Do Schools Really Care About Their Students? Do Schools

Sports are so glorified in some areas that schools will put athletics in front of academics. This is exactly what happened the book Friday Night Lights by H.G Bissinger. BIssinger explains that the town of Odessa houses the school Permian where everyone grows up on football. The school and the town give so much praise to the football team that some football players couldn 't care less about class and eventually the teachers don’t care how those players do in class. Mount Vernon is a place where the students are expected to do well in class first and everything else is second. The school has extracurriculars, but knows the school’s main job is to give students an education. Permian and Mount Vernon are opposites on the scale of sports and

The impact of preserving sports in high schools has been surrounded by much controversy as people suspect that it is the reason behind the poor academic achievement of students. Opponents to high school sports feel that allowing athletics to be a part of schools sidetracks the focus of the student body, which goes completely against the main purpose of schools. Indeed, this assertion is completely true and based upon plentiful evidence. High school sports undoubtedly come at the expense of student academic achievement since they divert the attention of students away from academics and they come with far too many financial costs, both of which incur negative impacts on the academics within a school. The bottomline is that sports are harming the education of students, so a school must make the decision between composing quality sports teams or providing high level academics; both of these choices simply cannot occur simultaneously.

Students are the future of our world, as one generation fades away, the next one steps up and keeps the world turning. In our society, schools are the vital place where many children grow, learn, and adapt. High schools offer athletic programs that keep kids active and teach valuable lessons. While sports have their benefits, they often end up undermining academics and have a shockingly large cost. Schools should preserve athletics yet never prioritize it and sacrifice academics, and if sports negatively impact academics, cut them altogether.

Are schools the right place for sports? This is a question that educators and experts everywhere are asking themselves, as more and more schools are faced with budget cuts and low academic scores. No one is debating the health benefits of exercise one receives from sports, but does the exercise benefit outweigh the expense, risk, and impact on academic grades? Amanda Ripley, the author of The Smartest Kids in the World, thinks club organizations, not schools, should provide sports programming (“Should schools eliminate sports” 1). Earl Smith, author of “Race, Sport and the American Dream,” along with Ripley believes sports are given priority in some schools, drawing attention away from education (“Should schools eliminate sports” 1). During an interview with the New York Times, Smith stated “high schools should not have competitive sports teams. And especially not in the under-resourced intercity high schools where academic programs are often sacrificed to finance sports teams” (“Making Sports an After-School Activity” 1). He went on to say “even the student bodies in many high schools have developed cultures that glorify sports at the expense of the scholar.”

In Joanne Lipman’s “A Musical Fix for U.S. Schools”, she describes the benefits music can bring to a student’s IQ that allows them to perform superior in school. Music forces a person to think differently than how they usually may in other classes. This allows for new thinking strategies to form, improving the cognitive side of the mind. This positive difference is shown when a canadian study was done with music training where the results showed an increase in IQ in the group of people children studied (Lipman). With that study, the favorable results of music is clear for children. An IQ measures the intelligence of people, which is related to the cognitive abilities of the mind, and therefore the person. People may think that music may

One reason they should not be cut from schools is, fine arts have tremendous benefits. The arts also help with early childhood development. Some say they are the building blocks of child development. Arts education helps with motor skills, language development, decision making, visual learning, inventiveness, cultural awareness and diversity, and even improved academic performance. High arts education in a school engages, learning, results in higher test scores, and lowers drop out and truancy rates.

While reading both opinions on how art, whether it be music or paintings, does or does not improve cognitive ability, I’ve come to the conclusion that it does. The articles that were in favor of the arts had great points. They were able to state their point of view, while backing it up with research and scientific facts. The articles against the arts stated that they do not improve learning ability, but rather auditory and visual skills. Despite auditory and visual skills not directly improving a child’s learning ability, they are still a substantial part in child development. Even so, the author of the passage still acknowledged creative imagination’s potential to help a child perform better in learning assessments and IQ tests. Involving in art in the school system, whether that’s learning about it or having the students do it themselves, really can improve school performance in several ways, including heightening brain activity, making them more attentive and enhancing their wellbeing.

Students that are involved in fine arts may do better on their test scores. Most children that participate in fine arts have a better act And can cooroperate better with others. Many studies show that all this is true.(“10 Studies on the Importance of Art in Education.”)

f. University of California did a study on children who are given music lessons. The 2nd grade students that were given music lessons scored 27% higher on proportion and fraction tests than those who did not receive lessons.

And they took a group of 6 year olds and gave them weekly singing and piano lessons for 9 months. And in this study they took a baseline IQ score at the before the 1st grade and then taken again at the beginning of 2nd grade with the time in between provided for the experiment. And they found that on average the kids that received the lesson IQ was 3 points higher than it was 9 months earlier. This might be in part because when learning to play an instrument much like learning a new language you brain is required to build new connections and remap the network of the brain to work faster. Another study that was published from Christopher Johnson at the University of Kansas was out to prove if this raise in IQ also would affect the testing scores of children. And they found that in an elementary school with good education in the arts scored 20% higher in both English and Math standardized test, than an elementary school with little to no music education. Johnson sums it up by saying, “Schools that have rigorous programs and high-quality music education and arts teacher probably have high-quality teachers in other areas. If you have an environment where there are a lot of people doing creative, smart, great things, even people who aren’t doing that have a tendency to go up and do better.”

One reason fine arts are so important in school is that they teach students how to deal with success and failure. Some might say that children fail and succeed in other classes, but many students get all the way through school without knowing what it

score for those students who listened to Mozart was an 8-9 point increase in IQ. This increase however

Schools that offer fine arts classes have lower dropout rates and raised attendance. The fine arts positively impact students of lower socioeconomic status more those of a higher  status. The fine arts have no barriers for race, religion, and culture when it comes to being involved in the arts. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to be involved (Katy Independent School District). Without the arts these students have no outlet for creative capabilities and no way to express their talents. Students who need this way of expressing themselves are overlooked and they are the ones who need it the most (Dickson). When viewing the participation of arts in the eyes of a ten-year old, “It cools kids down after all the other hard stuff they have to think about” (Arts and Smarts: Test Scores and Cognitive Development).

“People are forgetting that math is taught when a child is playing an instrument. English is taught when a child is reading or writing a script. Critical thinking is taught when a child is analyzing art” (Sabrina Holcomb). There is a significant correlation between participating in the arts, and success in school. Multiple studies have shown that there is a strong correlation between playing an instrument, and an increase in scores in mathematical subject. In these studies, it was also noted that students who were more creative were better problem solvers than students who were not as creative. All of these characteristics are sought after in the work force, meaning that the arts not only help during the school years, but in work and business as well (Ron Whitehorne). Also, it is important to note that “Low-income students who had arts-rich experiences in high schools were more than three times as likely to earn a B.A. as low-income students without those experiences. And the new study from the National Endowment reports that low-income high school students who earned little or no arts credits were five times more likely not to graduate from high school than low-income students who earned many arts credits” (Tyleah Hawkins). The arts have always been used as a form of expression and inspiration for people across the world, the arts have also been shown to improve high-risk student's outlook on their schooling. Research has shown that the arts help improve standardized test scores like the ACT or SAT (Tyleah Hawkins).People who support the arts believe that quality art education can help engage at-risk students in ways that other subjects such as math, science, or reading cannot. This is why it is believed that the arts are a key tool in the prevention of high-school dropout. There are many studies that point to a lower dropout rate for students who participate in

Imagine you’re a teenager in a high school who is involved in athletics, and sports are the one thing you love doing the most. Now imagine that one day out of nowhere your sports team was cut, and the one thing that you so deeply loved you are no longer able to do. A lot of people wonder if sports are too much of a priority in schools, and whether or not they should be cut. Students disagree that sports are too much of a priority, and claim athletics make them the person that they are, and that they wouldn’t be the same without sports. School districts should not cut sport programs because they benefit students, they bring in money and publicity to the school, and it gives the students a fit and healthy lifestyle.