Three Strikes and You're Out: Reasons to Eliminate Sports from Schools.

The overgrowth of sports in our society has resulted in a host of potential problems for the young athletes who associate with the sport culture found in schools. Although the positive elements of sports are routinely touted, the negative aspects are oftentimes overlooked or trivialized. Most of the positive personal and social aspects attributed to sports are unproven, overstated, or subverted by the culture of sports as it exists today. Sport culture creates understandings of the world and self that are frequently at odds with the civic mission of schools in a democratic society. The essay proposes that sports be taken out of schools due to the deleterious effects they have on the moral, physical, and social development of youth. There is no denying that sports influence youth in today’s society, and that the culture of sport reaches deeply into many aspects of young peoples’ lives. Sports are firmly ensconced in almost all institutions of education and at every level save the early primary grades. It would be difficult to find a junior high, middle school, or high school without numerous opportunities or pressures to participate in sports. There tends to be an increasing significance and emphasis placed on the meaning and importance of sports as students move through school and the privileging of athletes in schools across the country only makes more transparent the valued position of sports in educational environments. The importance of sports in education stems from the overgrowth of sports in society and has resulted in a host of real and potential problems for the young people who associate with the sports cultures found in schools. Although the positive elements of sports are routinely touted, the negatives are glossed over and dismissed. This paper contends that most of the positive claims of sports are unproven, overstated, or subverted by the culture of sports as it exists today. The paper also proposes that sports culture creates understandings of the world and self that are at odds with the mission of schools in a democratic society. For these reasons, it is suggested sports be removed from schools.