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Comment by cpursley | Hacker News Reader

Please tell me this magical place where people aren't obsessed with watching sports (playing themselves is fine). My passort is in hand :)

I completely agree. Athletics should be decoupled from public schools - K-12 and public universities. As someone who attended public school in the US, and who's wife currently teaches at a public school, I can say with certainty that these places are just training camps for the best athletes. In the place I currently live, the adults speak of their children always in the context of how good they are at a particular sport - never about academics or other achievements. For the parents, a child who's a good athlete is the same as winning the lottery.

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Where I am, in Scandinavia, and I think also in most of continental Europe, sports are decoupled from the schools. You don't have school teams or schools competing against each other, instead various junior sports teams are simply local and geographical, drawing kids from surrounding schools.

And junior sports activites are completely extra-curricular. A local team might have its activities at a single school, so as a student you might have your after-school basketball at your school, or another school, it all depends. You still have a lot of people watching professional sports, and working their way up through junior sports, but the "high-school jock" cliché simply does not exist.

And, consequently, athletic proficiency isn't mixed with academic proficiency, the school doesn't care about how good a student is at basketball or football or whatever, that's completely outside its interests. And academic scholarships based on athletic skill is unheard of. (Then again, scholarships are pretty unheard of, university education is free... :) )

If the social structure of high schoolers in Scandinavia isn't related to sports, what are the attributes which dictate where you rank socially?

It's a subjective popularity contest, much like high-schools everywhere. Dress "right", talk "right", listen to the "right" music, be attractive, and pretend to be confident.

I think sports are the principal reasons classes start so early in high school in the u.s. i recall shuddering under heavy rainfall in the early a.m. hours waiting for a bus to pick me up, barely conscious, staggering into a "homeroom". By the time I woke up, it was time to go home. Most kids stayed after for 6 or 7 hours practicing sports they'd never have the slightest chance of competing in beyond high school.

Well, I live in Lebanon. Very far from being a magical place. Instead of being obsessed with sports, people are obsessed with politics. And not in a good way. It's all sectarian, religiously racist bullshit.

But if you do decide to visit, let me know and I'll show you around :-p

Hey, sounds good. I'd like to visit that region - especially love the food.

On other other hand - I guess sports is a distraction from politics and disagreement - a proxy war if you will. But watching others play is entirely different than getting out on the field.

Well, if you are interested in visiting the area then I would definitely recommend Lebanon(I'm obviously biased, but still). Most people speak English or at least understand it, though fluency does vary quite a bit. So you shouldn't have too much trouble talking to people even if you don't speak Arabic. And we have really good weather for most of the year though it can get very hot and humid in the summer.

If all you know about this place is gleaned from the news it sounds like a warzone but it really isn't, and there's usually quite a bit of warning before anything security-compromising happens -- With the exception of the 2006 war with Israel, that was quite sudden. But relatively few areas were affected.

As long as you stay away from Hezbollah-controlled territory(The deep south, the bekaa valley and the souther suburbs/ghetto of Beirut) you won't get kidnapped or anything like that :P

If you do take a leap, shoot me an email(in profile) and I'd be more than happy to assist :-)

Please tell me this magical place where people aren't obsessed with watching sports

Soccer is a religion in Europe (and most of the rest of the world) but no one gets into a university in Europe only thanks to their soccer skills.

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