Why can I humiliate you in the sports world, but not the classroom?

Great Debates
1

In High School I had a 9th grade homeroom, but took all 10th grade classes. One day someone asked me if I thought I was an Einstein and instead of just saying “hell ya”, I chickened out and said “no, it was all my parents idea”. Now aside from the whole “need to belong” every teenager feels in HS, that memory made me wonder some…

Had I been on the court, track, field, whatever… and was clearly better than anyone else, and continually made everyone look foolish on the field despite me only being in the 9th grade, I would have been celebrated. But If I’m smarter than you and embarrass you in the classroom, well damn, I can’t even list the number of names I would have been called or the fights that probably would have ensued. I would like to think this is just HS behavior but when I take a look around today I see the same thing.

Athletes’ are expected to strut, humble, and generally make their opponents look like idiots. Hell, the athletes who do that the best are generally the most famous. However, if we are in a social gathering and you say something stupid and I call you out and make you look even more stupid, I’m a dick. A big dick.

But why?

Is this some evolutionary thing that causes us to celebrate the strong over the “weak”? I know nobody likes to look like an idiot, but hell if I played Michael Jordon in a game of pick-up he would without any doubt make me look like an idiot on the court and he would probably laugh while doing it as would anyone watching. But if we switch the venue and we do an IQ test and I score some 50pts higher (not saying I would) I would be an ass for rubbing it in HIS face and making him feel stupid.

Is this just our social agreement? We can beat you down if we are stronger, but if we are smarter we better be nice? How did we get here? Is there anything we can do to change?

Additionally, I had a track coach in HS that used to curse, insult, and was just generally a rude bastard. This was seen as “okay” since he was motivating us to win, do better, etc… But if a History teacher called me a “lazy slow bastard who needs to study more or buy a dress”, I have a feeling someone is getting fired.

2

The AP Euro test is tomorrow, so I’m borrowing this quote if you don’t mind.

3

Smart Guy to Strong Guy: “My vast intellect dwarfs yours, you muscle-bound cretin!”
Strong Guy to Smart Guy: “I’m gonna kick your ass!”
[Stage Direction: Strong Guy kicks Smart Guy’s ass.]

4

I take it you never played sports much?

It is generally considered “poor sportsmanship” to humilate or belittle an opponent on the sports field. Especially one in where the competition is extremely one-sided in your favor. Some degree of “smack talk” is acceptable for the purpose of psyching the other guy out.

If you feel “humiliated” or “look foolish” on the field, then you should practice more and harder. The expectation is that you are engaging in an athletic competition with a similarly skilled opponent and you have spent an appropriate amount of effort preparing.

An athlete who goes around strutting his stuff off the field is often known as a “bully”, “dickhead” or “douchebag”.
The reason you would be an asshole for rubbing your higher IQ score in someone else’s face is that one, you didn’t do anything other than inherent a brain. It’s like being proud because you are tall. And two, most people are not engaged in a competition for “who has the highest IQ”.

If you want to engage in a contest of intellect with someone, I’m sure both are free to talk shit.

5

That’s mostly true, although a lot of people do love pro athletes who make asses of themselves with excessive celebrating. But it’s also true that sports are a competition, and the classroom is essentially not. And people play sports for fun, which makes for a different situation from the classroom. Some trash talk might make football more fun, but it doesn’t enhance the learning experience.

6

Do you watch sports at all? Of course it’s considered poor sportsmanship, but it happens, and it happens alot. How many pictures of Dieon Sanders have you seen showboating into the endzone? Pretty sure nobody called him a bully. Douche maybe, but probably for other reasons.

That doesn’t make much sense. Shaq didn’t “earn” his 7ft plus frame, but he got it anyway and he trained it to play basketball. Having a “brain” doesn’t mean anything if it isn’t trained. You dont think Hawkins trained his brain? You dont think he worked his ass off? Why shouldn’t he be proud of that?

7

I’ve had a similar conversation with my daughter…

What was/is going is trying to lower your position in the pecking order. You were smart and, therefore, might attain a higher rank in the being-established pecking order. Therefore, they had to try to take you down. They don’t need to make YOU think this, but everyone else. Bonus points if they actually cow you as well.

You can’t take someone down on the pecking order by making fun of their being good in sports. That sounds stupid because that is the natural order so far. However, if you had a society of all geeks and you had a less than stellar geek thatis good at sports you can bet your bottom dollar that the same thing that happened to the OP would happen in reverse in that situation.

Young Whippersnappers…just be thankful you are growing up today. Geeks are at an all time high with computers, Bill Gates and company etc. Back in my day, this wasn’t the case. You wouldn’t have a hip Abby on NCIS back when I was gowing up…back then she would have been a hopeless loser. Maybe loveable but a loser nonetheless.

8

Also, back when I used to teach this bugged me as well.

You can praise the HS quarterback…about how great he is. However, you can’t do the same academically. This would make less smart people ‘feel bad’ and so shouldn’t be done. Why the same doesn’t apply to sports…

Hopefully that is changing. Hell, I still remember one of the main objections to starting gifted classes was that it would make people not in the gifted classes feel bad and that the money should be spent on regular students and not kids that “don’t need it”. The gifted classes were never approved.

Again, why that argument never seemed to work for sports…

9

Excuse me, no. Intellectual strength requires more than just inheriting a brain. Certainly, there are people who find it easier to learn things than others, just as some people are more athletically gifted than others.

But building up that intelligence takes just as much practice and dicipline in studying, than such practice and discipline does in building up sports prowess. You didn’t do anything to get tall. You did quite a lot to get smart. You read, wrote, memorized, observed, criticized, compared, concentrated, explained, deducted, and concluded. You thought, and thought, and thought. It was hard work, this brain work. You could’ve just said, “Fuck this shit,” and become a slacker. But you didn’t. And you should be proud of your accomplishments, as much as any athletic star.

The trouble is, many of us are socially taught that it’s a shameful thing to be smart. We’re laughed at, when some of our thoughts seem hard to comprehend to others. We talk funny, and go on about stuff that nobody else cares about. We’re put down by others, perhaps in our own family, and told that all those books we read are filling our head with crap we don’t need.

If we correct someone else, no matter how gently, we’re the instant target of resentment. So we learn to be quiet, but it still doesn’t work. They know we’re getting the good grades, the teacher’s favor. What they don’t see or care about is the work that goes into getting that way. So there’s anger and jealousy.

And there’s the media’s glorification of the idiocy of others: the worship of sports over intellect, the frat boy humor, the stereotype of the ugly, socially-backward nerd who gets shoved into the locker, and deserves it too obviously, because it’s just so funny.

No, of course those with intellectual gifts shouldn’t rub them in the faces of others. There are those that are like that too. But then, that’s more of a defense mechanism.

10

I’d also like to note that I’ve seen cases where coaches, just in the last year or so, were lambasted for running up the score in an already lopsided game. It’s really no more acceptable in sports than it is in academia, in an idealized sense.

11

There are also a lot of smart people that are worshiped and glorified by the media. To name a few obvious examples: Buffett, Gates, Jobs, etc. You could also say that Gates and Jobs “bullied” their competitors by out hustling and outsmarting them during the PC revolution. Even though they took hits for individual actions (the squashing of Netscape, Apple’s rejection of Flash, etc.) they are still admired for their intelligence, much like pro athletes are admired for their physical abilities.

12

Think in evolutionary terms. People (and animals) have been kicking each other’s asses for the longest time; we are therefore innately accepting of physical competition. (Any revolutionary who bravely challenged the brawny status quo would, as Marley23 shows, get weeded out of the gene pool posthaste.) Intellectual competition in the classroom sense is of much more recent vintage, and our brains have not adapted to it yet. So, our attitude towards it is mostly based on general inequality-aversion (the part of us that sympathizes with the underdog in any non-merit-based competition) rather than acceptance of this as an important way of competing and sorting folks by social status.

Note that cleverness competition is more widely accepted. The rapper who can humiliate his opponent in a rap battle, or a general who can fool his adversary through cunning tactics, is accepted and celebrated. We did evolve big brains partly to fool each other, and the “primitive” intelligence that influences social relations and physical tactics is probably treated about the same as athleticism. What we don’t celebrate is evolutionarily novel abstract thinking, like the chem nerd or the bombastic classicist.

13

Note that when popularizers talk about intellectual disputes, they use physical terms ("the battle between quantum and Newtonian mechanics) or portray it as a competition for social status (“The vendetta between Newton and Liebniz”).

When you want to make something interesting, you relate it to ancestral forms of competition - and nobody gets excited over “which model fits noisy data with a slightly lower p-value.”

14

There is a difference between celebrating in the endzone and calling someone out for being stupid. the endzone celebration is for how well he did something. It’s much more on par with celebrating an A on a test.

On the other hand calling out someone for being stupid is much closer to the running up the score example given above. You’re not being happy for your success but are rather making someone else feel bad for their failures.

While people may not appreciate the first it is no where near as bad as the second and in most situations people look down on the people that do either one. In sports though most people strive to make the playing field level, different divisions and such, while in school most of the time the dumb kids and smart kids are at the same school and are ‘competing’ against each other on a daily basis so intellectual embarrassment happens much more frequently and is called out more often.

15

There’s an easy solution.

Just be smart and good at sports.:slight_smile:

16

I think that’s a great thing to aspire to, and is something that I work towards in my own life.

17

Add in “fat” and you’ve just described every male gym “teacher” I had in middle & high school. :mad: Boy did they love attacking their students’ masculinity. Not too mention they got away with using other, “less savoury”, language that never came out of the mouth of any other teacher (well, other than the home ec teacher). Or playing grab ass with their students.

18

No one can humiliate you, and no one can make you look like a fool, anywhere. Only you can do that to yourself. Just do your best and let the chips fall where they may.

19

I was thinking more in terms of high school sports. Professional athletes are entertainers and much of their antics are part of the entertainment. And his competetion is presumed to be tough enough to take it (even if they do suck).

Then I suggest if you want to step into my intellectual dojo, you bring your A-game and not some weak-ass shit!:smiley:

My point is that you can talk shit when you are engaged in a competition (athletic or intellectual) with a willing challenger. If you are just making fun of someone intellectually or physically weaker than you, it just makes you a bully (or a pompous ass).

Fortunately, I grew up in a household where intelligence and education (as well as sports) were encouraged.
There are a lot of class issues too with respect to intelligence and education. The little-brains pretty much know that if you are intelligent and academically successful, you will have opportunities that they will never have.

20

I think the obvious answer, and I’m sure it has been mentioned in this thread, is that it is never okay to try to humiliate people, in any arena. The people who get celebrated (and this is true in sports as well as academics, or anywhere else) are the humble ones who do what they can to use their talents to help others. The people who showboat and humiliate are merely *tolerated. *I don’t hear a lot of support for Barry Bonds now that he isn’t useful as an athlete. Once these showboats grow old, that’s when they find out what their attitudes cost. Meanwhile, the class acts are still the toast of the town years after they retire.

I think I had a very atypical high school experience, reading threads like these.