In American schools that receive federal funds, girls and women are entitled to have sporting teams just as much as the boys and men.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX
No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.
— Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute (20 U.S. Code § 1681 – Sex)
One criticism of this policy is that sports programs for girls and women created to satisfy the requirements of Title 9 do not get funded like those for males.
There seems to be a tendency to scapegoat school administrators and politicians for not funding female sports.
The reality is that the public has less interest in women’s sports.
Community leaders can feel that they are throwing money away on sports that have a small audience.
It could be that equality in funding school sports will not be achieved until there is a shift toward participatory sports and away from spectator sports.
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The root problem is that "sports" in American schools refers to spectator sports.
In Europe, the focus in the schools is on participatory club sports.
In Europe, anyone who want to play a sport can join a team and play for enjoyment.
Europeans still love spectator sports.
In fact, Europeans spend more per capita than Americans do on spectator sports.
Europeans are sport-obsessed and are sports elitists just like Americans.
But in Europe spectator sports are privatized.
In the USA, in contrast, spectator sports are so often funded by taxpayers or tuition payers in the schools.
It’s one version of the American system in which “profits are privatized and risks and costs are socialized”.
It’s a perverse kind of socialism and a self-destructive kind of capitalism.
However, this arrangement is not perceived as a problem in American schools.
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It’s been claimed that an emphasis on spectator sports in the schools has health consequences such as the “obesity epidemic”.
For example, twenty years ago, Iceland had a problem with teenage alcoholics.
That problem has been solved with participatory sports for all students, strict curfews, and public education on the science of brain development in adolescents.
Just like the “Dog Whisperer” Cesar Millan says, a tired dog is a good dog.
Also, dogs secretly want to have rules, structure, community, and leadership.
The Icelandic policy of participatory sports in the schools feels more natural and normal, and less superficial and spectacular.
That is, spectacle is great — at the national and professional level, and not at the local level.
In fact, it might be best if college spectator sports were to be fully professionalized and privatized.
Athletes would be properly compensated professionals within a certain age bracket.
They would never need to set foot on campus.
So-called “college sports” as such would be run by corporations who would pay a fee and/or royalties to the university.
The games would still be played on campus in order to boost school spirit.
But the real “college sports” and high-school sports would be all the students signing up for all kinds of participatory sports regardless of audience size.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/01/teens-drugs-iceland/513668/
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The idea is to create an educational system that is more inclusive for students and offers them alternatives and options and choices in terms of participatory sports — and is properly funded.
This system would also teaches all students the discipline and teamwork and sportsmanship and so forth that is so valuable to elite competitive athletes.
Unlike spectator sports, participatory sports would be oriented toward promoting academic performance in the schools.
It would hopefully also reduce social dysfunction like drug use.
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When we think of “college sports”, we often imagine the small, homogeneous colleges of a century ago, where the “student athlete” was someone everyone knew.
Universities today are really corporations that resemble cities — and they need to be run as the corporations that they really are.
Spectator sports need to be run like the business they are because money-losing operations just don’t make any sense.
Also, the athletes need to recognized as professionals who deserve to be financially compensated as such — and they don’t need to take coursework to serve as a locus of identity for the campus.
The real investments should be in:
- physical education,
- public education on brain development, and
- participatory sports for everyone.
