The study I was thinking of is discussed here.
It is by no means a universal or uncontroversial thing. There is likely benefit to fostering a “growth mindset” versus one that is fixed or innate. It’s different but has some similarities and contradictions.
I read about this in a pop psychology book. I can’t recall which one, I’m afraid. I’d take it with a grain of salt, and realize it is not my intention to discuss this in this thread on scholastic sports if it warrants a separate one.
Some thoughts on a similar theme.
Also when a sport is sponsored by a school the school can use it as a means of discipline. for example a student who gets poor grades or gets in trouble can get kicked off say the football team. That goes the same for activities like school plays.
Now in cases where the sport is outside of school like a private hockey league, none of those rules apply. My son played hockey and several of the kids told me they had gotten into trouble at school and would not have qualified for sports there.
And that’s a good thing?
One of the criticisms is that sports take precedence over academics and you want to encourage that?
Thanks for posting that. May be a couple of days before I get to read it – market coming up.
Not in my experience no, and certainly no to parents wearing branded clothing. We had school rivalries, certainly, but those tended to only be of real interest to the people on the team.
One other thing we did have, and I don’t know if the US has something similar, was county teams. England is divided into 48 counties, and as school team players we could ‘try out’ to be selected for the county - there would be county teams at under 18s and under 16s. So this way, we could end up playing on the same county team as players from other schools. This was also the way to work towards selection for the national team - playing for my under-18s county field hockey team meant I also got to play with a couple of England players.
I take it that this, being so obviously spectacularly counterfactual, is actually some sort of joking reference to something?
At least at UCT, I only knew one person who ever went to a UCT Rugby game. And he had to, because he was on the team.
Once again, going to praise the Finnish model here - kids have a 15 min outside break in every hour of class time. Come hell or high snow.
South African school sports also has provincial teams - my sister was provincial volleyball and softball, for instance.
Not really, no. For kids of high school age, they’re usually either playing on their high school team, or playing on a private “club” or “travel” team – those seem to be more common in sports for which the local high schools may not be fielding teams (a friend of mine here in Chicago had a son who played ice hockey while he was in high school; as few, if any, high schools here have hockey teams, he played on private club teams).
Yeah. I went to UCT and know nobody who went to a game. I didn’t want to overgeneralize since most people I knew were mostly in the mathematics and computer science departments and might not have been truly representative. Actually, I did work on the student newspaper so I have to assume the sports article person attended. I thought they had a rivalry with Stellenbosch but there wasn’t a whole lot more going on …
In the course of my varsity career was in both Science and Arts departments, also had good friends in Architecture, Engineering, Music and Drama, hung out at UCT Radio, and shared a flat with a bunch of Med students. The guy I knew on the team was in my Geology class for 3 years. Oh, wait, I suppose I met his girlfriend, and she must have gone to the games.
It’s true, among major North American team sports, which seemed like the pretty obvious context here.
Travel/club and private teams also step in to fill seasons. For instance, the high school baseball season is a few months in the Spring. But people may play on a private team pretty much year round (as long as you live in a place where you can play baseball in January). Soccer is played for one season in high school, but serious soccer players might join similar leagues. Those leagues usually are filled with really good players in the off season - and the kids that didn’t make the high school team but want to play in the on season.
Aaah, I thought baseball didn’t have goalposts.
But lacrosse does.
Sort of.
The rule in Kansas is you cannot play on both your high school baseball team at the same time as private team. So kids take a break from the private when the HS baseball teams season is on.
Now its getting to the point where the private or travel teams are so much better (better coaching, better competitions) that many kids just play for their private teams instead of the school ones. I think All American Soccer is like that.
So thats another thing is that private teams are coming on so strong their might not be a need for a school team because none of the best players want to play for the school.
Ehh… kind of a tossup there.
Yes, academics is before sports. BUT, these kids still need an outlet for their energy which doesnt go away even if they get an F in math or a detention for cutting class. Club sports fill that. So a couple hours a week of league hockey or soccer or basketball can help them out. Also they play with kids outside of their school.
BTW, I find hockey is great at that. I’ve seen kids go all out on a scrimmage with shoving each other around and play hard, then they switch people around and do the same for a new team, than their best friends once again after they leave the ice.
In the dim distant days of my youth in a small Texas high school, I was in algebra class with the quarterback. He flunked his exam, which meant under “no pass, no play” he was off the team. So, the principal simply informed the teacher that they needed him in the game, and his test score miraculously improved enough that he started on Friday night. (No, he didn’t retake the test; she just “regraded” it.) Guess what that did for the morale of the students who were actually trying to learn algebra.
Sports are fine, but severely limit the amount of school designated resources that are involved.
Parents and students want a bigger program? They can fund it outside of the education budget. The two shouldn’t conflict, at all, including employing coaches as ‘teachers’ for classes that are actually just baby sitting.
ETA: I don’t see this as much different from religious schooling. It’s fine, parents can want it and get it. Just don’t make public resources the pocket for it.
If school sports are about physical activity and recreation, there shouldn’t be any need for assigned coaches or officials, merely one or a few adult monitors to make sure that there isn’t any bad behavior. Kids can teach each other rules or invent them on their own.
Exactly. And even with a large team sport like Football, how many students are actually on the field physically doing anything at any given point in time? Why do there have to travel 200 miles for a State Championship?
I suspect this website is not likely to attract a proportionate share of those that were in the High School jock crowd. Perhaps a question about Theatre or Band funding would make more sense.