Sports And American Culture Essay

But, that said, we don’t actually know that the values you learn [in sports] don’t ultimately help with being successful in life.” In an interview with the HPR, New York middle school teacher and softball and bowling coach Marni Torgersen listed the skills learned on sports teams that, in her experience, translate into success in the classroom: leadership, resilience, self-discipline, patience, persistence, time management, and self-esteem.Sports participation is an incredible opportunity, as long as it is balanced with concern for academics.Few Americans would openly subscribe to such an over-simplification.

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Sports And American Culture Essay Essays & Kite Runner

Instead, they become the laughing stocks of their respective shows, the best source of comic relief.A Report Card to Keep off the Fridge In the 2010-2011 school year, 7.6 million American high school students played sports.For the 2011-2012 school year, almost 4.5 million boys and about 3.2 million girls—a total of roughly 7.7 million—participated on high school sports teams.Americans who watch shows like The Middle and The Office generally do not consciously agree with the stereotypes that these shows present. Since CBS, ABC, and Fox also broadcast the Olympics, NBC’s viewership represents only part of the total Olympic viewership. Most likely, the upcoming 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2014 Super Bowl will attract equally impressive ratings.However, even without openly accepting such stereotypes, they may inadvertently internalize them. Meanwhile, nearly 110 million Americans, more than a third of the U. Wide viewership is not limited to big athletic events: even regular baseball and football games receive plenty of attention.“Me and my four or five friends took academics very seriously,” says 2010 Harvard graduate J. However, beyond the intricately-wrought gates of Harvard and other such American universities, all too many American students are less concerned than they should be with academics. At a school like Harvard, such a statement is not uncommon.For example, there is nothing endearing about Dwight K. Even when comedy TV’s nerds are shown to possess at least some personable qualities, they are still primarily a source of comic relief and a foil for the more popular athletes.Of course, most people take popular culture with a grain of salt, enjoying the entertainment but not necessarily accepting every idea presented by it.If Americans viewed sports not as an alternative but as a complement to education, then the two enterprises might excel simultaneously.Former Harvard Graduate School of Education professor Eleanor Duckworth believes that athletic participation can improve academic performance: “People can be very fascinated by academics and intrigued by athletics and good at both.