Unnecessary Roughness

I thought this article was particularly interesting because I had never thought of sports leading to increased violence. It was fascinating to read about the different sports, wrestling, football, basketball, baseball, and tennis, and how each sport led to different levels of social inclusion and violence. As I was reading, I thought about many of the exceptions and difficulties for creating an accurate study that looked at all of the variables that could lead to different conclusions. The article discussed that it is difficult to determine if playing football leads to increased violence or if increased violence predisposes students to playing football.
I thought a lot about the hidden curriculum in schools and how sports play into that, and I think sports have a large influence on social learning. As this article said, athletes that play basketball, football, or baseball are often very popular, and other students are essentially taught to glorify them by watching Friday night football games, attending pep rallies, and just generally hearing a lot about sports. Sometimes a school's sports team get more attention than anything else, and schools are specifically known to excel in certain sports. Athletes make up the popular kids that everyone wants to be friends with, so it dominates the social culture of schools too. However, this article did not talk about the benefits of sports and only focused on the big three sports, football, basketball, and baseball. In regards to the hidden curriculum, students learn a lot through sports like being good teammates and good communication. I think it is important to address whether or not sports should be directly related to school, or if it would be better to have sports teams associated with communities and outside of the school.

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I like what Aakash said about sports challenging students to achieve a higher standard. In my experience, I have learned how to work extremely hard to achieve a certain standard. Especially in the sport of running, what you put in determines your result. If you log 100 miles a week, you will very likely improve and become more competitive, but if you don't put in effort, your performance will suffer. This dedication spills into other aspects of life and teaches me to be dedicated in what I do. This applies to other sports like football where adding the extra reps and extra weight and film all improves the athletes game. Sports also provide an exciting realm to promote this kind of learning, so it is beneficial to continue using sports for this reason.
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Like Cameron said, sports do teach a lot of valuable life skills that are extremely important in life. This makes sports an important aspect in our schools. It provides yet another outlet to learn life skills in a way that many people can relate to. It is important to understand the tough love, but there is a difference between conflicts on the field and off the field. A player needs to understand the difference between these two spheres or it will lead to off the field violence. It is important to know which aspects of the hidden sports curriculum applies to all aspects of life and which are limited to the playing field. For example, being aggressive in a football game is extremely valuable, but in the outside world, it is important to understand when being aggressive is acceptable. In the article, it seems that there seems to be a disconnect between the players understanding this difference. There is also the team aspect that drives aggression and violence. Those players that had fri...
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