Imagine, for a moment, if Americans transferred our obsessive intensity about high-school sports—the rankings, the trophies, the ceremonies, the pride—to high-school academics. We would look not so different from South Korea, or Japan, or any of a handful of Asian countries whose hypercompetitive, pressure-cooker approach to academics in many ways mirrors the American approach to sports. Both approaches can be dysfunctional; both set kids up for stress and disappointment. The difference is that 93 percent of South Korean students graduate from high school, compared with just 77 percent of American students—only about 2 percent of whom receive athletic scholarships to college.

Boom! Goes the dynamite

10 pages by tomorow night

Making kids wear uniforms and ties in school will get test scores up.

There's going to be a whole lot of stupid in this thread, as evidenced by the two posts directly above mine.

Making kids wear uniforms and ties in school will get test scores up.

Actually, I think in a lot of cases, it has.

Any concrete policy ideas on how to "transfer our obsessive intensity"?

I think a lot of school districts are trying to improve education through technology. However, I feel that using technology for everything hurts the students ability to learn and use critical thinking. They should go back to the days where students would take a class a week or a day on computers and typing, but the rest of the time they have to use books and pencils and their brains.

Instead of teaching kids to learn, they are merely teaching them how to use computers to get answers for everything.

I don't know if we can do that, but start by reallocating the money spent on organized sub-concussive head trauma to cash-strapped academic/performing arts departments.

There are many students whose only incentive to come to school and get decent grades is a sport.

I am troubled the way high school sports have increased in stature over the last decade or so. I see no reason why high schoolers need to travel long distances when classes are in session in order to compete. I don't just say this for the public school league team that travels across country for an ESPN matchup. I think the same thing for the catholic league team that travels to Ireland for a football game. I don't understand why a high school needs to have a school wide ceremony on signing day for an athlete when several other students will be getting their acceptance letter to far more impressive schools resulting in a diploma that will provide them far more earning potential. I don't like that coaches are not otherwise gainfully employed and core members of a faculty at which they coach. I dislike the proliferation of transfers rather than students who have 4 stable years at a school in which to learn about community.

Elimination isn't the answer but de emphasis is in order and would be fairly simple

That's fine, but how much money are we spending on athletics? Not being snarky, this is honestly a topic I don't know much about.

Football at Premont cost about $1,300 a player. Math, by contrast, cost just $618 a student. For the price of one football season, the district could have hired a full-time elementary-school music teacher for an entire year. But, despite the fact that Premont’s football team had won just one game the previous season and hadn’t been to the playoffs in roughly a decade, this option never occurred to anyone.

Is this case against high school sports anything like the fight against the JDRF?

and that's at what seems to be a shitty impoverished district in rural south Texas. I imagine it comes out to more than that at Conant.

well, from the article,



and that's at what seems to be a shitty impoverished district in rural south Texas. I imagine it comes out to more than that at Conant.

At my high school, we had a state-of-the-art, four-court gymnasium, but the hallways had holes in the ceiling and the auditorium/music rooms were in shameful disrepair until 2003. Academically, we were mediocre at best, but the athletic department always seemed to be taken care of.

Boom! Goes the dynamite

10 pages by tomorow night