High School Today: Should Sports Dominate?

Essay by shaanHigh School, 10th gradeB+, January 2007

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"It is a cultural defect that football is the center piece of school activities and most football players are self-absorbed and arrogant."

Every year before the homecoming game, schools hold pep rallies to pump everyone up by spending huge amounts of time and money on floats, press coverage, and traffic control. Everyone thinks this is a wonderful expression of love towards the game. It is not necessary to document this fact, since it is obvious that in every town in America where there is a football team, some such activity goes on regularly every football season without much questioning whether this is really a good thing to be doing. It's not bad that this "festival" is going on, or that kids have something of interest to them, or that the kids have something they are excited about; this is not the objection. But why is so much of this focused on football? Why? It comes down to what the teachers like and what the administration supports.

They respect sports more than any other extra curricular activity. More than speech, more than theater, more than band, more than art, more than chess club. Why is this?

Recently, a teacher at my local high said that music should be completed eliminated from school. This came about because of too much listening to music in class, but the fact remains that this remark shows a deep discontent and distrust of all things artistic. Just because they don't understand artistic people, they just show a total disregard for all things artistic. Notice she didn't say anything like this during the football season when all the jocks were caught at keg parties.

When I hear the words, football player, my gut reaction is anger. Why is this? Is it because of the stereotypes...