The American Sports Craze (Is Destroying Our Schools)

China. Singapore. Finland. South Korea. These are the countries that score highest every year on advanced placement tests and academic assessments. The U.S. is not mentioned in the same breath as these nations. Why? Because of tests like this one, where America scores 25th out of 34 countries math/science test. Politicians and education officials offer various reasons for this. Not enough money, uncooperative parents, and uninterested students are among the many. But in this discussion. one sacred topic is left untouched: sports. They're expensive, time consuming, and dangerous, but everybody loves them. On average, the U.S. spends $1300 per football player, but only $618 per math student. It's this kind of gap that is holding our schools back, and sports are a big factor.

The high school in the town of Premont, Texas, is a perfect example. I read about this school in a recent article in the Atlantic, and the data was stunning. The school was hemorrhaging money and was on the verge of shutdown, so an outside superintendent, Ernest Singleton, was brought in to rescue the district. He described it as the worst school he had ever seen. The teachers had no power, students were cursing in the classroom, and everything was in a state of chaos and disarray. The most striking fact to me, though, was that even after the school had laid off employees, closed the middle school, and sealed off science labs, the school still competed with teams for more than 7 different sports. In fact, the school used over $150,000 every year just on sports. This disgusted me; the school just competitive sports over a good, useful education. So Singleton did what had to be done: he cut all the sports team. To many of my competitive peers this may seem like a drastic reaction, but the results justify it completely. 80% of students passed classes, instead of the previous year's 50%, and during parent teacher conferences, 160 people attended, compared to laughably low attendance of only six parents the year before.

These are just a few examples, and the article goes much further in depth. Sports are clearly embedded in American culture and are a big part of our education system (despite their near non-existent educational value.) With this data, I'm surprised more struggling schools don't cut sports, but at the same time I see why they might not. Kids love to compete. But do the pros of school organized sports really outweigh the cons?