American Exceptionalism and the Non-Debate
99% of Americans can hardly imagine high school without conjuring up images of pep rallies, Homecoming, championship games, letter jackets, short-skirted, somersaulting cheerleaders, parents and neighbors screaming themselves hoarse in the bleachers, and thick-necked jocks reigning on campus – all the pomp and fanfare associated with school sports.
But America is the only country in the world in which high school and sports are inseparable institutions, an undeniable instance of "American exceptionalism."
Not surprisingly, perhaps, nobody is asking basic, critical questions about why Americans cling so strongly to high school sports. What do our kids get out of them, and what are the benefits for society as a whole? In fact, the benefits of high school sports are just assumed; hence the debate about the need for, and benefits from, high school sports is non-existent.
I perhaps optimistically chalk up this bias to a dearth of experience and a lack of imagination. It is extremely hard to conceive of, much less fight for, the benefits of a system of education which you have never seen or experienced. Yet it is worth remembering that high school sports are a relatively new phenomenon in the life of our country; 100 years ago, they were exclusive to well-to-do private schools and academies. High school attendance itself was not even compulsory in America until the 1920s. There is nothing about American culture or history that necessarily predicts or requires sports in our high schools.
By "high school sports," I mean sports funded by the school, at the taxpayers' expense. In the case of private high school (which I attended), I mean sports supported by the school at parents' and alumni's expense, and carried out in the school's name on school grounds. Even in public high schools, sports teams receive significant support from sources other than taxes, like pledge drives, fundraisers, and corporate sponsors. I acknowledge and include all these sources of funding and support when I speak of “high school sports.”
Who Really Benefits From High School Sports
Diehard boosters of high school sports would say that everyone benefits -- from the students, to the school, to the wider community. But we should also consider who is really meant to benefit, and using whose resources -- resources including considerable time, money, and energy.
Most people would argue that students are meant to benefit the most from high school sports. Students benefit, we assume, from all of the lessons mentioned below:
- Dedication and hard work;
- Time management;
- Team work and self-sacrifice;
- Performing under pressure;
- Willingness to learn, to be coached;
- Competitiveness;
- Dealing with defeat (and conversely);
- Not becoming complacent with success;
- Sportsmanship, and;
- (Not to be forgotten) physical fitness and health.
For two reasons, I will not argue to what extent high school sports do or do not deliver these benefits. First, because it is too hard to prove one way or the other. Second, because I am not interested in abolishing sports altogether (and, ipso facto their benefits); but rather I will argue for taking sports officially out of our schools, and ending taxpayer support for them, so that their significantly negative aspects -- which I intend to enumerate -- do not adversely affect the educational environment.
But if we define "benefit" in terms of dollars and exposure, surely the schools benefit more than the students. Schools with successful sports programs attract more alumni and private donors, entice parents to send their children to those schools (or re-locate to those school districts), attract more ticket buyers to games, and sell more concessions and school paraphanalia.
If we define "benefit" in terms of making a city or school district more desirable to live in, then a successful high school sports program surely benefits the city the most, by attracting more people to live there and pay taxes -- either because they want to support the team more actively, or, more likely, because they want their children to have the chance to play sports there.
In fact, some supporters of high school sports do consider their benefits to the community at-large to be just as important, or even more important, than their benefits to students. In their view, high school sports are about bringing neighbors and communities together. High school sports create a sense of identity, unity, and shared purpose in the local community like no other cultural institution can.
The unifying effect on the local community of high school sports is beyond question. However, I find this situation a deplorable statement on the health and vibrancy of American civic culture. Should it really require a bunch of adolescents running around on the court or field to lure community members out of their houses and offices, avoid the TV, and come together in mutual support? Since the days of our founding until the mid-20th century, Americans did not rely on local sports to unite them. This is relatively recent phenomenon, not part of our American heritage.
Advantages In High School, College and Beyond
It is difficult to say definitively whether students who do not play high school sports suffer some disadvantages later on in college.
As for getting into college, the prevailing logic in college admissions is that, all things being equal, a student with good grades who also participates in school-sponsored sports (or any other extracurricular activity of merit) is more well rounded than a student who shows similar academic achievements alone.
But even sports participation is a highly variable factor in admissions decisions from college to college; and it is weighed against several other, arguably more important, factors like GPA, ACT-SAT scores, the high school's academic reputation, race and economic background, state of residence, and a student's other extracurricular activities.
Hence, while we should acknowledge that participation in high school sports is a positive factor in college admissions, it is extremely difficulty to offer a verdict on just how positive.
More important, it would be wrong to assume that colleges choose students with inferior academic achievement, but who participated in high school sports, over students with better grades who did not participate in high schools sports -- all other factors being equal. A student would have to be a phenomenal athlete indeed to gain an admissions advantage over a student with a better academic background. Realistically, most student-athletes, even with extreme hard work and dedication to their sport, will never achieve that level of athletic prowess. Parents and coaches who sell the false hope of an athletic scholarship to academically deficient student-athletes are doing them no favors.
It is even harder to determine definitively (quantitatively) whether or not students gain any demonstrably beneficial, life-long lessons from participation in high school sports. To some extent we must rely on our subjective impressions; but to a greater extent we may rely on common sense and logical reasoning to answer this key question.
Some supporters of high school sports argue that, thanks to lessons learned playing sports, successful high school athletes often do better in life than "book smart" students who merely studied well. I would raise two objections to this argument. First, I think there may be a generational factor in play here, which I will analyze in more detail later. Second, this argument suffers from several rhetorical fallacies.
First, just because some -- or many -- athletes in high school went on to be successful, happy adults does not mean that their athletic career caused this outcome. Second, sequence (i.e. high school sports, followed by successful adulthood) is not the same as causation. Third, this argument relies on one cause (sports) to explain an outcome (success and well being), when in fact it probably has many causes. Finally, this argument -- if taken too far -- would affirm the fallacy of the general rule, i.e. that high school sports always lead to success later in life. We have to find only one exception, and this rule is proven false. For this very reason I myself will be wary of arguing in absolutes.
Believe it or not, our arrival at this point of uncertainty about the benefits of high school sports represents real progress in the “non-debate,” since we have cast significant doubt on the widely accepted belief that high school athletics can only help a student later in life.
There is, however, an abundance of evidence linking academic achievement to career success and well being later in life. Therefore, academic achievement is what our high schools should focus on; everything else should be subordinate.
Sports and Bullying
American movies and TV programs are a mirror of who we think we are. In shows about teens and high school, jocks are almost universally portrayed as the most brutish, cruel, yet popular and influential students on campus. Their favorite prey are nerds, i.e. kids who study hard, show higher mental aptitude, are physically weaker, or simply take no interest in sports.
To the audience's satisfaction, in these movies the nerd usually does find a way to beat the jocks and prevail in the end, often winning the cheerleader's heart, etc., etc.
In real life, however, we know such feel-good endings very rarely happen. Jocks do indeed bully nerds and weaklings to the point of mental and physical torture. But there is no justice, no comeuppance, or even prospect of reform for the bullies. Parents, teachers, and coaches look the other way or tacitly encourage the jocks' behavior; and nerds do not win in the end, or get the girl, or make the big emotional speech to effect a school-wide change of heart.
If the nerds ever do seek to give jocks and bullies their comeuppance, it is in the form of a Columbine shoot-'em-up massacre. A Secret Service report from 2000 on deadly school shootings since 1974 found that more than 75 percent of all school shooters had suffered continuous bullying. Studies and surveys have shown that about 15-17 percent of kids have been bullied at school; another 15-19 percent has been bullies; and about 6 percent of students admitted to having been both.
And, as USA Today reported, there is an obvious explanation for the sports-bullying connection: athletes who bully were often themselves the victims of hazing and bullying by older students. Such hazing "gets a little worse each year" because "the ones who suffered it the year before, they want to make it that much more dangerous, to validate their experience."
Teachers and coaches must know something about such hazing and bullying, but too often they do little to stop it. Indeed, physical punishments (a form of hazing) are consistent with the training philosophy of many coaches. Is it any surprise that teenage athletes take such negative cues from adults whom they trust, and then take them too far?
Also, logic tells us that to be a physical bully, you must possess greater size or strength than your victim. And athletes, thanks to their genes and hours of physical training, are more often the possessors of such superior size and strength. Hence, bullies are more likely to be athletes than not.
Therefore, it is entirely possible that the prestige and self-esteem that high school athletes gain from participating in sports could make them even bigger bullies.
The Bad Outweighs the Good
We have just considered one extremely undesirable "side effect" of high school sports: the bullying and physical domination that high school athletes impose on weaker students. In the worst case scenario, bullied students' rage and resentment builds up to the point that they take an arsenal of guns and explosives to the school to seek the justice that parents, teachers, and school administrators can't provide them. But there are other, less dramatic negative aspects of high schools sports.
First, as mentioned already, investing so much time, money, and emotional energy in sports as opposed to academics sends a wrong-headed signal to students: that athletic/physical prowess is more important in life than academic achievement.
More often than not, a school's very self-image (embodied in its sports mascot) is tied inextricably to sports. Even if a given student does not participate in sports, even if he is a high achiever academically, his pride or dismay at attending his school is probably a result of how successful its sports teams are compared to neighboring schools. This makes no rational sense – unless you acknowledge the backwards value system of U.S. high school compared to the real world.
Another downside is that non-athletes do not enjoy the same special license as athletes to miss classes and homework assignments, put off or re-take tests, and generally show less devotion to their studies.
This double standard exists for several concrete reasons. First, teachers who give athletes special treatment are often coaches themselves; and even if they do not coach the specific athletes in their classes, they come under pressure from their fellow teacher-coaches not to make the athletes' lives difficult. Naturally, there is a tacit quid pro quo involved here: "I'll take it easy on yours if you take it easy on mine." Second, like their students, teachers are susceptible to the power of athletes' popularity. Teachers understand quite well who are the popular and influential students on campus, and they are reluctant to make enemies of them, when a popular athlete can turn the whole school against a teacher. Third, teachers come under direct pressure from the school administration to "take it easy" on student-athletes who win glory and prestige for the school in the eyes of the community.
Except for those lucky few who go on to a big name college and/or pro career, jocks often experience a dramatic, even cruel, role reversal after high school, when society grants the greatest praise and rewards to those who offer value-added, knowledge-based ideas, services, and products to the rest of us. Muscles, hand-eye coordination, forceful character, (and perhaps physical beauty) will only take you so far in life.
Third, athletes and non-athletes alike often suffer inferior teaching from teacher-coaches, whose first priority is winning at sports, not preparing students for college and the real world of work and ideas. Frankly, many teacher-coaches only teach because they have to. Our students deserve better than half-hearted teachers.
Fourth, sports have an undeniably negative impact on academic performance, overall. Granted, many students learn valuable lessons about time management, achieving goals, and setting priorities as a result of balancing school work and sports. The question is why should they have to learn those hard lessons at that particular age? Why so young? After all, they could learn similar lessons, driven home even more forcefully, by having a child in their teens. Yet we would never counsel teens to go out and do so!
No wonder so many U.S. high school students remark, upon entering college, how "easy" it is compared to high school. Are their college classes indeed easier -- or could it be that many students, freed from the pressure cooker of do-it-all high school life, suddenly have more free time outside of class to read, study, think, and meet with teachers? Could it be that many students discover only in college that they like learning, and are good at it, because learning is the very reason for college, and academic performance is college's main measure of value?
So, can we really say in all certainty that the active promotion of high school sports offers some distinct advantage to U.S. students, despite all the drawbacks mentioned? What could those benefits possibly be?
Sports, Academics, and How the U.S. Measures Up
A look at students in other developed countries might grant some perspective. Yes, those students may spend more time in the classroom than U.S. students do, (and their summer vacations are often shorter), but their homework load is generally lighter; and the majority of foreign students do not hold after-school jobs or play sports (jobs being much rarer than sports).
In an international study of student achievement, 55% of American high school seniors said they worked three or more hours daily, while fewer than 10% of students in Sweden and Switzerland (two of the highest-achieving nations in mathematics) worked as much. The focus of students in other developed countries -- their "job," if you will -- is to be full-time students while they are at school, not stressed-out little "adults" trying and failing to "do it all," just like their parents. And as the test scores show, especially in math and hard sciences, foreign students perform better at their job than their American counterparts.
In that same study from 2001, foreign exchange students who attended U.S. high schools were asked whether success in sports was more important to American students or students back home. Two-thirds of foreign students said sports were "much more" important to U.S. students.
A cursory look at other industrialized countries, their levels of income, and many other accepted indicators of general well being, lead us to conclude that a country's devotion to sports cannot possibly play a significant role in its prosperity. For instance, is India more prosperous than neighboring Pakistan because it is sportier? Is China more prosperous than both countries because it is the sportiest? And are China and India gaining on America in economic growth and living standards because America's relative emphasis on high school sports is "slipping" compared to theirs?
I'll leave it to you to ponder such silly, least plausible hypotheses.
"But sports are just one of many factors that play a role in a person's future success," a sports booster might argue.
Again, we cannot draw any hard conclusions here about the positive or negative influence of high school sports without hard data to support them. But it has been argued that any more than 20 hours total per week of extracurricular activities (including jobs, sports, clubs, music lessons, etc.) lowers academic performance. So, perhaps it is time to make some hard choices about what to cut out. If the choice is between, let us say, work-study programs (more on these to come) and sports, the choice seems clear.
We must admit, nevertheless, that the U.S. must be doing something right. After all, America consistently numbers among the world's top 10 most competitive economies, as ranked by the World Economic Forum's annual Global Competitiveness Report, although the U.S. did slip from 5th to 6th place in 2006-07. But that small slip might portend bigger falls to come. Consider this excerpt from an article in 2005 in Business Wire:
“The United States once produced the highest percentage of bachelor's degrees in the world but now trails behind five other countries including Canada, Japan, and South Korea. Nearly 80 percent of the nation's post-secondary students attend non-selective four-year and community colleges, and less than half of those students graduate. What's going on in American higher education?”
Indeed, what is going on in American higher education? The answer is almost certainly to be found in answering the question: What is going on in American high school?
Coaching Without Sports
The coach-player relationship can be intense and profoundly beneficial for student-athletes, but it can also be source of lifelong anger, regret, or bittersweet emotions. Even those athletes lucky enough to make the team are not guaranteed the coach's approval or fair treatment.
Student-athletes and coaches alike are often victims of a high-pressure, high-intensity environment, where parents, peers, teammates, the school administration, and the community at-large expect them to perform at a high level all the time, no exceptions. The pressure to win imposed on student-athletes from all sides is especially great; and the tactics used by coaches to train and motivate them often dubious, considering student-athletes' tender age and emotional immaturity.
Mental and verbal abuse from coaches is common. Psychological inducements (manipulation) are used with varying degrees of skill by many coaches, with mixed results. Coaches may be experts in their chosen sport, but they may know nothing about psychologically healthy methods of mentoring developing adolescents who are desperately seeking adults' praise and validation. Often coaches receive little or no training on this critical aspect of teaching and molding young adults.
Formal mentoring programs, on the other hand, are already in effect and proven to work. Most formal mentoring programs include a period of training and orientation, when they talk about acceptable behaviors of mentors and mentees. Mentors teach students in a more friendly, relaxed, informal, and trusting atmosphere, without instant judgment, humiliation in front of the group, verbal abuse, or constant demands for outputs/performance -- all of which are endemic in high school athletics.
A tried and true substitute for the coach-athlete relationship is vocational training and work-study programs, i.e. apprenticeships. In many countries, professional apprenticeships for teenagers produce excellent skilled workers – and not just master craftsmen: some of them are on par with U.S. engineers.
Therefore, since so many teens are already working after-school jobs anyway, why not encourage them to work at something that pays immediate professional dividends and looks impressive on a resume, like learning a trade or technical skill, instead of learning how to mop floors and fry burgers?
Colleges and employers already recognize the immense benefits of apprenticeships (called “internships”), and no college can compete for enrollees today without offering them. Why should we limit this beneficial experience to college students? We should offer internships to high school students, too.
The guaranteed benefits of internships, vocational training, and apprenticeships for high school students offer a strong rebuttal to those who argue that students can learn valuable life lessons primarily, or only, through sports. After all, even most sports boosters would acknowledge that the point of school sports is not to make great athletes, but rather to mold more well-developed and successful adults, mainly in the context of work. So, why should students settle for “metaphorical” life lessons learned through sports – like teamwork, dealing with adversity, and setting goals – when they could learn these lessons in a real-world, hands-on setting – and also learn skills that are commercially in-demand?
Competition and Teamwork Without Sports
Athletic competition may be more "dramatic" and physically and emotionally intense than other forms of competition, but high school students already have ample opportunities to compete against their peers – in academic teams, creative writing contests, art and music exhibitions, even GPA scores. True, in the general curriculum there may not be enough team projects and chances for all students to compete, but this is a problem easily solved with will and creativity.
Sexism and Homophobia in Sports Culture
Another consideration in sporting competition is sex segregation. Because of differences in physical size, speed, and strength, boys and girls must not compete against each other in the same sport. So schools have sensibly instituted sex segregation. This has some benefits, mainly for the girls, but still more drawbacks.
For instance, hormonal teen boys struggling with self-esteem and identity are especially ripe targets for sexist and homophobic inducements from male adults and peers in the “manly” milieu of sports. Variations on "You throw like a girl," and "Don't be a fag," are, unfortunately, too commonly used by high school coaches and fellow athletes with the aim of motivating athletes out of anger and humiliation to perform better. This is not a very good lesson to instill in our young men especially, who must go on after high school to study and work with (and for) women and homosexuals.
In addition to breeding sexism and homophobia, sex segregation in sports prevents boys and girls from learning how to work together effectively. This is a lesson both sexes must learn before they enter the world of work, and preferably before college. The more often we encourage co-ed competition and team activities, the better.
However, I am a firm believer that female-only sports teams provide dramatic benefits for girls, as do female-only schools in general. The absence of naturally louder and more aggressive boys forces girls at female-only schools to pick up the slack – in the classroom, on the field, in student government, etc. – simply because if they do not participate, no one will. Nevertheless, the idea of private club/select teams for girls addresses this issue, at least when it comes to sports.
Changing Times: Education and Global Competitiveness
Like the rest of America, high school has changed dramatically in the last 30-40 years – although these changes have largely been organic and unintentional. Examples are numerous to show that, compared to 30 years ago:
- Students today have increased homework loads (although, granted, much of it may be "busywork" that does not teach them much);
- Due to competition for admissions and scholarships to select schools, college admissions departments are demanding more extracurricular and volunteer activities than ever before to separate the "outstanding" from the merely "excellent" students.
U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao addressed this trend in a candid May 2006 speech:
“There is a growing mismatch between the new jobs being created and the skills of our nation's workforce. I believe this is the core issue surrounding the debate about wage inequality in our country: we don't have a wage gap, as much as we have an education and skills gap. [Emphasis mine.]
[“…]
“In the technology-driven workplace of the 21st century, education determines a worker's earnings for life. Workers ages 18 and over with a bachelor's degree today earn, on average, about twice that of workers with a high school diploma. Workers with the most advanced degrees make an average of over three times as much as those with a high school diploma.”
Taking this phenomenon of “degree inflation,” together with globalization and increased outsourcing of U.S. jobs, we have no choice but to emphasize the importance of quality higher education for as many Americans as possible. In this context, it makes sense to put even more emphasis on academics in high school than ever before. Our kids simply cannot afford to spend so much time on activities that cannot be proven to give them a competitive edge in life. The opportunity cost of high school sports is often too high. This is the harsh reality.
In this context, encouraging teens to toss around leather and pigskin balls for several hours a day is an extravagant waste of our time and taxpayer resources.
Understanding all this, if students (and their parents) would still value and desire the lessons learned through sports, I say let them organize and pay for them with their own time and money.
In a word, privatize.
Sports and Opportunities For Minorities
One may object to privatizing high school sports based on the fear that it could deny poor and minority students the chance to participate in sports at all. For a small number of minorities, after all, sports have been a dramatically successful “way out” of poverty.
However, private club/select teams already provide an outlet for poor and minority students who wish to participate in sports year-round. And if high school sports were abolished, any athlete who showed talent would be readily integrated and their fees gladly paid for by wealthier parents and sponsors. After all, most teams want to win, and will usually go after the best players to gain a competitive edge. Communities and local businesses could voluntarily support private teams just as easily as they support public high school teams.
College athletic scouts – who are also under intense competitive pressure to discover the best athletic talent – already visit these private leagues, so minority students would not be overlooked. And in the absence of high school-sponsored teams, club/select teams would be the only game in town: recruiters would choose either to look there for scholarship athletes, or would not recruit at all.
We should admit that U.S. high school’s inordinate emphasis on sports betrays black male student-athletes’ hopes in particular. Statistically, young black males are already falling behind in the struggle for labor competitiveness, not just compared to India and China, but compared to African-American women and their non-black peers. And consider this excerpt from Business Wire (2005):
“Today an estimated 88 percent of high school students aspire to attend college, the highest percentage in the nation's history. Yet their desire is being undermined by a disconnect between what post-secondary schools expect from students and what high schools prepare students for. The most pronounced effect is on first-generation college goers -- many of them students of color -- and on the economically disadvantaged.” [Emphasis mine.]
Historically, African-Americans have placed inordinate emphasis on sports prowess for a very good reason: In sports the best excel, period. The objectivity of sport has allowed blacks in this arena to outshine whites for decades, even as they have lagged behind whites in the arenas of work and education, where there remain deliberate and systemic biases against them. These biases have greatly diminished, thanks to changes in our laws and attitudes; but they have been much slower to go away than discrimination in American sports.
Hence, ever since the 1950-60s when full participation of blacks in U.S. sports became possible, blacks have looked increasingly to African-American athletes as models of success and the “American Dream.”
True, hero worship of black athletes and anti-intellectualism among blacks cannot be attributed directly to high school sports; but our country’s general overemphasis on sports in its institutions of learning certainly does not help improve matters.
Especially for those groups who underachieve scholastically, we must emphasize even more strongly that learning is the raison d'etre of high school. Sports in this context must be viewed strictly as a luxury – and a potentially harmful luxury at that.
Conclusions
The undeniably positive aspects of high school sports are far outweighed by the downsides: the sports-bullying connection; sending students (especially minorities) the wrong message about what is important in school; inferior teachers who just want to coach sports; diversion of scarce public funding; overloading students’ after-school hours with extra-curriculars; sexism and homophobia in sports culture; and most important, the end result: decreased competitive advantage of U.S. workers in the global economy.
Moreover, most so-called positive aspects of school-sponsored sports could be taken outside the school and replicated in private leagues. Some so-called positive aspects of high school sports that probably cannot be replicated through private sports are increased school spirit; and increased community pride, identity, and unity.
However, I have argued that a school or community's spirit and prestige should not depend on how well its students play sports. No one can say that sports prowess is the goal of a high school education; and sports are even less relevant to the real issues facing our communities.
I see local communities' latching onto sports teams as an expression of their unfulfilled desire for fellowship, collective pride, and togetherness. Local communities' fanatical devotion to local sports teams is a symptom of our atomized, "bowling alone" civic culture in recent distress, rather than a healthy civil virtue worth celebrating. We should embrace more creative, inclusive, and traditionally American ways to come together and show pride in our community.
Interestingly, it should be noted that the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, which is composed of U.S. business and educational leaders, recently recommended a radical overhaul of high school education. One of its main recommendations was ending "high school" at the 10th grade. If the commission's recommendations were enacted, the preceding discussion would become moot. There would be little community interest in promoting only 15- and 16-year-olds athletes, who have not yet honed their skills to a "varsity" level.
Of course, the NCAA would lobby vociferously against such a measure, because the NCAA’s success depends on a constantly replenishing pool of top notch high-school athletic recruits. Any threat to this pool of recruits would in turn threaten university ticket and apparel sales, lucrative TV deals, school prestige, and wealthy alumni donations. However, even the NCAA could be appeased in this regard, I believe, once private sports teams for adolescents became well established nationwide.
Finally, I hope this discussion will kick start a necessary debate that is presently non-existent. Privatizing high schools sports may seem extreme; but is it really it so radical to suggest that America be like every other developed, industrialized country in this one regard?
Perhaps some compromise can be found which would allow us to "fix it, not nix it." But honestly, I am doubtful that meaningful reform is possible, and that there can be only false compromises here. It is past time to take a hard look at the supposed lifelong benefits of high school-sponsored sports, consider other ways we could spend our scarce public resources, and how our children could better spend their precious school years.
