Interesting article... but even better is Kwame M. Browns commentary on the article. He wrote: Hmmm....While I certainly disagree with the everyone gets a trophy view (and the always need to be competing for a trophy view), this article makes several assumptions that are thought provoking, but lose me a bit: 1. That every athlete should be playing to look for a scholarship, and of course every kid should be trying to reach the pinnacle of sport. I challenge the notion that somehow this is the pinnacle of existence. 2. That our society is somehow non-competitive. In a way I see that - you could say that both the dominators and the avoiders are all trying to avoid competition. This could be the reason behind the cheating in sports, and the forming of monopolies in business - that no one actually wants to compete in the purest form of the word. 3. That we need to end up with 1% of the population totally winning, and everyone else being classified as losers. Are we ultimately losers because we do not play sports at the professional level? This article, the way it is written in several places, would seem to make that assumption. 4. What about painters, poets, dancers? Should they all be competitive? Or are some things just about expression? Should there be winner poets and loser poets? 5. She says that CrossFit competitions are scored like golf? Is golf not competitive? Is gymnastics not competitive? Or are they competitive in a different way (competing against the course, or against scores)? 6. She says ask any high school coach what they think about 3 sport athletes. Like Bo Jackson? Michael Jordan? Roger Federer? My father? Several highly capable athletes and highly capable people we all know? I guess they all made huge mistakes. They never really realized their potential. At the end she saves it by qualifying it to junior year. But this is just not an accurate assessment of reality. It is an accurate assessment for a subset of athletes who have designs on Division I scholarships, which again is certainly not the pinnacle of humanity.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 12:13:13 +0000
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