How education and having sports in school MAY relate.

Is it not funny that sports are sold to us in the schools as a way for our kids to learn team work and many other "valuable" skills. I can remember when the local schools here where lucky to have maybe seven boys on a basketball team. Forget about football. So at that time you mainly went to school to LEARN!!!! Then the real big surprise The students DID LEARN!!!!

I think there is a direct link to organized sports in schools, high school and college, to the lowering of learning your kids receive. The adults become distracted by sports and forget what the schools main JOB is, teaching. It is just a job to teach kids day in and day out but a sports GAME is exciting. So where does the focus go to???? GAMES not teaching!!!!

Want to know what my Grand Daughters think that sports do in high school???? They say it teaches guys that they can be JERKS and poor students but if they are good football/basketball player they can get away with it. They say that 2/3s of the football players don't even do their own home work. They expect their girl friends to do it for them for the privilege of dating a "football player". My Grand Daughters also say it is expected that if you date one of the better players you have to "put out" to keep them. Their words not mine. So the system is teaching that it is OK for the good players to have their girl friends as basically slave for them. Good morals!!!!

IF you don't think that this attitude of being "better" than everyone else did not help cause many of Penn's States problems you need to wake up to real life today. Sports have created a Special class of people. IF your are a good coach or player you don't have to live by the rules like everyone else.

So we get a bunch of little snots that are high school heroes that don't have any education. Then maybe 5% of them go on to college sports where they can become even bigger snots. Then maybe 2% of them go on to profession sports becoming true profession SNOTS.

So we have a system that is promoting teaching a profession that maybe .001 percent ever will make a living at it????? Try that with any other field of knowledge and see how long it lasts.

That is my Rant for today. LOL I just had to listen to another report of how terrible it is on poor little old Penn State. That lasted 5 minutes and the guy ran through the market report in less than a minute. Show what is important. It is no wonder this country is in bad shape. Many people can tell you in great detail what sports team is doing what but can't tell you their senator or representative name. Guess which one will effect your life the most????

Well said and I agree that many priorities are messed up. I have seen this happen too many so called sports heroes.

you must be reading my mind. how else could you so exactly print my thoughts?? LOL

I will agree with what you are saying about Penn State, but I feel like you need a much larger sample size before you can say that ALL High Schools have the issues the one you are talking about obviously does. I would also be interested to see what other perspectives from inside that school would say.

I am a sophomore in college and in high school I did multiple sports at the varsity level and I never took part in, or had a teammate who did any of the things you said. Then again I am just one example, but I feel like you are kind of being irrational here. I feel like the bigger issue is that there are just a lot of kids my age who just lack responsibility and respect for everyone and everything around them. I don't think being an athlete or not really has anything to do with it. Girls dating guys who are not on the football team are also expected to "put out." I think it is largely because of what we see on T.V. and in movies that makes us all think that it is ok.

Overall I want to agree that the generation growing up and that the education system now are terrible and full of flaws, but I think athletics have very little to do with it at all.

-Thanks for the post, got me to think a lot.

I'll agree with Olliekid that quite a number of high school athletes turn out to be well adjusted and respectful people. Having said that there are a number that become self indulgent jack arses. The bigger problem is a lot of parents look at high school sports as kind of a babysitter and part time teacher. High school athletics unfortunately is going to get more money than it deserves in most districts because of that attitude. We have more well paid personnel and facilities than most districts can realistically afford.

Very well said !!!

I'm a teacher at a high school in southern Wisconsin and I have a much different view of high school athletics than the people who already commented. I may be biased because I also coach high school girls basketball. In our school our athletes are held to a higher code of conduct than the other students and must receive certain grades to be eligible to play. As a coach I expect my athletes to be leaders in the classroom and in the school. If they mis assignments of get into trouble it will have implications in practice and in games. I know that he stuff thT you guys mentioned does happen even in our own conference as I have friends who coach and teach in other schools. My school is a high scoring school in both academics and athletics. We are probaly one of the exceptions as 80 percent of our students go on to college or tech school.

Just my two cents.

I'm a teacher at a high school in southern Wisconsin and I have a much different view of high school athletics than the people who already commented. I may be biased because I also coach high school girls basketball. In our school our athletes are held to a higher code of conduct than the other students and must receive certain grades to be eligible to play. As a coach I expect my athletes to be leaders in the classroom and in the school. If they mis assignments of get into trouble it will have implications in practice and in games. I know that he stuff thT you guys mentioned does happen even in our own conference as I have friends who coach and teach in other schools. My school is a high scoring school in both academics and athletics. We are probaly one of the exceptions as 80 percent of our students go on to college or tech school.

Just my two cents.

Agree 100%

My oldest son chose his high school's Marine Corps Jr. ROTC instead of sports. He did all 4 years of ROTC and graduated 2 years ago with the rank of sergeant major. Talk about a character and leadership development program with high standards. These kids are among the most respected and best behaved at the school, and out of school. Meanwhile, the athletes were notorious for partying, alcohol, drugs, and activities with the opposite gender. And this was at one of the top high schools in GA.

My son's about to start his 2nd year at The Citadel with the intention of being a career officer in the USMC. I'm glad he didn't get on a sports team in high school.

I recommend ROTC programs at any high schools that offer them, as an alternative to organized sports. There's absolutely no obligation to join the armed forces.

You are 100.00 percent correct on this one. AND, we taxpayers are paying millions into public school for this nonsense. Colleges and Universities hire special tutors to "aid" the key ball players, and they actually do all the assignments and homework for the athlete. Some of them never even attend class. Baylor university paid for young ladies to be driven by taxi from Dallas to Houston to "service" the leading basketball players, cars funrished, etc. etc. Tom

Jacksonduper: How many people does your school have that are paid money to assist and keep track of all of these high standards???? In my local school they have one person that their whole job is just to keep track of all of the "athletes" grades. Then provide "extra" help for those that are flunking out. The regular Joe average kid gets squat. Plus this person is paid $60,000 each year.

I was on the local school board for ten years. It made me sick to see how the money spent on the sports was never questioned but if it involved actual learning/teaching then it would be studied ten ways to Sunday. I voted against every single one of the sports issues. SCHOOL is for teaching and learning. If you want sports than have private teams that meet after school hours. Off school grounds too.

Then even better ask how much the Gym or foot ball field cost to build if you have a newer school. They just built a new building here. The gym was 1.2 million of the 3 million total cost. so the gym cost a third of what the whole school did. I say let drop the gym and have that many more class rooms and teachers. I want my tax money going to TEACH kids Not play GAMES!!!!

A few years back I sat on a stearing committee for our local school district. Our schools in Ohio fell into dispair and needed replaced. I was the only civilian on the committee being that my only connection to the school system was that I lived in the district. I was not employed, nor an administrator nor a board member. Over a period of a year, we had 24 meetings, we had ZERO discussion on how this new building would improve education but most meeting were about basketball, football, preforming arts hall and parking lots for the events that we might draw to the school if we had better facilities. This opened my eyes to what our educators real focus is on.

A wise retired high school teacher told me this.

"Sports in school. The tail that wags the dog".

I agree, BUT, wheres the parents in all of this. To expect the educational system to teach and enforce morals is just not going to happen.

As a high school football player the minute I started straying to the dark side my parents,uncles,cousins etc. yanked my chain hard.

I have a work ethic and team skills learned from playing football that have made me wealthy. Team sports are just another way to teach valuable skills.

You can't make a kid learn, all you can do is expose them to it and put the oportunitly in front of them. The old saying that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink applies.

The Penn state fiasco is tragic and a shame. Typical of our society we want to penalize the institution and not the people. The right course of action would be to clean house on the administration and replace/punish the people involved. Public hangings come to mind. But I guess we're too civilized for that.

All they've done is penalize 10's of thousands of innocent people for the actions of a few.

Right on!!

In the early 1980's, I was Buildings and Grounds Supervisor for a local public school district for five years.

I learned real soon that the school district wasn't run by the School Board and Administration. The school system was run by the local sports booster club. Academic matters were meaningless, what happened in the district was what the sports booster club wanted to happen. The funny part of it was, the school wasn't even a sports powerhouse. The football team went 0 for 8 one year.

In college at the University of Nebraska, it infuriated me to see students working just as hard as any athlete to prepare themselves for academic or performing competitions, then when you picked up the newspaper you had 8 pages of sports and not a word about the other students.

In fact, I did a survey once including the Omaha World Herald and Lincoln Journal Star newspapers, and it averaged out to four column inches of type concerning sports to every one column inch dedicated to academic matters. (Other news excluded).

So, where are our priorities?

JD would say you are spot on in your comments
grew up in canada where football is not that big a deal, but hockey >>>>>>>>>>>>> wow
seems the kids that are " good " feel a sense of " entightlement ", and the parents of these kids are worse, cause they figure thier kids are going to the " show "
but you see it all the time in the usa & here , where the talented ones get a pass on some pretty bad $hit
my .02 ( canadian ) cents worth

High school sports are not to blame for the affirmative action based dumbed down politically correct curriculums that have replaced real teaching and learning in this day and age, the federal government, stae legislatures, activist courts, politicized school boards and the liberals strangle hold on college teaching positions have done that. My oldest Son loved to play ball every since he was a little boy, he started on organized teams when he was around 6 years old, every team he ever played on had rules of some kind, good sportmanship, respect for other teams and adults, all things that were taught and enforced at home but good to see none the less. In high school he had to maintain a respectable grade point average, behave himself in general, wear a shirt and tie on game day, take regular urine tests and maintain a clean driving record to stay on his high school teams, granted, its a small town and I can't think of any parents that ever objected to any of the rules.

I remember an old carmudgian teacher I had inHS that used to comment "When the sideshow gets bigger than the circus, it's time to get rid of the sideshow". Wise man.

Areo

I guess I will weigh in with a few random thoughts.

FWIW, I enjoy sports at all levels and think there are an abundance of life lessons that can be learned as they relate to discipline, hard work, team building, leadership, ... The same can be said for band, orchestra, ROTC, FFA, ....

Professional sports is one of the great examples of free market economics in action.

My daughters are now in college, but their high school athletes were held to a much higher standard than the students in general. Other extra-curricular activities (band, etc.) were also held to the higher standard. Might have had a few bad apples, but probably less than the population in general. I am sure abuse takes place, but seems to me it probably has as much to do with the "culture" of the school which is usually developed by generations of leaders (administration, teachers, boards, parents, students, ...) good and/or bad and is difficult to change.

Could keep going on Penn St. and the Colorado shooter, but need to get back to work.

Kirk

There is a town near me that has a population of about 5,000. This town produced a WNBA player who played about 4-5 years before some of the younger, quicker players took her place, made her sit on the bench, and now she does some limited playing time for a pro woman's team in Europe. We will call this lady "Jane Doe".
Anyway, when you hit the city limits of this town, there is a sign that, after you read what town you are in, says "Home of Jane Doe".
Now I realize that the people are somewhat proud of this lady, but what about all the other kids from this town who studied hard, got good grades, and now make more money than Jane Doe?
(Average salary of a WNBA player is less than $50K a year. The big money is the shoe and the accessory contracts) There are a lot of kids who graduated from this town making more money than what Jane Doe does and yet they are not even mentioned. My little bitty home town is athletics crazy, but there hasn't been an athletic scholarship given for several years. There has been several academic scholarships given, however.
I'm all for sports and did athletics in high school. I will be the first to admit that the priorities of some parents are completely in the wrong spot.

My thoughts on Penn State- when the misdeeds came to light last fall they did fire the coach. At the time I thought that they did the honorable thing and sent out a message that that kind of behavior would not be tolerated. In the back of my mind I do wonder if they are only sorry because they got caught. I understand the value of sports and team athletics in education but I think we put to much emphasis on sports and winning and the associated cheating or "allowances" made in the pursuit of victory.

Look at the other side of the coin, our military academies are supposed to be the paragon of honor. They all have a strict "honor" codes, yet how many times in the last 27 years has the Air Force Academy had major honor code violations and the cadets were allowed to continue their education, graduate and get commissioned? One of the officers I served with was a graduate of West Point and had taught at the Ranger school at Ft Benning, he claimed the motto during his time of service was "if you ain't cheating, you ain't competing" I feel that the military, especially in training has some of the same problems we have in public education, that the process becomes more important than the product.

Some of it is the abundant bias in our education system where the unions fight to prevent their members from having to be responsible for anything they do or occurs. The unions strive to fight against any attempt to test or evaluate their effectiveness.

To sum it all up if we don't like the education our children are getting why don't we elect people to the school boards who will shift the focus back to reading writing and arithmetic? Same for our government, people of my political ilk stand back and look at what is happening and say "we told you so" or "what are you surprised"

I can't see why my tax money is spent on teaching kids how to play.

Look at little league, youth socker, youth basketball at the Y. Kids can play and not use my tax money that was set aside for education.

The problem is that parents want to live their childhood over again through their children...sad day.

It's even sadder that we have to import many Dr.s', technical people, engineers, and programmers. Our kids think it's more important to play than to study.

George

Really sports in schools are no different from
livestock showing,tractor collecting,racing or most anything else there is always a group of elitist within the group that act the same way you described the ball players.Its not the sports that does it its how these folks were raised.

Having had more time to reflect on this I will say the financially elite of the community have raised some less than fine children. The worst guy in my high school class had a father that was a lawyer. He for the most part did not participate in sports and definitely not football.

I agree with the thought that sports has gotten out of hand. Here in Iowa there were a couple guys that were accused of assault of a personal nature and were eventually convicted. All the time one of the big call in sports shows on the radio defended these guys to the end. Can't kick them off the team because they're good. They'll just go to another team and we'll have to play against them. Don't want that, we want to win.
I think it's high time we reign in what we pay college school coaches. The highest paid state employee is not the Governor, not even close, it's a sports coach at the University of Iowa.

It's all too common today. Can't punish that kid, he scores too many points. Can't punish that kid, his parents donate alot of $$ or are too influential in the community.

In defense of school sports I think of the writings of the old Greek Philosophers. Plato's Republic is a great example.
In his imaginary Republic all youths were sent to state schools where they were taught and trained to be the workers and leaders of tomorrow.
They underwent a thorough winnowing process and were divided into three groups - Bronze, Silver and Gold.
Only the best - those who excelled at physical, intellectual and moral training were thought good enough to become eventual leaders - the Philosopher Kings in the new Republic.
In the Republic you might have been smart but if you didn't excell at sports and being a warrior you weren't considered Gold. Or if you were a great athlete but couldn't do the intellectual work you might only make it to Silver.
Or if you excelled at both sports and study but couldn't control your animal urges or had character flaws you might only reach Bronze.

Consider our college sports programs of today
where character does NOT matter and learning is done for the athletes by others.
Were it up to me I would toss out most of the HS and college sports programs. At least for a time till we can adjust our priorities a little.
For it seems to me todays schools are building up the least important part of a child or youth in this day and age - the physical. And they let the most important parts of the kid - their character and education go to the dogs.

To keep it in perspective, you have to realize that when inter-school and inter-collegiate sports were first organized well over a hundred years ago, the original intent was to create a diversion that would allow the male student body to burn off energy that would have otherwise been spent knocking up the female student body.

Can anyone argue that that lofty goal was met?

I so agree that the tail's now wagging the dog when it comes to sports in schools.... bottom to top. I'd be the first to agree that there are good citizens as well as an overload of suspect citizens in sports, just like any other facet of life. But , because the media, and who drives it, we're all inundated with it. In my opinion, (the Penn State fiasco) Penn State got by with just a mere hand slap compared to what they really deserved. Good ole Jopa and his cronies. Keep winning and anything is alright. One more thought. Recently I spent seven days in Joplin, MO with a church group building three houses that have already been given to three needy famlies. Just across the street Habitat for Humanity was building a house. One of the "local" pro football teams came there to "build" the house. During one of their breaks the building supervisor came over to our site and commented on how well we were getting along with the project. One of our guys asked him how he was doing. His comment was,"I'm herding cats!" I told him that I'd used that term at times and knew exactly what he meant. He repeated the same phrase again but more emphatically. Once I looked over there and there were TEN of those dudes carrying a 28' truss. Well, on our side three old men carried the same sized truss. Course the TV station was there and interviewed players and coach......."Ah, we dist wanted ta come down heah and hep dees folks" and on and on. Well, when the cameras were gone so were they. All gone well before noon. So what I'm saying is it don't stop in college. They were "educated" in college. Why would it change when they went pro? YES, the tail's wagging the dog!

"We" don't pay the coach or anyone else unless you
are a supporter or buy tickets to the games.Major college football is funded by the Sports depts
at the schools not the schools themselves.On coach's salaries VS salaries of politicians Babe Ruth was asked in 1930 about him getting paid more than the President of the United States.Babe's reply "I had a better year than the President"

I disagreed with my dad at the time when he wouldn't let me play football. He let me play some other sports, but really only encouraged my study of music (violin). I excelled to the point I have made it my career both as a teacher and performer. Music students learn the same values of self-discipline, self-esteem, teamwork and sacrifice they might learn as an athlete, with the additional benefit of learning language, art, and beauty while developing their brain. Athletes learn many of those same lessons with torn ACLs, broken bones, concussions and arthritis in their later years. We are becoming a nation of "Al Bundy's" where everyone sits around and talks about their glory days in high school sports. High school athletes grow up, sit on the couch, and shout at and watch other athletes on TV do the things they can't anymore. High school musicians grow up and make music with other musicians. I now often thank my dad for his wisdom.

I sat at a table with a group of coaches trying to figure out if "all those blows to their heads have had a negative impact". Gee? ya' think?

And lets not forget how many times we hear, "I'm not putting $10.00 in the collection basket!. I have to buy pro tickets and they're $80.00!" "Besides, I'll be at the game Sunday, anyhow".

Yup! I get a warm fuzzy feeling every time I drive past our $3,000,000 PIAA approved sports complex complete with a PIAA regulation football field, 2 full gymnasiums, 2 baseball fields, regulation swimming pool and weight training facility. My kids got to march on the field in the band which has been severely curtailed due to budget constraints. That warm fuzzy feeling goes away when I consider my property taxes for the school district have quadrupled in the past 20 years and we are also assessed local income tax by the district. Yeah we produced several Penn Staters. Sports were their ticket to Penn State, few if any of them made it far in that sports program and many bombed out at Penn State education wise. Between my kids and I, we're paying their ride at Mansfield University where they have gotten a decent ACADEMIC education.

I saw an ad recently about how having sports in schools raises the grades the students get. I don't know about out here in Nebraska, but back in PA (I graduated in 99), sports raised grades because the worst students were the best athletes and get passed through so that they could play on Friday night. The one kid I graduated was brilliant, but no one ever made him do anything, so he never got to develop his brilliance, even though now and then it really showed through.

Hey JD this is a tractor site and you arent into the College sports and where the money come from so just cool it theres enough off topic stuff now just dont need any more.

You said it as good as it could posibly be said. I get very upset when the words ...sports, and hero are used in the same article,,,,,it takes away from the real heros.

A friend of mine asked at a school board meeting how much the total ....SPORTS package cost our school. He is still picking the tar and feathers off his skin...ten years later.

One of my favorite Jerry stories:

Jerry was poor and couldn't play football in H.S. Had to get home right after school to do the farm chores. One evening after school he was walking past the practice field when a football bounced right up to him. Jerry picked it up and kicked it back out on the field, barefooted. It sailed right through the goal posts at the opposite end of the field. Coach got excited and ran over to him. "Never saw anyone kick a football like that, and barefooted too - can you pass it??" Jerry said, "Pass it? I don't even know if I can swaller it."

EVERY school around here is that way, even Jr high. My daughter was sent home one day to rest up for the BIG game that night. (she didn't go to the game)
Dennis