Socratic Seminar Sports

Goals:
● Develop and present ideas based on the texts and life experience
● Support ideas by citing evidence from the texts
● Come to discussion prepared and engage in collective exploration of ideas
● Respond thoughtfully to questions and to your classmates perspectives and ideas

Seminar Grading:
● Preparation (4) - Read the articles and take notes based on the questions. Respond to
questions based on your notes and using evidence from the texts. Raise your own
question related to each question and come up with some possible answers. Your
responses and questions should be written down on paper or typed to be handed in to
me after the seminar.
● Participation (10) - Each student should contribute to the discussion ​AT LEAST ​twice.
Your contribution must be meaningful, not just agreement with another person. This will
make up the bulk of your grade. If you do not contribute to the discussion you will only
get partial credit at best.
● Notes (3) - Students must take notes during the discussion of important
ideas/arguments/questions raised by your classmates. Write down the point that was
made and why you thought it was insightful.
● Reflection (3) - After the seminar you will write a paragraph reflecting on a new
idea/ideas from the discussion. Feel free to expand on something from your notes. How
does this idea challenge or add to your understanding of the topic or life in general.

Socratic Seminar ground rules:

● Stay engaged through listening and speaking. Phones and side conversations are
unacceptable and will cost you points.
● Voice disagreement respectfully.
● You are responsible for keeping the discussion going; when a topic has run its course,
you can raise a new subject or direct attention to a different question.
● No hand raising - take turns and let the conversation flow.
● Allow on person to speak at a time. Encourage others to participate and don’t dominate
the conversation.
● Talk to each other, not me.
● Speak loud enough that everyone can hear you.
● Stay on topic.

Ways to participate meaningfully:

● Use your prep work and notes to raise questions and offer opinions. Use your notes as
discussion points.
● If you feel a topic has been exhausted, ask the group if you may raise a new question for
discussion, and explain your perspective so others may respond.
● Respond to a question that has been raised.
● Add on to something someone else has said.
● Provide evidence from the text or the world around you.
● Respectfully disagree with a point that has been made and offer a new perspective.
● Ask each other questions and follow up questions.

Socratic Questions

1. These articles were published in response to a hazing incident ​in which a New
Jersey high school cancelled its football season after ​seven varsity players
were charged​ with hazing and sexually assaulting younger players. The
scandal led to scrutiny of not just football, but youth sports in general. Why
do you think these types of incidents repeatedly show up in the news? Does
the media only focus on the negative? Or are there truly negative effects
from competitive sports? If so, what would they be and what types of
situations would create them?
2. After reading the articles, which author did you agree with the most when it
comes to high school athletics? Why? What arguments did they make to convince
you?
3. Which author made the weakest points? Why? Where was their argument flawed?
4. What types of things might be lost if schools no longer had sports teams?What
types of things might be gained?
5. Based on the articles and the things we’ve studied this semester, what are some
of the positives of sports? What are some of the biggest negatives?
School Should Be About Learning, Not Sports

Amanda Ripley, an ​Emerson senior fellow​ at the New America Foundation, is the
author of ​"The Smartest Kids in the World — and How They Got That Way."​ She
​ witter.​
is on T

UPDATED​ MARCH 2, 2015, 12:54 PM

In the world’s smartest countries, school is about learning. Full stop. There is no
confusion about the academic hurdles kids must clear to have full and interesting
adult lives. Kids play sports, of course, but outside of school, through recreation
centers, club teams or pick-up games on dirt fields with no adults in sight.

When these same kids come to the U.S. to live or study abroad, they are surprised
by the Olympic villages they encounter in our high schools. Here, school is about
learning, but it’s also about training to compete in games that the majority of kids
will never get paid to play. It’s about pep rallies, booster clubs, trophy cases and
cheerleaders decorating football players’ lockers after they fill them with
brownies.

Those messages shape kids’ priorities. When I surveyed former exchange students
about their impressions of America, 9 out of 10 said that teenagers here cared
more about sports than their peers back home. “Doing well at sports was in the
U.S. just as important as having good grades,” observed one German student.

This mash-up makes school more fun, without a doubt. “The biggest difference was
definitely the school spirit,” one student from Finland noted. “It was amazing to
see how school wasn't just about the grades. In my home country, school is just for
learning.”

The problem is the dishonesty. By mixing sports and academics, we tempt kids into
believing that it’s O.K. if they don’t like math or writing — that there is another
path to glory. Less obvious is that this path ends abruptly, whereupon they get to
spend 50 years in an economy that lavishly rewards those with higher-order skills
and ruthlessly punishes those without.
Kids notice when they have a sub in math class because the football coach (I mean
teacher) has an away game. It is not lost on them that their local newspapers
devote an entire section to high school sports and say nothing about the trials and
travails of the AP English class. This hypocrisy eats away at the focus and integrity
of our schools.

Imagine if medical schools dedicated hours of every day (and a chunk of their
budgets and staff) to the culinary arts — to perfecting tiered wedding cakes and
artisan breads. We could argue that this approach keeps med students from
dropping out, but we would sound insane.

Competitive sports is not about exercise. If it were, we’d have the fittest kids in the
world. It’s about a fantasy with a short shelf life. If we want to build school spirit
and teach kids about grit, hold a pep rally for the debate team. Those kids are
training to rule the real world.

Turn Down the High School Football Volume

Buzz Bissinger​ is the author of “F

​ riday Night Lights”
​ and “​Three Nights in
August​."

I primarily spend my time in a remote corner of southwestern Washington. There

is a small town nearby called Ilwaco. Several towns feed into the high school there.
They have a football team called the Fishermen, which surprised me at first. The
school is small with about 400 students. They just recently ended a 17-game losing
streak.

Then I met a young man on the team. He was selling merchant discount cards to
help raise funds for the program. You could tell from his size that he had no
aspirations of football beyond high school. You could also tell that he loved
playing.

There was a lovely innocence to it all. The team does what a high school football
squad should do — become the focal point of team and town and wider community.
Most high schools play football this way. But then there are the high-powered
programs that mimic the major college ones. There has to be a better way.

But getting rid of high school football is a terrible idea. What is needed is a turning
down of the volume — not such an easy task given how competitive sports are
ingrained into our culture. It is shocking that the head coach of Sayreville War
Memorial High School in New Jersey spent little time in the locker room. The
community of Allen, Tex., should never have built a high school football stadium
for ​$60 million​ (which subsequently needed ​$2 million in repairs​ because of
cracks).

Football is now being watched with a high-powered telescope because of the spate
of recent scandals at every level. Fanatical coaches cannot hide anymore. Players
are no longer immune from punishment.The effects of chronic traumatic
encephalopathy is not some left-wing conspiracy. As long as the heat continues
there will be changes. Maybe enough to make high school football just a game.

Sports and Education Work Well Together

Jay P. Greene is the 21st century professor of education reform at the University
of Arkansas. Daniel H. Bowen is a post-doctoral fellow at the Kinder Institute for
Urban Research at Rice University.

Athletics have always been an essential component of a liberal education, but

recently sports in school have come under attack. If, because of that, athletics are
cut or eliminated from schools, the quality of education would likely be harmed.

There is a relatively consistent body of research showing that ​students who

participate in athletics​ tend to fare significantly better both in school and in later
life. Participating in sports, like playing in the school band or competing on the
debate team, are cognitively and organizationally demanding activities that help
convey self-discipline and leadership skills. This is ​especially true for students
from disadvantaged backgrounds​.

In addition, ​our own research​ has found that schools that offer more sports and
field more successful teams produce higher test scores and graduation rates. So,
there is no reason to believe that schools that emphasize sports do so at the
expense of other educational goals.

What is the case against sports in schools? People sometimes cite the bad behavior
of some student athletes, such as recent incidents of sports-related hazing in New
Jersey. Quite often they refer to fictionalized accounts of sports corrupting
education, as in the movie "Varsity Blues." But selective anecdotes and fiction do
not constitute generalizable evidence.

Others refer to the fact that ​certain high-achieving countries, such as South Korea
and Finland, do not have athletics in schools​. This may be true, but then again
many low-achieving countries also lack school sports programs. There is no reason
to believe that the academic success of students in South Korea or Finland has
anything to do with the absence of school athletics rather than with some other
feature of those countries.

It is strange that as many education advocates are seeking a “​broader, bolder​”

approach that expands the responsibilities of schools to include social work,
medical care and food provision, supporters of that vision are also often seeking to
shrink school activities by eliminating sports. They are also fighting to prevent cuts
in school-sponsored extracurricular activities such as band, debate and the arts.
Why are sports on the chopping block when these other elements of a
well-rounded education need to be preserved?

The evidence suggests students benefit from schools that offer a variety of
enriching activities, including sports. Singling out sports for elimination while
fighting to preserve other elements of a liberal education betrays an elitist bias
that reveals more about the opponents of athletics than it says about the research
on what helps students.

School Sports Provide Lessons in How to Live

Donté Stallworth, a former N.F.L. player, is a national security fellow at The
Huffington Post.

It was a blistering hot Saturday afternoon in Sacramento, Calif., in October 1997. I

was drained and dehydrated and my team needed a huge play. At the time, I was one
of the top high school football players in the nation, and I played both offense and
defense. That day, I was exhausted from going against Matt Barnes, a future N.B.A.
star, then a wide receiver for Del Campo high school. My coach pulled me aside. "We
need you, now!" he yelled into my helmet. With nothing left in me, I made a reception
over the middle and outran everyone for the go ahead touchdown.

When weighing the pros and cons of high school sports, experiences like that day in
1997 could provide a good example of how beneficial organized athletics are to
children both in the moment and years down the road. Looking back, I've come to
realize that the best times of my life, when I was playing high school sports, also
provided beneficial life lessons.

For years my Uncle Jim begged my mother to let me play football. When I turned 11,
she acquiesced. I had dreamed of becoming the next Jerry Rice. Football posters
became a collage on my wall, providing me with daily inspiration.

I grew up in a rough neighborhood engulfed by gangs and drugs, but there were
many who helped guide us through. Mike Alberghini, my high school coach, is
responsible for much of my life's success. He knew which buttons to push to motivate
his team and when to express love — something he still does today after more than
two decades.

As I move beyond my N.F.L. career, I incorporate much of what Coach Al taught me

as a teenage boy — teamwork, responsibility, perseverance, accountability — into
other aspects of my life. Whether speaking in front of high school students, college
students or N.F.L. players, I always remind them the lessons they learn in sports will
carry over to any profession.

The magic of high school sports isn't about how a kid can go pro someday, or even
that their team wins, but that they step out of their comfort zones and challenge
themselves, a lesson they take with them wherever they go in life.

There are obvious health benefits as well. In the digital age, organized athletics is one
of the best ways to combat the rise in childhood and adolescent obesity.

I recognize that there are dangers whenever kids get together, including hazing. But
for many communities, including my own, sports provided one of the only outlets to
avoid even greater dangers and sports taught me life lessons, at an impressionable
age, that I may not have learned otherwise.
Make Sports an After-School Activity, Not a Competitive Team

Earl Smith​ is a sociologist and the author of "R

​ ace, Sport and the American Dream​"
and co-author of "​African-American Families: Myths and Realities​," which includes a
chapter on sports.

No, high schools should not have competitive sports teams. And especially not in
under-resourced inner city high schools where academic programs are often sacrificed
to finance sport teams. And not in their current form. Like in colleges and universities,
the once “extracurricular activity” of an after-school sport (especially football) has
gotten out of control.

High school teams going to preseason sport camps (often out of state); coaches that
have no academic connection to the school; the building of huge, expensive stadiums;
the opening of the sport season before school even starts: these are all indicators that
the primary mission of high school has been supplanted and replaced — especially for
those young men playing football and basketball — by sports. Even the student bodies
in many high schools have developed cultures that glorify sports at the expense of the
scholar, as in the ​Jocks vs. Puke mentality​ that sports columnist Robert Lipsyte has
written about.

And, for those who defend this system by invoking it as a route to a college
scholarship, the social science research has shown (over and over) that the chances
are slim to none, ​especially for young women​, who are often dismayed to find that
even when they are talented enough to win a scholarship, it is usually a ​fraction of
what they need​. Even in football and basketball, only ​2 to 5 percent​ of young men
playing on their high school team will earn a college scholarship.

Let's return high school sports to the simple after-school activity it once was, like the
drama club or the science club. Give young men and women an opportunity to develop
holistically, in moderation, and with realistic expectations for their college and
professional lives.
Preserve High School Sports, but Monitor Them Closely

Mark Hyman​ is an assistant professor at George Washington University. He is the

author of three books about youth sports including "​Until It Hurts: America’s
Obsession With Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids.​ "

The troubling reports out of Sayreville, N.J., this month offer another chance to call
for the dismantling of high school sports. We should resist.

High school sports have a lot to offer. They’re a rite of passage in many ways, from
playing for school pride to working hard to becoming the best you can be. It’s no
surprise that ​7.8 million athletes​ suited up for their high school teams last year – a
record.

Let’s preserve high school sports and monitor them closely. Let’s also seize this
moment to start paying more attention to the millions of kids who enjoy tossing
footballs but are not going out for the varsity. There should be an equal path in sports
for them.

One of the distressing realities of today’s youth sports landscape is how it caters to the
most talented, competitive players. With skills training for 3-year-olds and 70-game
travel seasons for rising third graders, many of us are grooming our kids to play at the
next level and the next. It’s as if the only reason for a child to play is for a letter jacket
or a college scholarship. Many of us have learned that’s a recipe for disappointment.
The odds are ​heavily stacked against​ any young player. Less than 4 percent of high
school girls’ basketball players play even one minute for a college team.

Most 14-year-olds aren’t cut out to be stars. They lack the D.N.A., the drive or both.
They’ve played organized sports most of their lives. They simply want the opportunity
to keep going. Pickup games are an option, of course. But have you seen a pickup game
lately?

An executive in the sporting goods industry once told me, “When our kids hit their
teens and we realize they aren't going to be stars in high school, we lose interest. Not
that many of us want to be coaches and league presidents anymore.” That’s
shortsighted. Youth sports are about more than letter jackets.
 Challenge Article:

Jocks vs. Pukes

Jock Culture is a distortion of sports.

​ obert Lipsyte
By R

In the spring of that hard year, 1968, the Columbia University crew coach, Bill Stowe, explained
to me that there were only two kinds of men on campus, perhaps in the world—Jocks and Pukes.
He explained that Jocks, such as his rowers, were brave, manly, ambitious, focused, patriotic
and goal-driven, while Pukes were woolly, distractible, girlish and handicapped by their lack of
certainty that nothing mattered as much as winning. Pukes could be found among “the cruddy
weirdo slobs” such as hippies, pot smokers, protesters and, yes, former English majors like me.

I dutifully wrote all this down, although doing so seemed kind of Puke-ish. But Stowe was such
an affable ​ur-​ Jock, 28 years old, funny and articulate, that I found his condescension merely
good copy. He’d won an Olympic gold medal, but how could I take him seriously, this former
Navy officer who had spent his Vietnam deployment rowing the Saigon River and running an
officers’ club? Not surprisingly, he didn’t last long at Columbia after helping lead police officers
through the underground tunnels to roust the Pukes who had occupied buildings during the
antiwar and antiracism demonstrations.

As a 30-year-old ​New York Times​ sports columnist then, I was not handicapped by as much lack
of certainty about all things as I am now. It was clear to me then that Bill Stowe was a “dumb
jock,” which does not mean stupid; it means ignorant, narrow, misguided by the values of Jock
Culture, an important and often overlooked strand of American life.

These days, I’m not so sure he wasn’t right; the world may well be divided into Jocks and Pukes.
Understanding the differences and the commonalities between the two might be one of the keys
to understanding, first, the myths of masculinity and power that pervade sports, and then why
those myths are inescapable in everyday life. Boys—and more and more girls—who accept Jock
Culture values often go on to flourish in a competitive sports environment that requires
submission to authority, winning by any means necessary and group cohesion. They tend to
grow up to become our political, military and financial leaders. The Pukes—those “others”
typically shouldered aside by Jocks in high school hallways and, I imagine, a large percentage of
those who are warily reading this special issue of ​The Nation​—were often turned off or away
from competitive sports (or settled for cross-country). They were also more likely to go on to
question authority and seek ways of individual expression.

This mental conditioning of the Jocks was possible because of the intrinsic joy of sports. Sports
is good. It is the best way to pleasure your body in public. Sports is entertaining, healthful, filled
with honest, sustaining sentiment for warm times and the beloved people you shared them with.
At its simplest, think of playing catch at the lake with friends.

Jock Culture is a distortion of sports. It can be physically and mentally unhealthy, driving people
apart instead of together. It is fueled by greed and desperate competition. At its most grotesque,
think killer dodgeball for prize money, the Super Bowl. (The clash between sports and the Jock
Culture version is almost ideological, at least metaphorical. Obviously, I am for de-emphasizing
early competition and redistributing athletic resources so that everyone, throughout their lives,
has access to sports. But then, I am also for world peace.)

Kids are initiated into Jock Culture when youth sports are channeled into the pressurized
arenas of elite athletes on travel teams driven by ambitious parents and coaches. A once safe
place to learn about bravery, cooperation and respect becomes a cockpit of bullying, violence
and the commitment to a win-at-all-costs attitude that can kill a soul. Or a brain. It is in Pee Wee
football, for example, that kids learn to “put a hat on him”—to make tackles head first rather
than the older, gentler way of wrapping your arms around a ball carrier’s legs and dragging him
down. Helmet-to-helmet hits start the trauma cycle early. No wonder the current concussion
discussion was launched by the discovery of dementia and morbidity among former pro players.

There is no escape from Jock Culture. You may be willing to describe yourself as a Puke, “cut”
from the team early to find your true nature as a billionaire geek, Grammy-winning band fag,
wonkish pundit, but you’ve always had to deal with Jock Culture attitudes and codes, and you
have probably competed by them. In big business, medicine, the law, people will be labeled
winners and losers, and treated like stars or slugs by coachlike authority figures who use shame
and intimidation to achieve short-term results. Don’t think symphony orchestras, university
philosophy departments and liberal magazines don’t often use such tactics.

Jock Culture applies the rules of competitive sports to everything. Boys, in particular, are taught
to be tough, stoical and aggressive, to play hurt, to hit hard, to take risks to win in every aspect of
their lives. To dominate. After 9/11, I wondered why what seemed like a disproportionate
number of athletic women and men were killed. From reading their brief ​New York Times
memorials, it seemed as though most were former high school and college players, avid
weekend recreationists or at least passionate sports fans. When I called executives from
companies that had offices in the World Trade Center, I discovered it was no coincidence;
stock-trading companies in particular recruited athletes because they came to work even if they
were sick, worked well in groups, rebounded quickly from a setback, pushed the envelope to
reach the goal and never quit until the job was done. They didn’t have to be star jocks, but they
did have to have been trained in the codes of Jock Culture—most important, the willingness to
subordinate themselves to authority.

The drive to feel that sense of belonging that comes with being part of a winning team—as
athlete, coach, parent, cheerleader, booster, fan—is a reflection of Jock Culture’s grip on the
male psyche and on more and more women. Men have traditionally been taught to pursue their
jock dreams no matter the physical, emotional or financial cost. Those who realized those
dreams have been made rich and famous; at the least, they were waved right through many of
the tollbooths of ordinary life. Being treated like a celebrity at 12, freed from normal
boundaries, excused from taking out the garbage and from treating siblings, friends, girls
responsibly, is no preparation for a fully realized life. No wonder there are so many abusive
athletes, emotionally stunted ex-athletes and resentful onlookers.

At a critical time when masculinity is being redefined, or at least re-examined seriously, this
sports system has become more economically, culturally and emotionally important than ever.
More at service to the empire. More dangerous to the common good.

Games have become our main form of mass entertainment (including made-for-TV contests
using sports models). Winners of those games become our examples of permissible behavior,
even when that includes cheating, sexual crimes or dog torturing. And how does that lead us to
the cheating, the lying, the amorality in our lives outside the white lines? It’s not hard to connect
the moral dots from the field house to the White House.

The recent emergence of girls as competitors of boys has also raised the ante. Boys have
traditionally been manipulated by coaches, drill sergeants and sales managers by the fear of
being labeled a girl (“sissy” and “faggot” have less to do with homophobia than misogyny).
Despite the many ways males can identify themselves as “real men” in our culture—size,
sexuality, power, money, fame—nothing seems as indelible as the mark made in childhood when
the good bodies are separated from the bad bodies, the team from the spectators. The
designated athletes are rewarded with love, attention and perks. The leftovers struggle with
their resentments and their search for identity.

Of course, the final score is not always a sure thing. There are sensitive linebackers and CEOs,
domineering shrinks and violinists. Who won in the contest between the Facebook Puke Mark
Zuckerberg and his fiercest competitors, the Olympic rowing Jocks Tyler and Cameron
Winklevoss?

“I don’t follow that stuff these days,” says Bill Stowe, now living in Lake Placid, New York, after
retiring as crew coach and fundraiser for the Coast Guard Academy, a far more comfortable fit
than Columbia. “And I have to tell you, I don’t remember separating the world into Jocks and
Pukes, although it sounds good. I liked good brains in my boats, as long as they were willing to
concentrate and pay the price.”

Stowe, at 71, is still a conservative Republican. But he doesn’t like to talk politics. “It’s time to
give up the torch,” he says. “People are still living in ignorance, but I’m not running it up the
flagpole anymore. Life’s too short to fight.” He surprises me when we talk sports. “The
big-league thing, that’s a circus. I don’t understand how anyone could look up to those guys. But
the real issue is with the kids. Did you read where they’re building a $60 million football
stadium for a high school in Texas? Just for the Jocks. Have you got any idea how much good
you could do, even just in athletics, for all the other kids with that much money?”

I dutifully write all this down, which doesn’t at all seem Puke-ish now. We’re on the same page,
the coach and I. There’s hope.