Ask a high school coach in America about the benefits of school
sports, and you'll likely get a list as long as a football field. Sports
build character, he'll tell you. They teach self-sacrifice, discipline,
and fair play. They keep kids off drugs and reduce the incidence of teen
delinquency. And they provide poor kids with a ticket right out of the
ghetto.
There's only one thing wrong with this litany: none of it is true.
That's the word from Texas Christian University anthropologist Andrew
Miracle, Ph.D., and Adelphi University sociologist C. Roger Rees, Ph.D.
In Lessons of the Locker Room (Prometheus Books), the duo search the
scientific literature for evidence to support the "sports build
character" theory--and strike out.
"Generally involvement in any extracurricular activity is a good
thing," says Miracle. "But sports are no better than band or chorus. The
danger is that the 'win at any cost' attitude becomes so significant that
the potential positive benefits are overwhelmed."
Most research suggests that scooping up ground balls, kicking
goals, or eluding tackles has little influence, positive or negative, on
character. And any effects that do turn up tend to be small.
In one of their own studies, Miracle, Rees, and a colleague tracked
1,600 high school boys. Varsity athletes, they found, did have slightly
more self-esteem and attached greater value to academic achievement than
did nonjocks. But sport participation also increased the students'
aggression and irritability, while decreasing their self-control and
belief in the importance of being honest.
Canadian research also shatters the character-building myth. The
longer boys north of the border play on youth hockey teams, the more
likely they are to accept cheating and violence and to use illegal
tactics. But studies like these also point up one of the interpretive
hurdles that researchers face: does hockey make kids more violent--or do
only the violent kids continue playing hockey?
Either way, say Miracle and Rees, we shouldn't expect sports to
turn our kids into model citizens. For one thing, a child's personality
has largely taken shape by the time the opportunity to join a sports team
arises. Thus even if the promise of an athletic scholarship does
occasionally reform a troubled youth, the benefits for the vast majority
of us are modest at best.
Miracle, who played football and lacrosse in college, says he's not
antisport. But if the public wants to fund school athletics at the
expense of, say, new textbooks or teacher salaries, it should be aware of
the real benefits. "Sport doesn't do most of the things people claim it
does," Miracle says. "But it sure is good entertainment."
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