saw a set of figures. At the Rio Olympics, the United States sent 555 athletes to compete, 80% of whom were college students, plus some high school graduates. Amateur athletes accounted for 90% of the Olympic troops sent by the United States to Rio. about. It is this kind of "amateur army" that has always occupied the top spot in Olympic gold medals and has always been in the dominant position of "how lonely it is to be invincible".
After reading this article, I know that this dominance is a natural result of the values that the United States advocates for sports. Go to the United States to study. If you don’t understand the role of sports in American education, you can’t truly understand American campus culture.
American education values sports, so in American high schools, sports students tend to be more popular than top academics. Skeptics believe that this is an anti-intellectual trend in American schools, but in fact if you fully understand the reasons why they attach great importance to the cultivation of sports expertise, you will feel that it may not be understood in such a simple, either/or way.
Most American parents believe that sports activities actually train children's personality and quality, as well as their cooperation and leadership skills in team activities. At the same time, they also create opportunities for children to endure hardship and experience failure through sports activities.
This is why most American children choose to practice team sports instead of individual sports.
In China, top students are the most beloved by school teachers, and their classmates and their parents also look at them with admiration. Top students are gods and goddesses, loved by thousands of people, and can do anything to their detriment. In the United States, which type of student can walk sideways like a crab? Not the top student, but the captain of the football team. If a student gets full marks on SAT and is admitted to Harvard, let alone the headlines on the school website, there is not even news. But if a student will be on a sports team in college, that is a great honor for the school. On the homepage of the school's website, you can see photos of students shaking hands with future college coaches and related news. The high school principal will personally meet with him. It is possible that this university is ranked outside the 50th, but the school pays far less attention to this sports student. There are more students than those who got perfect scores on the SAT.
Students with good sports skills have a great advantage when applying to American high schools. Why is sports so important to American schools? It comes down to money.
The coach of an American college football team may earn more than the principal. The team often wins, and wealthy alumni will support the school team, buy tickets to watch games and continuously donate money to the school every year. The spirit and popularity of the school will also be improved. will rise. No matter how good the school's Mathematical Olympiad is, it is difficult to inspire school spirit.
Many Chinese parents have realized the importance of sports and often ask which sports their children should practice to help their children.
In the eyes of Americans, table tennis and badminton are not sports. If a student practices a certain sport for only one hour a week, I can be sure that that sport is not the student’s specialty, but at most just a hobby.
If students do not want to start developing a certain sport until they are 13 or 14 years old, it is already too late. If you want your children to be good at sports, they need to start from elementary school.
Ordinary people in the United States believe that sports are an activity that exercises personality, not just physical fitness. There are government-supported group sports clubs in every small town in the United States. Starting from kindergarten, the coaches are fathers. No matter how busy they are, they can always find time to be football coaches or rugby coaches. They were also athletes when they were young. .
These non-professional coaches teach their players not only to win, but also to:
teamwork (teamwork)
sportsmanship (sports manship)
endurance and perseverance (endurance and perseverance)
attitude (attitude)
How to lose miserably on the field Learn lessons later (how to deal with failures)
I know a white father. Because of his investment banking job, he travels back and forth between New York and Mexico City every week. No matter how tired he is, he will definitely show up at the New York Ice Arena at six o'clock on Saturday morning to coach his son's ice hockey team. .
We often complain that today’s children are unwilling to endure hardship, but parents do not provide their children with opportunities to endure hardship. In the eyes of Americans, it is a joke to use the experience of only going to Guizhou for one week as a volunteer teacher in four years of high school as proof of hardship. .
I think it is necessary to let children endure hardship in sports activities. I know some children in the United States who spend 5 hours a week on one sport in elementary school. Many children play two sports at the same time. After junior high school, the weekly sports activities range from 10 hours a week to 20 hours a week. No exaggeration at all.
gets up at 5 a.m. on weekends when practicing ice hockey. The swimming team does swimming training before class in the morning, and then returns to the swimming pool to train after class. Only through such training can students be considered to have special skills and get a seat on the top high school sports team. After many American high school students participate in sports team training, their physical strength cannot hold up and it is difficult to compete with American children.
Parents need to choose activities they like based on their children's abilities. According to the recommendations of American pediatricians, children aged 11-14 need at least one hour of vigorous physical exercise every day.
Parents should not worry too much about whether their sports scores are good or bad at the beginning, whether they are ranked or not. As the body changes, the scores will change. What matters is the child's interest and the parents' persistence. In fact, the most difficult thing is the parents' persistence. It is far easier to send children to cram schools than to practice sports. It is much more comfortable to memorize words in an air-conditioned room than to look like an African refugee under the scorching sun. But because of this, the admissions office feels that students who are good at sports have more interesting life stories.
Chinese mothers are busy having caesarean section before September 1, hoping that their children can go to school early. American parents generally let boys study at a later age. This is actually related to sports. Many American kindergartens set different birthday deadlines for boys and girls. Many boys will go to school a year later because there is a big difference in maturity between boys and girls.
If a student has strong physical activity ability in the whole grade, has more chances to get placed in the school team competition, is highly popular in the school, and has a deep friendship with his teammates, he will naturally develop leadership skills.
Student Union President There is only one position in the school, but every sports team needs a captain. Every year, many Chinese parents struggle with the question of whether to repeat a class. Repeating a class is not just about English proficiency, nor is it a question of IQ. American schools pay more attention to students’ communicative skills.
Therefore, if Chinese children, especially boys, do not repeat their studies, they will not only be younger than the Chinese students who repeat their studies, but also younger than American children. Chinese children grow younger (local high school students in the United States already look like they are in their twenties) ), you don’t have enough energy to speak in class, let alone talk about joining the sports team or running for student union president.
Sports expertise is very helpful for height, but this is not the original intention of writing this article. I hope more students will love sports, not just to apply for school, but to have a strong physique. Many students I come into contact with are foodies but don’t exercise enough.
Many school sports coaches have told me that Chinese students quit easily. When Chinese students encounter challenges, they quickly think of giving up. Sports not only exercise people's willpower, but also improve students' mental health problems.
Don't spend all your time in tutoring classes, spend an hour every day exercising.
