Sport in the Educational Milieu: Unanswered Questions and Untested Assumptions.

For years the initiation and continua tion of both physical education and interscholastic sport programs within the school system have been based on un tested assumptions and value-laden be liefs. Among them: Participation contrib utes to ? is perhaps essential to ? the mental and social development of children and adolescents (usually males). The rhetoric suggests that involvement in physical activity teaches or results in the acquisition of desirable personality traits, values, attitudes, social skills, and moral fiber. It is argued that these qualities might not be learned elsewhere (e.g., the regular classroom), and once learned in the sport milieu are transferred to other social areas (e.g., the workplace). The few attempts to provide empirical evidence in support of these assumptions have been equivocal. Chris Stevenson suggests that participation in sport and physical educa tion classes may have no greater positive outcome than participation in any other adult-supervised extracurricular activity, competitive or noncompetitive.1 JuSt as there may be positive outcomes of participation in sport, there may also be dysfunctional outcomes such as learn ing to cheat or to bend the rules; and ex cessive emphasis on athletics often re duces time for other academic pursuits. There is little empirical evidence, however, to support either the encomiums or the criticisms. Moreover, few if any claims have been made that sport en hances the socialization process for females. Why shouldn't females have the same potential for learning via sport, if it occurs, and why should the outcome be any different? Finally, since much early socialization takes place within the elementary school, we need evidence of the degree and type of social learning in sport at this stage. Since most of the sporting opportunities for ele mentary school children are provided by volunteer agencies in the community (e.g., Little League, Pop Warner football), the positive and negative consequences of these programs should be analyzed. Since the early 1900s the relationship between involvement in interscholastic or intercollegiate sport and academic per formance has been an area of interest for educators. Whereas early in the century the findings suggested that nonathletes perform slightly better in schoolwork than athletes,2 more recently the evidence sug gests that athletes have higher grade-point averages than nonathletes.3 Some authors have interpreted this finding as indicating that athletes are "brighter" students4 and that participation in sport "causes" better academic performance, but empirical evi dence is lacking to support the argument. Furthermore, there is little data to prove or disprove the existence of the many intervening variables that have been advanced to account for this relationship. The major limitation of studies in this area, other than their primarily descriptive approach, is that most of them have been cross-sectional rather than longitudinal; and therefore the long-term effects of par ticipation have been ignored.5 Moreover, the degree or intensity of involvement in a sport has not been considered, nor has the impact on academic performance of ceas ing to participate. Finally, little attention has been paid to these relationships for fe male athletes or for children participating in nonschool sport programs during the elementary school years. It appears that at the high school level, and to some extent at the college level, athletes obtain higher grades, on the average, than nonathletes. However, we don't know why, nor do we understand the influence on academic performance of other extracurricular activities within and outside the school, such as music, art, drama, and part-time jobs. It may be that the relationship between sport participa tion and academic achievement can be ex plained by initial dissimilarity between athletes arid nonathletes. Or it may be that sport is no more effective as a facilitating mechanism than nonsport extracurricular activities such as music or art. Moreover, there may be an "enhancement" effect wherein disadvantaged youths gain more from participation than others do.