The last football funding discussion at the town level was whether to fund better helmets to protect against CTE or make the players' parents pay for it, so the town isn't seen supporting/encouraging brain damage to children.
That a magnet school that attracts the students of wealthy parents who are deeply invested in their kids eduction doesn't have a sport the those demographics turn their nose up at <insert low effort quip about brain damage here> is expected. I bet they have rowing and lacross to make up for it.
Maybe they have the "best overall public school systems" but looking at individual public high schools Massachusetts doesn't even make the list till #26 and then not again until #153 in the national rankings
That's just lying with statistics. Adjust for parental income and see what you get. The state has few poor and rural areas to "drag the average down" so of course they look good. VA would look good too if they had the luxury of counting just NOVA and the coast in their stats.
I'd say that more sport is generally a good thing. What matters most to me about high school learning is that IQ does not decline. Grades are just a bad IQ test and most things you learn in high school don't matter. Sport is healthier than sitting in a dim classroom all day.
I am the kind of person that likes to learn by myself so all learning in school is time spent ineffeciently (from a pure learning perspective; reading a book instead is better). But I think that for most people many things that are taught in high school are useless while more important things (understanding how social media affects you, how to declare taxes, how credit cards work) are not covered (at least here in Germany, I suspect its no different in the US).
Well, speak for yourself. It may be a very unpopular opinion here on HN but I learned a lot at school, be it elementary, middle, high or university. But I went to school in Italy, and it was a good school.
>But I think that for most people many things that are taught in high school are useless while more important things (understanding how social media affects you, how to declare taxes, how credit cards work) are not covered (at least here in Germany, I suspect its no different in the US).
This are thing that you can easily google. Why would I want to waste time teaching such trivial things while there are subjects much more interesting and intellectually engaging. Talk about inefficiency.
If someone does not want to study academic subjects it is not obliged to finish school, they can simply abandon once they reach the appropriate age (in Italy, 16 y/o): I know someone who did it and went the trade route and was very happy, but please, please, let us, academically inclined people have our own habitat.
4.0s only mean you worked really hard or, in very rare cases, are extremely intelligent. I know a guy who got a 3.2 in calc 3. Doesn’t sound very good right? Well the only reason is because his teacher was test heavy and those tests were quite difficult. My teacher was much more focused on homework so I could work harder to get a good grade. After working with him I realized we almost exactly the same amount. However, if you looked at our grades I would seem significantly “smarter” than him.
> I learned a lot at school
These aren't contradictory statements. You aren't considering all the things you forgot from school, for a very simple reason: by definition, you forgot about them and didn't learn them.
You have players on the team and coaches, yes. But you also have cheerleaders, marching band, trainer assistants (usually students who want to go into medicine or physical therapy). There are homecoming pagents and dances plus the social event every weekend for the school that goes along with it.
There’s no sport in high school that comes close to pulling everybody together the same way as football. There’s more to it than just classroom education vs sports in this case. It’s helping to foster a sense of community and school pride.
Often there will be charity drives that coincide using the games as a place to make announcements.
There are so many non-traditional ways and skills to teach kids that I think would be worth exploring, but sport doesn't even register on the scale of usefulness. Apparently we don't even teach finance in highschool yet or any kind of professional development skills.
Teamwork, acting/thinking under pressure, detailed preparation, controlling nerves, performing in front of crowds (with high expectations), pride in your body and performance.
These are just a few high level/low hanging fruits learned from competitive sport.
You forgot part:
> It’s helping to foster a sense of community, school pride, *and brain damage*.
Then there's the issue of discipline. The stereotype of athletes getting a pass on bad behavior or a little "help" on grades, because enforcing the rules would mean they'd have to miss a game or two, is based on real behavior that is very much alive today, not some relic of 1980s teen movies.
Additionally, I've read a ton of studies of this stuff and everything that I've found said the risk at the high school level is virtually nonexistent when compared with the general student body. In the college and professional level where everybody is bigger, stronger and faster it's an entirely different situation.
But to each their own.
Even the linemen who have aggressive contact each play aren’t banging their heads together, they are using their hands. The helmets are largely protecting against incidental contact.
Head trauma comes from rapid changes in momentum that cause the brain to bounce around inside the skull.
Those from “horse collar” tackles, which are illegal now.
Those from intentionally or unintentionally having helmet to helmet contact, which is also illegal.
Virtually every type of helmet hit is penalized at this point.
Soccer headers are probably much worse I would imagine.
To try and prop it up as a natural thing that is good just feels like a major problem.
It's awful hard for the band to take the field at halftime at water polo. Those uniforms don't really want to be wet.
Other sports play a lot more games. Football has a predictable and consistent schedule, Friday nights in the fall. The limited number of home games (only 5 or 6 usually) also keeps involvement at a level that's not overwhelming for the student body.
Additionally, football teams can support a lot more players than any other sport with rosters typically 50 players or more. Especially in smaller schools, this means almost everybody will know somebody who plays.
Lastly, football is the most diverse sport in the US. There's a role for everybody. From smaller faster guys playing receiver, more medium sized athletes playing defense at linebacker or defensive back and bigger stronger guys playing offensive and defensive line. Even the soccer players can find a role at kicker / punter.
It brings together more people from different racial backgrounds than any other sport as well.
I was not an athlete in high school by any stretch. I was an overweight kid who played MtG, DnD and Duke Nukem all the time who just happened to be 6 feet tall. I played football for 4 years and learned a lot about hard work while I got in much better shape. Even though I was never a starter, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not fully against football. But praising the sport that has more money spent on it for reaping the rewards of said money feels... Not that charitable to other sports.
Edit: I feel ashamed to have omitted basketball I'm my list. :(
Football has more money spent on it because it became so popular that people started spending more money on it. I can't say for sure WHY it became so popular, but people in my area know college football history back 100+ years so well that it's a common topic of conversation.
Usually the 2 big state schools would play a football game at the state fair every year and it became a major social event. The games themselves were almost secondary to the social event.
Football was likely popular in it's origins due to not needing a lot of equipment, amusingly. Is the reason pickup games were so popular in local parks. If you have a local court, basketball is rather popular for similar reasons. If you are out in the court, you are there to play and the main equipment is the net.
And, at large, any sport or group activity is good. Remember back when schools would have large tug of war contests? Tons of fun that most anyone could join in on.
Fairs were neat in the sheer variety of offering. Shame we lost those in favor of organized game nights, to me.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry that you would unironically write that about a Sport that excludes 50% of the population.
Wow, that's not my high school experience. Sports divided the student body into the popular athletic kids and the unpopular academic kids. If you celebrate the football team and not the math team, the results are predictable, and they won't be to promote math.
We had two valedictorians, one who was excellent at cross country and soccer while the other was a fantastic golfer. Our salutatorian was homecoming queen and a cheerleader too.
The top guy in my school ended up going to GA Tech on a baseball scholarship.
Being required to waste an entire evening at a football game to play for a few minutes here and there was insulting.
I'm pretty sure it's also the reason the curriculum was built almost entirely around the microscopic musical niche of marching band, rather than instruments & skills that were more likely to be useful in life beyond college.
Our marching band always got superior ratings every year in their own competitions and had a blast playing throughout all of the games. Everybody in our band seemed to have a great time with it, especially the drummers.
I suspect selection bias also plays in to all of the negativity. But variety reigns and places that had more offerings almost certainly had more success.
EDIT: Since we've hit the reply nesting limit. I still don't see how having an activity that involves so many people sidelines anyone or how a lack of that activity would improve the involvement?
I can't think of any school sanctioned activities that discriminated against any student based on their appearance, even cheer. I had giant glasses that slid down my nose, a belly and braces. Believe me, the only thing that kept me from feeling included was my own perception of myself. Having coaches and a routine that forced me to exercise and lift weights was one of the best things I ever did.
Edit: if you click the timestamp on a post, you can reply to it. :) Having an activity vacuum up all the money from any alternative sidelines folks. Did you have a thriving chess club? Go? Math or spelling bee?
I honestly don't remember. I know we did have a chess club. We had "Mathletes" that was very popular. A lot of people were involved in it.
For many small town High Schools in the US, it's not just a school-wide event, it's a town-wide event. I remember in my small town, during High School football season, the entire town mobilized around the event. Sales at local stores, drinks and catering to the field/bleachers, specials at bars post-game for the grown-ups, and so on. The football game was quite literally the most exciting and important thing going on within a 25 mile radius of the school.
As for it becoming a school-wide event, your post is only part of it: Yes, football manages to pull together a lot of the students, not just the athletes, which is positive. But it also can very negatively disrupt the academic routine. Teachers would plan lighter days and/or skip topics because "It'S FoOtBaLl DaY" and they knew everyone was mentally checked out because football game. Athletes would get special exceptions from academic expectations, get special treatment in the classroom, get treated with kid gloves discipline-wise. High School athletics was so important to the entire town that it kind of established the entire local area's social totem pole.
I think physical activity in school is important; but you could definitely argue that these are special treatment.