Darth Wong wrote:Does any of this money go toward actual education?
Yes, though this varies widely since each school district has different rules. In some, any profits from school activities goes immediately to those who hold school bonds -in other words, retiring school district debt, whether those bonds were issued for a gymn, track, cafeteria or library. In other districts, the school board is free to spend the profits as they see fit (with certain restrictions). Also, the facilities for sports aren't just used for sports. The training room in the new gymn doubled as the school nurse's office. The gymn itself was multi-use as a gymn, auditorium and assembly hall. To this day, it's an election precinct. So not only did the money raised by basketball pay for a new gymn, it helped pay for a number of things that weren't directly related to sports.
Yet again you demonstrate that you completely miss the point; it's not a question of whether it helps the tiny percentage of kids who get athletic scholarships; it's a question of what it does to the community at large. Scholarships only go to the top performers; everyone else just wastes their time pursuing pipe dreams that won't go anywhere. Athletic achievement is a ridiculously low-percentage route to success.
Do they hand out scholarships to biology students with bad grades? No? Then why should a college give an athletic scholarship to a bad player? Athletic achievement may be about as likely as winning a lottery, but let's be realistic here. A jock whose only selling point to a university is his ability to shoot baskets was never going to cut it as an accountant, doctor, or engineer was he? Compared to his chances of making it in those lines of work, making it in the NBA might be his best of a several shitty hands.
Wow, so a country of 300 million people employs almost 2000 people in one industry. Yeah, that makes it all worthwhile.
For those who make the most of it, yes.
Darth Wong wrote:Elfdart wrote:I'm of the opinion that sport contributes more to schools (at least in my neck of the woods) than it takes out. The proof is in the fact that private schools are every bit as nutty over athletics as public schools and in spite of not being able to just vote themselves more money like school boards and county commissioners do.
How the fuck does that prove net positive contribution?
Private schools also make money off sports.
And how many disadvantaged kids play basketball every day instead of doing their schoolwork, in pursuit of athletic scholarships which they won't get? You seem to think that athletic scholarships are justified if they are good for the few people who get them, rather than asking what effect they have on society and the entire student population as a whole.
How many disadvantaged kids do other things instead of their homework like after school jobs? As I stated before, just because most people don't qualify for one scholarship or another doesn't mean those subjects shouldn't be in schools. How many people can draw or paint well enough to earn a scholarship? Does that mean art classes in high school are a waste of time and money? Keep in mind nobody buys tickets to see the sketches from a high school art class. They had to offer free pens to get people to watch our debate team. And the number of people who actually earn a living as artists is very small.
First, I think you are overgeneralizing about the income balance; I would like to see some statistical sources for your claim that high school sports can be generalized as a net gainer.
I made it clear that I was speaking about Texas, where football is a religion, with basketball and baseball close behind. People gladly cough up money to watch the school games. Businesses gladly give money for school sports as well. I conceded that this might not be typical for the rest of the country. I also made clear that if a school district is losing money on sports, they should cut off sports rather than say, textbooks.
Second, you are thinking of sports solely in terms of how they benefit the top performers, not the harmful mixed messages that are being sent to the entire student body about where you should focus your attentions and who you should look to as a role model.
I don't think the message is mixed at all. Even dumb kids figure out what the "grownups" truly value. It's not that schools venerate athletes so much. Society as a whole does. It would be nice if local businesses coughed up money for biology textbooks instead of jerseys for the basketball team. But they don't. Luckily, they sometimes have enough of a hardon for sports that the money they lavish on the local high school team spills over and benefits the schoole as a whole.
Surely anyone with even a passing familiarity with American pop culture should realize that you people put far too much faith in athletes and actors to be role models.
Faith? No, we just love to watch them at work and will pay good money to do so.
And third, I certainly don't hold up drama or music as necessities; I said earlier that if they were costing too much money I would axe them, so take your strawmen elsewhere.
What else would you cut off? Art? Literature? Foreign languages? I'm curious. Music, drama and team sports are expendable as far as you're concerned -what else?
So what are we arguing here? I agreed with my first post on this subject that if sports are a detriment -and I mean a real detriment, not some armchair psychology about role models and mixed messages- in a school district, cut them off immediately. I don't just mean financially. Some players turn their teams into gangs, like the h.s. football players in New Jersey who gangraped a retarded girl. I love sports, but I'd pull the plug on that program no matter how much money they brought in.
I think you're putting the cart before the horse. Sports aren't overly valued because the messages sent in high school. The message is sent to high school students (outside of school) by their elders because sports are overly valued.