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Athletics and Academics
In the current economic climate of the United States, public institutions are finding themselves having to make harsher and harsher budget cuts. Teaching positions are minimized, class sizes are increased, and fees are rising to nearly unaffordable regions. The English Department at a certain university or high school may drop from twenty-five professors to a dozen or so. It is the harsh reality of living in an era of economic downturn. However, even as the college school would lose more and more financial assistance from the government, athletic programs at schools continue to expand and provide more and more incentives for prospective recruits. This is symptomatic of a flawed philosophy in college institutions: the ability to perform athletic skills has more importance than the ability to think. This perspective not only jades the graduating classes but teaches the wrong principles for when a student needs to learn to cope with the adult, working-class world.
Supporters of school athletics argue that the programs teach teamwork and cooperation as well as instill in the academically gifted an elevated sense of self-esteem (Meier 2004). Those is opposition argue that those who are not engaged in athletics perceive the importance placed on sports as having a detrimental effect. The adoration placed upon the athletic people is not bestowed upon students who are academically gifted, leading to misplaced value and improper priorities. To find out the basis...
As with any organization that has divergent goals, also called goal conflict, the two top priorities of the school world, namely academic and athletic, forces the leadership of that organization into a form of limbo wherein he or she must appease factions supporting both sides of the debate. Often, as the researchers found, this battle for priority leads to lack of functionality and continued disagreement between the two groups and gets nowhere closer to resolution.
The findings of the research by Meier were that within a single school, athletics would have a positive impact on the academics of that individual. However, when examining an entire school district, it was determined that there was a negative correlation between academic performance and expenditure on athletics (Meier 2004). This is due to many factors. Primarily among them is that for athletes,…
Works Cited:
Larimore, David (2007). "Non-Economic Societal Impacts of Intercollegiate Athletics." The
Sport Journal. United States Sports Academy.
Meier, K.J., Eller, W.S., Marchbanks III, M.P., Robinson, S., Polinard, J.L., Wrinkle, R.D.
(2004). "A Lingering Question of Priorities: Athletic Budgets and Academic Performance Revisited. Review of Policy Research," 21(6), 799 -- 807. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier.
But despite these strides, the negative as well as the positive legacy of sports in American culture cannot be ignored. References About Title IX. (2010). University of Iowa. Retrieved September 20, 2010 at http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/ge/aboutRE.html Douglas, Scott. (2005). Running through Kenya. Slate.com. Retrieved September 20, 2010 at http://www.slate.com/id/2117122/entry/2117123/ Gettleman, Elizabeth. (2006, July). Review of William C. Rhoden's Forty Million Dollar Slaves. Mother Jones. Retrieved September 20, 2010 at http://motherjones.com/media/2006/07/forty-million-dollar-slaves Johnson, Jenna. (2010). NCAA graduation rates. The
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