darkSpyro

Here in America, lots of schools have a heavy focus on sports, often investing money into gear, the fields and other such things over other activities like theater and such.


I personally think there should be a balance. I got this idea from a reddit post btw

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No, not as much as there is. It's fine to give them attention and funding, but more focus should be given to the fine arts than what currently is at many schools.

When I went to school in Canada there was no focus on sports at all and were no school sports teams. When I moved to New Zealand, however, sport is a huge thing in schools and you would have sports competitions and sometimes a mandatory sports season. In my opinion being encouraged to try out all sorts of different sports was a very positive experience and helped keep me active as a kid. I think that if schools are very focused on academic studies then they should also have a focus on other career options like sports.

I wouldn't do it anyway man

There was a kid from my high school who just barely graduated with a C average, made an 1100 composite score on the SAT (this was back when it was on the 2400 scale), and clearly gave zero ****s about his education. He got a full baseball scholarship to a major university in our state.

That should illustrate my opinions on this very clearly.

Look, I know that there are kids who aren't exactly the academic type but are good at other things, and they deserve a chance, too. But there's a difference between not being the academic type and reading on a damn middle school level because you don't care about your education.

my high school put 70% of their budget into their sports teams every year

they also regularly axed art, music, foreign languages, and other stuff like driver's ed and culinary studies each year just to put those funds into sports

Funding for sports? Cool.
Using the results and rewards from sports to help fund other parts of the school? Cool.
Sacrificing academics or arts in favor of already bolstered sports? Not cool.
Fudging the grades of a poor student so they can still play? Not cool.

None of my schools were super sports heavy so I don't have any stories about sports dominating everything. Even now in college the sports department is mostly away from view for me and isn't some sort of dominating thing. If anything my department (film) has more influence and idk if that says good things about our films or bad things about our sports teams.

And let's not forget school athletic departments and administrators actively trying to cover **** up (bullying, hazing) if it gets their prized student athletes in hot water. You know it's bad when shows like Law & Order regularly use a setup like that as the plot to an episode (or, for a more contemporary example, Netflix's 13 Reasons Why adaptation). <.<;

Well, that's from where the jerk jock stereotype comes from; though there's more realistic examples like these. Everyone would just laugh off the guy who's getting held back a year if sports didn't keep him going regardless of grades.

Quote: Bifrost

Well, that's from where the jerk jock stereotype comes from; though there's more realistic examples like these. Everyone would just laugh off the guy who's getting held back a year if sports didn't keep him going regardless of grades.

You'd be surprised how many American colleges have "5th year seniors" on their big sports teams. <.<;

Sport often needs a good amount of funding to be of high quality for the players. But if there is over funding in sport and a lack of in other departments such as art I don't see why it shouldn't be shared more evenly.
I do think sport is necessary for a happy healthy life though. Which is partly why it gets a lot of funding. I'm biased as I am ranked 7th best female badminton played in my entire university