Now, if you’re all done saying “OMG LIASRRRRX)R”, can you please address my point of it all being a pointless waste of time, effort, and money?
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Discipline, learning to work with others, setting goals, physical fitness, are all things students get out of sports programs.
A football program does not require a mini-stadium at each school. Many of the schools in my district did fine with just a field to practice on. When they had to play a game they just went to the stadiums shared by all the schools in the district. Generally, the higher the grade the bigger the stadium used.
Why does it matter whether or not they go on to college programs? A lot of kids in the band, orchestra, and drama don’t go on to pursue these things on the collegiate level. I’m sorry your experience with athletics was so negative but that wasn’t my experience in high school. Teachers didn’t give preferential treatment to athletes and would fail them if they deserved it.
Why is there more merit in soccer? I do agree that if a school can’t afford much needed text books they shouldn’t spend the money on sports.
Why limit that to athletics? We should get rid of all electives. People can just enroll their children in youth orchestras or take art lessons from private tutors.
Marc
Yeah, but I grew up in Orange County, CA. I have only lived in Arlington since after college, so I have no idea what the high school football situation is over here.
No, I went to school in Anaheim. Anaheim Union has but two football stadiums for the whole district. It may just be the fact that you’re in a very rich area. Are any of those schools actually hurting for textbooks?
“San Dimas High School football RULES!”
[sub]sorry, had to get that Bill and Ted quote in there [/sub]
It’s not just a rich/poor district thing. You have to remember that a tremendous amount of the money a district gets is catagorical funding, which means that they have to spend it in certain areas. They have no choice. If you get State Building funds, for example, you cannot buy textbooks with them. A number of stadiums probably got built because the schools had the building money, and didn’t need buildings.
My district is small and rural. We have a stadium. The next district over (Redlands) is a city of 50,000, and their high schools don’t have stadiums. They play at the University of Redlands stadium.
Wow, so it funds a bunch of activities that still do nothing for children who aren’t talented at sports. Why not use football to fund arts and music instead?
And for a lot of others, sports is something that makes them want to leave school. Perhaps not drop out, but certainly skip that class.
Nice denigration of band members there. And you wonder why so many of us hate sports and jocks.
No one cares about the uncoordinated kids whose self esteem is trashed and whose self image is ruined because they’re no good at sports, and all the asshole jock scum pick on them for it. They’re told to “be a man,” or “tough it out,” or some other macho nonsense.
For the untalented, sports is cruel, hateful and terrible. Should we really be putting so much emphasis on something that so many people are bad at?
It’s not the athletes’ fault you decided to anthropomorphize “sports” like it was something that followed you home after school and threw your books in the dirt. And phrases like “Asshole jock scum,” for what must be the eighth time I’ve said this to you in various threads, don’t do anything for your argument but make you look like an asshole yourself. “Sports” didn’t want to make you cry, or hurt your self-esteem. Maybe some asshole students did, but guess what? They were assholes before, after, and regardless of whether they ever stepped on a football field or wrestling mat.
It’s really not that hard to figure out. Students want to play sports, and the popular sports actually fund themselves. So the schools have sports programs. Why wouldn’t they?
As far as football teams having “stadiums,” I grew up in a pretty solidly middle class area, and the “stadiums” are nothing more than the field, a track going around the field, maybe a scoreboard, and some bleachers on each side. It’s not like we’re talking about every high school erecting the Rose Bowl behind the cafeteria. Seriously, you think the government is just handing out millions so high schools can have sports teams?
So it’s NOT the fault of jocks that they pick on kids who are not as good as them at throwing balls or hitting things with sticks? (And why do we laud throwing a ball – how is that impressive? Ooh, look, that musclebound guy who doesn’t know the name of the vice president or both his senators can bounce a ball around – yippee, he’s now evolved to the same level as a circus seal).
So what do you describe the sports stars who felt that being able to hit a ball made them demigods, and who picked upon, belittle and made miserable those who weren’t so “blessed” with such a lauded but meaningless talent?
It’s funny, I’m used to seeing “so” used to mean “following from that” or “in that manner.” Apparently you’re using it to mean “although you never said the following, I’m going to assume.” I never said bullying wasn’t the fault of “jocks” who bully. I said “sports” isn’t some demonizing force that terrorizes the infirm and the clumsy, and that your paranoid fear that “sports” is coming to get you shouldn’t be held against the millions of schoolchildren who want to play soccer after school.
Yes, bullying is the fault of the people who do it. No, athlete does not equal “jocks who pick on kids who are not as good as them.”
Does it hurt to be such a hypocrite? Get snippy with silenus for saying “band nerds,” and then spew this kind of garbage at the next turn. I don’t see a musclebound guy, so I don’t get it. Or were you just generalizing in a pejorative manner?
I don’t know, assholes? The problem isn’t that I’m denying that bullies and athletic elitists, so to speak, exist. The problem is that you’re denying that “kids who play sports” and “the kids who apparently gave you a wedgie freshman year” are separate groups.
That’s always been the conventional wisdom, but can’t most of these goals can be met by all kinds of other activities that might be more useful to the kid who is not interested in sports? Couldn’t putting on a play, editing the school paper, or working on a class project meet these goals? As for physical fitness, I’ve always thought that was my responsibility as a parent, much like seeing to my kid’s nutrition, health and well being.
I’d have no problem at all with sports programs and physical education if they were not compulsory and offered like any other elective.
Yes, there are assholes in all areas, including sports. And in some schools, I’m sure the athletically-inclined are not given a free pass when they behave like assholes. But unfortunately, there seems to be an environment or atmosphere in some places that makes it somehow easier for the asshole jocks (not all jocks, just the asshole ones) to make life miserable for the poor athletes, the geeks, the nerds.
Maybe it’s just the way things are set up in the class vs. the field—I don’t know. All I know is that harrassment, cruelty and basic shitheadedness didn’t seem to be too hard to come by in school sports.
Now, I’m not familiar with how all music, drama or arts classes are run, but the ones I attended didn’t tolerate that level of mean-spiritedness. I don’t know of hardly any student who dreaded the humilation of, for instance, an art class in the same way that I (and many, MANY others) dreaded the humilation of a PE class. In fact, there seems to be an abundance of stories about the hell and misery experienced in PE class specifically. While wide-spread bullying and shitheadedness can occur in any class, there’s a special kind of hell that can be present in a PE class.
Not that I’m saying that PE classes or school sports should be abandoned. Just that there should be a way to take the torment out of the whole thing for the geeks and clutzes. It’s great to say that sports can be so beneficial, and teach discipline and strength, etc. But does it also have to teach misery, dread, and humilation as well?
I agree, yosemite. Where spectrum and I seem to part ways is the fact that I just don’t think the sports themselves are to blame. I mean, your statement that “harrassment, cruelty and basic shitheadedness didn’t seem to be too hard to come by in school sports” could be just as correctly applied to school in general. High school can be rough on the outcasts. The poorest kids will probably get taunted by some of the richer kids, the fat kids will probably get picked on, the ones who talk funny, etc. And, of course, some of the crappy athletes will get picked on by the star athletes. It’s a symptom of youth in general, in my opinion, not youth sports.
I think it’s also likely that sports and bullying share some characteristics that make them both attractive to the Hitler youth. In other words, a 200 pound kid who loves to push people around will probably take quite a liking to football, and he’ll probably also enjoy generally being a dick and bullying younger kids. I agree that the bullying is likely to happen during times when it’s most easily gotten away with, and so gym teachers and coaches need to be especially vigilant in keeping these things from happening. Chorus doesn’t lend itself well to pummelings, after all, while floor hockey might. Once again, though, I don’t think it’s safe to make that leap and say that floor hockey is causing bullying.
On a different note, regarding the humiliation of arts and drama classes- I was terrified of home economics. Not so much the cooking, but the sewing. I couldn’t even thread the machine. I didn’t get picked on by the excellent seamstresses and -sters in the class, mind you, but I really, really dreaded that class and the teacher. Not that I’m arguing with you about the underlying point, but you reminded me of those days. I got a 2% in my 8th grade sewing class.
/pointless anecdote
I agree. There’s no real reason why sports must include cruelty and harrassment.
This is true, but it’s somehow often enhanced or exaggerated in sports. I was a fat kid, but being a fat kid in sports was worse. There was something about the atmosphere that made it easier for cruelty to happen. I think it was the “teamwork” and “winning” component. I may have been a fat kid all day long and gotten some grief for it in all classes, but I got more grief when my fat clutziness caused me to miss hitting the ball. I may have sucked in other classes (typing, for one—ironic, because I now type pretty fast), but my slow typing never mattered that much to anyone else, because I didn’t let down the “team” when I typed badly.
Exactly. When you have one teacher and a lot of kids spread out on a field, the kids are going to get away with more crap out of earshot of the coach or teacher. Once again, a reason why sports seemed to breed more of this misery.
No, but kids are going to associate sports with bullying, because so many ingredients make it more likely that it’s going to be worse there.
I understand, and I had classes that I dreaded too. But they didn’t compare to the dread of sucking and getting harrassed and humiliated, which was how most PE classes were. (Not that bullying didn’t happen in other classes, but that “you let down the team” component—that caused kids who otherwise wouldn’t have bothered me to get downright nasty—well, it wasn’t there.)
I disagree. I was a member of several groups in high school: the film club, the school newspaper, the varsity swimming team. In none of these groups did we belittle those who were less capable at things than us. We didn’t bully. We didn’t beat people up. We didn’t skim on classwork and expect to be covered up for. We didn’t act like we were the kings of the hill when we walked down the hall, like those dipsticks on the football team did.
It’s not all sports, it’s certain “competitive” sports that are a problem. No one should ever be made to play any sort of sports in PE. That’s where the humiliation comes from – some worthless “coach” who only knows basketball, so we have to play basketball in PE, when obviously if we WANTED to play basketball, if we were any GOOD at it, we’d have tried out for one of the teams.
Sports should be no more of a priority than art or music. In fact, given the cultural ramifications of art and music, and the eternal meaningless of athletics, aside from the Olympics, effectively, it should be less of a priority than art or music.
You don’t see theater kids beating up non-theater kids. You don’t see the painting class skating by in history. But those jocks… what they did and how they acted no one need have described to them.
But its okay. Most of that trash peaked in high school. Most are floundering in the real world, and I can’t wait to see how far they’ve fallen at the reunion in a few years. Everyone they ever stepped on in high school as they climbed the social ladder now gets to step on them. Irony is proof that there is a god, and he doesn’t play football. Though he may be a swimmer.
Yes! That’s by far the worst. Sports in that situation teach kids to HATE teamwork, which is supposedly “important.” To hell with that, I say. After a middle school career of awkwardness and clutziness (mixed in with a great deal of oh-god-I’m-gay-these-bastards-find-out-I’m-dead! stress), where I was picked on and roughed up routinely (but never beaten up) for not being good at basketball or football or – god, the worst – volleyball or badmitton, I was so turned off from teamwork that I just stopped.
Since ninth grade, I do not do group projects. I won’t do them, and never will. I will not play team sport games or even non-sporting games, aside from with my closest friends. I will not co-write, co-direct, co-anything. Not being good in middle school, and having the Jock Trash make my life miserable for it, has made it so that I break out into a cold sweat at the mere thought of having responsibility for someone else’s grade/score/whatever be partially my responsibility.
Sports builds teamwork? F— that, only if you’re GOOD at the sport.
Two things I’m thankful for: there’s no such thing as a tag-team doctoral thesis, and most of those idiots I hate so much from high school probably can’t even spell “PhD.”
spectrum, I definitely see what you’re saying and I don’t doubt for a minute that you experienced all that you did, but it doesn’t follow that all sports-minded people fall prey to being assholes.
I remember some so-called “athletic” types who were truly nice people. Why? I don’t know. Probably they were raised well, by parents who wouldn’t take shit (though I’m sure some parents tried to reign in shithead kids but there’s only so much you can do). I think some of the “nice” athletic kids were also interested in other things as well—more well-rounded. The point is, they existed, and I’m sure still exist. Sports doesn’t make monsters of them all. But sure, some definitely were.
I also think that some areas of the country or some schools create an atmosphere of “no other gods before football” (or whatever). I can’t say I remember the jocks in my school getting a free pass on grades (though they could have—I just have no knowledge of it). I have no doubt that other schools did cater to athletes that did poorly otherwise, and of course, this is setting the students up for failure later on.
Pretty funny! Yes, it is true—some of the “popular-my-shit-doesn’t-stink” kids have had to face a big adjustment in the real world. A world that doesn’t revolve around them, a world that doesn’t care how “popular” they are, but wants to see what they can actually do and what they can accomplish.
Either a “golden child” (athletic or not) adjusted, or they didn’t. Some so-called “popular” kids did adjust, I daresay. They sucked it up and learned quickly that they weren’t all that. The rest probably will be losers who will constantly bitch about how the “good old days” are gone.
Frankly, I think some of them make their own prisons. To give an abreviated hijack, I saw on some talk show, a 30-something woman who was married, had a couple of kids, had a decent life, but was horribly depressed and ashamed because she felt so ugly. She wasn’t ugly, just a little chubby. She was pretty average, actually. But (as she brought out during the program), she’d been this cute, bubbly, cheerleader popular kid in high school, and she simply could not reconcile her current “ordinary” self with her so-called “glory” past. I have to admit, I felt little sympathy for her, as I concluded that it was all in her head. She couldn’t bear to be like the “ordinary” people that she possibly mocked when she was young and “popular.” She thought that she should be more than that. Well, guess what? In order to be more, you have to put in more effort. And she’d never learned to do that. And she’d made herself miserable over being “average,” when the rest of humanity had long ago adjusted to being “average” and were busy getting on with their lives.
Okay, end of that hijack.
But here is a point - sports represent pointless conflict. They breed ideation of competition an a race to be better than everyone else, while promoting an elite class.
I think it would be much better to concentrate the funding that pours into football into more cooperative, educational, social activities, such as the arts, or other after-school groups and activities. Or, at least, buy updated books.
Welcome to life.