12/21/24
September 26, 2005
Well, duhhhhhhh: University of Idaho professor Sharon Stoll says elite athletics are lacking in morality and ethical strength. "The environment of athletics has not been supportive of teaching and modeling moral knowing, moral valuing and moral action," Stoll's 2004 study found, in part because there are few consequences for immoral behavior in sport.
Study done on study of atheletes moral character traits found that it is being used to generate money from naive owners of professional sports teams.
posted by panteeze at 09:08 PM on September 26, 2005
Well I hope that the research is more scientific than the article. Sharon Stoll has concluded that many jocks are deficient in the moral reasoning that governs honesty, fairness and responsibility. Presumably, she means "deficient" compared to some control group (say, the rest of the population, adjusted for socioeconomic background, race, etc.) I'm sure she wouldn't just say that they're deficient unless she had some comparison group in mind, right? Stoll ... is not surprised that sports pages often read like a police blotter. This is probably just the reporter's hyperbole, but again does this mean that elite athletes get into more trouble with the law than non-athletes? How much more? The longer they compete in sports, the more morally calloused the athletes become. So the older you get, the more cynical you get? Wow, those elite athletes sure are different from the rest of us!
posted by Amateur at 09:10 PM on September 26, 2005
Gosh it's like everybody needs a baby sitter these days.
posted by T$PORT4lawschool at 09:55 PM on September 26, 2005
Morality and moral reasoning (which is the subject of the study) are not exactly the same thing...but you wouldn't expect a mainstream publication to pick up on that.
posted by lil_brown_bat at 10:42 PM on September 26, 2005
'Everything I ever learned about morality and obligations I learned from football.' - Albert Camus. As a goalkeeper, he would say that.
posted by owlhouse at 03:09 AM on September 27, 2005
Then why do we want our kids to participate in sports? There are some redeeming qualities of athletics. This study seems to be fed by media coverage of sports, rather than the sports themselves. A disurbing lack of quantitive data.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 07:44 AM on September 27, 2005
My twins are to young to play now, but as soon as they are walking they will be catching, running, hitting and gearing up for everything from soccer to t-ball to football. I think sports will keep them healthy, help them with social skills and boost their self-confidence. In the mean time I just got the Baby Bulldog DVD to teach them about Georgia football so that they will be ready to go to the games next fall. This DVD teaches them all about the team colors, traditions and campus-they love it. I know they will make me proud by becoming a real Bulldog in about 17 years!
posted by Sam at 10:39 AM on September 27, 2005
Yeah can we get any evidence to back this up, if not I'm dismissing it as rubbish.
posted by tron7 at 10:45 AM on September 27, 2005
Then why do we want our kids to participate in sports? "We" don't, I hope. I hope that individuals are making personal decisions about whether or not to have their kids participate in sports, not that we're in some kind of groupthink about it. I'll tell you one thing that I learned from years of martial arts training, and that's that parents have all kinds of notions about what their kids will get out of learning karate which sound good at first, but upon examination turn out to be pretty silly. There's a lot of talk about self-confidence and self-discipline and yadda yadda yadda, and to be sure, a kid can come out of a dojo (or off a soccer field) with more of those things. But parents are confusing the uniforms and venues with what's being learned and how it's being learned. Kids will learn social skills from any endeavor in which they must cooperate with others for a common goal. They'll boost their self-confidence and self-discipline through any experience where they improve through perseverence. There's nothing magic about sports; it's just that in our culture, sports may be the most readily available venue where kids have the opportunities for the experiences that can build those worthwhile traits. Or they can build traits that are a lot less worthwhile -- but how often do you hear about that? They can turn a kid into a quitter, someone who's unwilling to try something new because he's afraid of falling on his face, because he got ridiculed when he didn't execute perfectly on the first snap. They can turn a kid into someone who divides everyone up into winners and losers, the in-group and the out-group. They can teach a kid to value competition and disdain cooperation. They can teach a kid that tangile achievement is the only achievement worth having, that winning the big trophy gets you acclaim and that Mom and Dad won't love you if you don't get it. They can teach a kid that the rules are different for stars than they are for scrubs. They can teach a kid that hypocrisy is great, that coaches may say, "Grades are what matter," while pressuring kids to do things that will harm their academics. "Sports" don't teach character. Parents need to remember that.
posted by lil_brown_bat at 10:51 AM on September 27, 2005
But sports can keep kids out of trouble- what about kids in the ghetto- numerous kids escaped by getting into sports. What are you saying?
posted by redsoxrgay at 07:44 PM on October 02, 2005
Ahem, I don't tune in to sports on tv for a moral lesson. She needs to get over her self righteous self.