Everyone in my household plays ice hockey, except me. I spend a good bit of time cheering on the menfolk with frozen toes and chattering teeth, and I enjoy it.
In my relatively short career as a hockey mom, I’ve come to find that there’s a lot about American youth sports that annoys me. It hasn’t always been clear exactly what it is about it that irks me so much, but I realized recently that some of the same inequities and constructs I dislike about American K-12 education exist in youth sports as well.
The common themes in both are these: the assignation of resources based on demonstrated ability rather than potential, and a system that heavily favors the affluent.
In both education and youth sports, we take kids who are 8 or 9 years old and test their ability. We then assume that their aptitude at that fixed point in time is a reliable indicator of how they will always perform relative to other kids. Then, we stratify them by ability and assign more and better resources to the higher performers. Whether you’re talking about Gifted & Talented placement or tryouts for travel sports, the outcome is the same – we get it backwards by giving fewer resources to those who need them most. Travel teams get more practice time and more games than rec teams. G/T students get enrichment work and seminars not offered to others. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that nurtures those with ability while neglecting those with potential, rewarding talent rather than cultivating it – and late bloomers and kids without early advantages get left behind.
And that doesn’t even begin to cover the obvious and problematic messages kids receive when they don’t make the cut – they must not be gifted or talented, or they are not good athletes. Are the kids placed in G/T really “gifted,” or did they simply get a lot of tutoring? Are the kids who made the travel team really better athletes, or did they just happen to appear a little faster at tryouts because they’re eight months older than the other kids? Wouldn’t the kids on the cut list do better if they just had a little more time and a little more help?
As with many things in life, the affluence of one’s household makes a difference. Kids whose parents have resources will always have a leg up as they enjoy tutors, private coaching, better equipment, and extracurriculars. They will then be more likely to be accepted to travel teams, G/T programs, or private schools, as well as more likely to be able to afford to participate. Meanwhile, kids who may have enormous potential but fewer resources at their disposal miss out as the gaps only grow wider.
Is this what we want? Do we really want a system where a kid who could become the next Wayne Gretzky gets left behind because he was small for his age as a child, or because his parents couldn’t afford to get him into more competitive programs? Do we really want a system where a kid who could become the next Albert Einstein gets locked out of the G/T track in elementary school and never gets a chance to reach his full potential?
Regardless of whether we want it or not, I suspect this system is here to stay. So what can we do instead? What can we do to foster talent instead of simply identifying it? What can we do to avoid putting kids on immutable, predetermined trajectories at such a young age?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
