@TheGFG I don’t fool myself. I know a lot of work goes into being a good athlete, and I said my own kid plays lax. I do not like the fact that everyone goes nuts about the good academic student athlete, and not the great scholar. Does an academically successful athlete deserve more praise than my kid who plays violin for 8 years and gets over 90 at Level 5 NYSSMA competitions? She practiced for years, all through summer, etc… Be honest, the violin-playing geek with great grades and high test scores, and those kids like her, are praised by none but their parents. Even though there are grad ceremonies honoring kids who do well in various academic subjects, such as outstanding Physics student, etc…that recognition is a one off, once a year thing. That is fine, I don’t think the amazing academic kids think they are missing out in anyway. It is just a particularly American thing that we idolize student athletes. Any small town in the USA can vouch that plenty of people with no,kids in high school turn up to watch games.
It’s just the nature of the beast. Athletic endeavors are simply more public and sports games are entertainment for people. It would be a rare person who is going to want to watch a kid work physics problems. However, musicians do have their concerts and competitions where they also get attention, right?
Why is it socially acceptable to brag about your kid’s athletic achievements but not their academic ones?
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If you say something like “my kid did well on the SATs”, a lot of parents hear “my kid is smart and your kid is a big dummy”. Moms are especially bad because they tend to be very protective of their children and derive a lot of their own self worth from raising their kids and seeing them do well.
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In the back of their minds, most people know that almost no athlete, theater kid, etc. is going to become a professional. It’s just a game. However, a lot of people have the nagging suspicion that their kid’s SAT score might actually really matter - it will determine what college they go to, what job they have, whether their hair is silky & shiny, etc. I’m not saying this is right. I’m saying that people are sensitive because they’re afraid that the stakes are real.
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The comparison is much less overt in athletics since most kids aren’t participating in any given sport at the high school varsity level or above. So people can cheer for another kid since they don’t feel like their kid lost out. However, at least in most upper middle class communities, pretty much everyone is aiming for college, so lots of people are comparing their kid to all the others.
Plus, sports are often team efforts … even if the events are individual events, a lot of effort is spent to create a culture built around team achievement. Academics is more around individual achievement, so it’s more braggy.
- I think a lot of people view being smart or not smart as a reflection of their worth as an individual. They don’t view being able to run fast as reflecting on their individual worth - I guess they think it’s mostly a function of the genes they inherited (most people who weren’t college athletes don’t have any conception of the amount of time, work, and mental discipline it takes). Also, most moms aren’t that concerned about athletics anyway, so again they don’t view athletic prowess as reflecting on the worth of their offspring. Dads are usually more concerned. But moms set the social norms more than dads do.
I had one who is an athlete and one who wasn’t. Each was celebrated at school, but rarely at the same awards ceremony. My athlete was in both categories, a good student and a good athlete. While the athletic department did a good job of promoting and recognizing athletes, the guidance office did a poor job of recognizing academic scholarship. My daughter wasn’t even invited to the academic awards ceremony because no one had ever confirmed her merit scholarship, just assumed it was an athetic one. One parent, whose daughter was also on the same athletic team as mine, said as we left the awards program (I was there for my non athlete child) “Well, that was strange.” And it was. Just strange. Most of the athletic celebrating, banquets, ceremonies were just for the teamost or in the athletic department. Those not involved would not have know the event was happening.
Parents of athletes do a lot to promote their children. Recognition doesn’t happen unless someone organizes the banquet, the pep rally, the booster club. Form a booster club for the NHS if you want to recognize your child’s academic successes. My daughter was an academic all american, an award for both athletic ability and grades, and while the athletic department recognized it and celebrated it, the academic department did not. It was not considered an academic award on awards night.
Like TheGFG, my daughter got into college on her academics, has more than half her scholarship from merit, but works 20-30 hours per week on her sport at college. It is her job, and she’s ‘paid’ with that athletic scholarship. I’m proud of her work on and off the field.
Also, accepting an athletic scholarship means you cannot take need based financial aid from the institution, so if you need money, it has to be merit. All athletes are not dumb jocks there on a free ride.
Not too sure that bragging is socially acceptable for anything.
^^ I’d say that holding an all-school pep rally, complete with marching band, cheerleaders, and ticker tape parade with police escort down Main Street to celebrate a state championship might be a little braggy 
Reminds me of watching new parents begin practicing the art of the “humblebrag” … “We’re going to have to spend the entire weekend re-baby proofing the entire house. Who would ever have thought that Junior would start walking at age 7 months. Woe is me.”
^ Was just going to say that! Back when regional and town newspapers were still a going concern, I think athletes got much more attention. My older D was in the paper a lot, and it did bring her some fame. Now, however, no one is going to ever know how a team or individual athlete does unless they follow the sport through online sites. The neighbors aren’t going to ever find out. For example, D won a major title this fall and no one knew about it except her teammates who also competed.
@al2simon the humble brag…yes! I think I may have been guilty of that a few times…I also like the humble drop a name, too. That always goes over well. “oh! Since you know the Governor…I am sure that you will get a full ride with an engraved invitation to sit at the President’s table every night.” seriously? Oh well…I guess we all love our children and do our best to contain it. I find I battle the worst at stopping it in areas that I have regrets in. Like that dumb psat. Who knew back in the late 80s that it meant so much???
I have one athlete and one band/theater kid. I can’t recall a single sports parent ever making a negative comment about kids performing music or engaging in the arts in general. I can’t count the number of times I have heard band/theater parents talk derisively about athletes. As @TheGFG said, it is not all sunshine and roses on the other side of the fence.
And just to show you how old I am, if you don’t want to know how the high school football team did last night, don’t read the sports page 
I won’t knock a C student, but I would expect someone to have a basic understanding of a subject, especially when using an illustrative example. “To boil water, the MED is 212°F (100°C) at standard air pressure. Boiled is boiled — higher temperatures will not make it more boiled.” You can’t make boiling water hotter than 212F at standard pressure.
My son’s school puts academic achievement, including college acceptances right smack on the home page of the website with a big, embarrassing picture of the kid involved. Same for music accomplishments, maybe more so, because it’s a very accomplished music school. The kids are generally mortified, while the parents are gratified.
Music and athletic accomplishments are known to the general public, whereas academic accomplishments, such as GPA and test scores (not public awards, of course) are private, and permission should always be sought by schools before publicizing them. So that’s apples and oranges.
as far as other people, even extended family: who cares what they think? And the GPA/test scores should really be private to the child, not waved around by the parent.
The parents shouldn’t be spreading that information anyway. They are the kid’s scores, not the parent’s.
But doesn’t that very attitude sort of prove the point? We can say “my kid made the varsity football team”, “my kid got a job at Google”, “my kid got a promotion”, etc. without people saying “you shouldn’t be spreading that information anyway. That’s the kid’s business, not the parent’s”.
I think people are sensitive about test scores because “deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties” (Jack Nicholson) a lot of them think it reflects on their kid’s worth. It’s not right, but that’s what they think. Similar to how people don’t talk about their salaries.
BTW - I’m not saying our family is any different. When my wife’s parents asked how our kids did on the SAT, at most we’d just say “well” despite them pushing to know the score.
The difference is that being on a school team is a public thing. The public is able to come to meets/matches/games and see with their own eyes who is there and what they are doing. Grades and test scores are private. If the child wants to spread, that’s fine, but it shouldn’t be the parents. It is not their information. Just like the kids shouldn’t be spreading the parents’ salary if known. Parents should have some respect for their kids’ privacy and hold appropriate boundaries.
Risking getting flamed from all sides, but…
Studies of who gets more positive attention are actually a thing, and a lot of them have been conducted. The basic result of pretty much all of them is quite simple: If you have a vested interest in one particular side or another, your side gets less positive attention and praise and such while the other side gets more. Even better, you can provide absolute, clear, compelling, utterly factual evidence for this. (You can see this quite clearly in reactions to media coverage of politics, for one example—your candidate doesn’t get the positive attention s/he deserves, and certainly not to the extent his/her opponents do.) The only problem, it seems, is that the other side can present precisely the same sort of evidence that their side gets the short end of things.
I’ll note that it works in the converse, too: Your side gets more negative attention than the other side does, and you can provide absolute, clear, compelling, utterly factual evidence for that. (Consider, if you’re into sports, all the times the refs have been against your preferred team in perhaps subtle but certainly very real ways.) The problem, again, is that the other side can produce the same sort of evidence for their side getting more negative reactions than yours.
And thus we end up with debates like this thread.
I don’t blame you. This seems to be an endemic problem with many mainstream US K-12 schools. and is underscored by some school districts’ apparent priorities…such as allocating large sums for new sports stadiums with all the latest bells and whistles while cutting budgets for teachers, textbooks, science labs, and even the academic classrooms/building itself.
Also, considering what I’ve heard and seen of some extremely “jock-centered” school districts, there is practically no escape from the hardcore sports-oriented school admins/teachers, parents, and adults in the area unless one elects to completely move out of the area. An option some undergrad classmates did after HS/college for this among other reasons.
This principal is at best, an unmitigated jerk for effectively stealing the spotlight from the very group the event was supposed to be centered on and honored. Wasn’t the appropriate time and place to make such an announcement and calls for applause.
How would athletes and sports-centered(possibly crazed) parents feel if a principal did the reverse and said to athletes who just won the local/regional/statewide championships “You’ve worked hard, BUT those who are honor roll/top 10% scholars/top 2 academic students here…THAT IS TRULY AMAZING. Stand up and let’s give them a hand.” I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s much grumbling and judging by some recent examples of parental overreactions at athletic events…possibly even a violent riot requiring a call out to local/regional law enforcement.
http://ksn.com/2014/09/09/parent-pulls-gun-on-youth-football-coach-over-playing-time/
However, in many mainstream US K-12 school districts/schools, the athletes are usually near or at the very top of the school/local regional social pecking order not only among student peers…but even many school admins/teachers whereas above-average academic achievers who aren’t athletes…especially those labeled “Nerds” are relegated to the very bottom of that social pecking order.
From what I’ve seen in my friends’ and relatives’ mainstream K-12 school districts…while the “dumb jock” stereotype is present, it doesn’t carry nearly as much weight and most athletes(including some relatives) can easily brush it off because most of the school…especially admins/teachers, parents, and most adults in the region will visibly be on “their side” when push comes to shove.
The only exceptions are school districts or public magnet high schools like Stuyvesant where academics are heavily prioritized by school admins/teachers, parents, and student peers over athletics.
If a student athlete had attended one of the exceptions like my public magnet, the “dumb jock” stereotype would be equivalent to the types of overshadowing and dismissive comments about their achievements to what above-average academic achievers experience on a regular…sometimes daily basis in many mainstream US K-12 schools and I would and have expressed sympathy to Stuy classmates who were thus negatively stereotyped.
It is especially galling in my public magnet’s case as everyone…including athletes had to take the same admission exam and meet/exceed the same minimum cutoff score to be admitted. No special “discounts” on the admissions exam for athletes unlike what is practiced in some college and some private/boarding high schools. .
Agree with Ohiodad. Athletes are often looked down on academically and are assumed to have certain personality traits and to be entitled. Most student athletes are not in sports that get a lot of spectators. Go to a random girls soccer or softball game and see how many people are watching besides parents and good friends. The marquee sports - primarily football but sometimes basketball - get a lot of attention. For a team to win a state championship is a big deal and is pretty rare. Isn’t it good to have the town celebrate how hard those kids worked? Most student athletes do not go on to play in college and if they do they get no bump in admissions and no athletic scholarship.
I have also not heard parents of athletes complain when the school wants to upgrade the auditorium or pay for new band uniforms. Yet I have heard the theater parents complain about the support athletics get, even though a lot more kids are in sports than get a part in the musical.
Yes, there should be recognition of other types of achievements and our district has definitely gotten better. The marching band’s championship win got recognition in the paper, as does the Model UN group each year. But this years winning sports teams got even more recognition. The reality is that more residents are excited about the perfect season of football than another Best Chorus award for the play.
Academics are a bit different too. The perfect scoring kids on SAT or ACT get a photo and caption in the paper every so often. The honor roll is listed every marking period. There are awards nights for top students and the honor society recognition. But no parade or town council recognition for top students. There are just too many of them. Every year a handful of HS seniors have a perfect GPA (unweighted). The baseball team does not win every year.
As for lauding the kids that get into Yale on academics alone, is that really what schools should be “bragging” about? Is the naturally bright kid that worked hard, but had all the advantages, really more worthy of recognition than the kid that was not so bright but worked incredibly hard and got into a “lesser” school? Most kids in the CC world are aiming for college. I am not so sure that any school should celebrate Kid A getting into an elite more than kid B, who did not get into the same school and is now going to a slightly less elite school. Should we put the picture of the Yale kid but not the BC kid?
Reality is its tough to compete with the drama of many sports. You get game winning catches, shots, etc. Dramatic photos. Crowds going wild. Tough for that to happen with a science competition. Or a math test. Though the folks at Scripps do what they can with the National Spelling Bee. Should it be that way? Don’t know. But it is.
Why the assumption that the kid who was admitted to Yale or a peer elite college had all the advantages?
Just wondering as most HS classmates admitted to Yale or peer elite colleges were from lower-middle class and low income families. Quite a few of them had immigrant parents who were working as waiters, supermarket cashiers, laborers, janitors, etc.
Interestingly enough, many of the HS classmates who applied and ended up going to BC tended to be more well-to do, middle-to-bottom of my and earlier HS graduating classes academically, and obsessed with Division I/NCAA sports.
The immigrant/lower-income kids didn’t have the time* nor the interest** to follow Div I/NCAA sports to that extent(especially cable TV or getting tickets to go see them).
- ECs, part-time/afterschool jobs, research with Prof at local respectable/elite 4 year schools, etc.
** Most came from societies which aren’t nearly as sports-obsessed(some could argue crazed) as Americans in many areas of the US. Of the latter…I include relatives who practically assimilated themselves to becoming as sports-obsessed and encouraging a few older male cousins to aspire to be college athletes at the Big-10/Div I level.
1983, 7th grade, 35 kids stuffed in a hot classroom with an overworked teacher. The “bad girl” of Eagle Rock Junior High was sitting two seats in front and one row over from me and her bra strap was showing. Two boys were mercilessly teasing her; her bra strap was by far the most upsetting thing they had seen in their young lives. I felt sorry for her while thinking, “Jeez, just cover it up and stop the madness.” After ignoring them for a good while, she slowly turns around, looks them in the eye, and says with a smirk on her face, “If it bothers you so much, stop looking.”
Free will is fun.