year - because they were the only such team competing. I can readily understand wheelchair races or other special olympics competitions, but the idea of one competitor simply being “ballast” sees odd to me.)
I’ve spent a little time on the Illinois IHSA website, but I couldn’t find any information about mixed teams as my friend described. Instead, they describe sports for athletes with disabilities, but those did not seem to describe teams with a mix of able bodied and disabled team members.
And, yes, the IHSA considers cheer to be a sport.
Cheer is a sport at the college level with full scholarships like any other sport.
Yeah, I took a Bonehead Physics course (official name: Physics for non-science majors) because I needed a hard science class for my eventual degree. Turned out to be one of the favorite classes of my undergrad years.
Why “mixed”?
Why not 3 able-bodied competitive athletes and one unathletic Average Joe who never trained ever?
It all seems arbitrary and odd to me.
We have 2 kids, one of whom is a bit “weird”, and to whom other kids have been kind and inclusive. The other is “not weird” and popular, and people have made a point of telling us how kind and inclusive he is when it comes to “weird kids.” However, I don’t remember ever making a point of teaching him to be inclusive.
Hopefully your son will meet good kids; I have to say that I don’t think they’re rare.
Note the assumptions here:
- In every situation, the least able people should be left behind, otherwise they’re taking something from others.
- People are only kind when it benefits them. Of course not my people, we’re always authentic. Yours are the ones who are pretending.
I would… beg to differ on that.
Some programs are, many are not.
Yeah - and someone posted upthread about a Title IX federal court decision, and a prior SDMB thread.
As an outsider, I am wondering to what extent people’s perspective on this is shaped by the in some ways complex but in other ways straightforward relationship between success in skill based competition and access to funded higher education opportunities.
I agree. But, if they just “take it down a few notches,” that would leave out those who do have higher ability–whose level of excellence is higher.
Is there any issue with just having multiple levels? I know that, when I was in high school, there were two different football teams and (I believe) two different basketball teams. There was only one band, but there were three choirs. Two of them were divided by age, due to younger singers often still dealing with vocal changes and needing different music. But there were also the chamber singers, an additional smaller choir you could also be a part of if you succeeded in tryouts. We would be given more difficult music, and would perform more often.
It seem to me that this worked similarly to the advanced placement (AP) classes, allowing you to challenge those who could use the challenge while not overburdening those who don’t.
Are they not? Only so many students can participate on the team. Unless you are doing first come first served or random lottery, shouldn’t slots go to the best qualified?
The original example was a group of kids with pom poms entertaining the crowd. My guess is that in most schools, you can always add 1, or 3, or 7 more to that team, and they can all participate.
Someone with a lower skill level may be more reliable or more of a teamplayer than someone with a higher skill level - and a coach might reasonably pick the person who actually shows up to practice and doesn’t fight with the rest of the team over a someone who could be good, but doesn’t put in the effort/drives other people away.
Note that this is an exhibition, not a competition. The special-needs person is neither a member of the team, nor is it a competitive situation.
Although in the conservative brain the term “virtue signal” is a snarl word, a term of hate and derision, in fact conservatives are neither opposed to virtues nor signals (they show us theirs all the time, unprompted). Their true object of hatred is that conservative virtues aren’t supreme, that competing virtues aren’t corrected or punished enough.
In this case, the virtue being signaled is that this school allows marginal people to feel worthy and special in non-competitive exhibitions. As is often the case, the conservative objection is expressed as an obsession with the sanctity of competitive merit within a sport or skill that they otherwise never spend a nanosecond thinking about, except when there’s a possibility that a marginalized person might have one bright day in their otherwise struggling life.
Virtue signaling is good! It’s how we know what our virtues are. If yours are in the minority, that’s just how it goes sometimes.
Depending on the size of the school, the team you saw may have been the most qualified of the students who were interested in participating. There’s not a draft for cheer squad.
As I’ve noted twice, while this video was of an exhibition, I was informed that the cheer team does compete, and having a special needs participant makes them eligible to a certain category of competitions. I do not know if the team competes in both “able bodied” and “inclusive” competitions.
I’d love to see any evidence of what these competitions entail and rules for eligibility (or if they even exist). I’d also love to see some evidence about track and field claims.
Uncritically passing along the latest conservative rage-bait is all too common around here these days .