Sydney Halady
English 101
Professor Bergert
Not all educational
experiences are taught in school, life itself is an educational experience and
people never stop learning no matter how old they get. That is what makes life
a wonderful journey. By playing a sport as a kid whether it is a school sport
or not; that sport teaches them to be dedicated, driven, and responsible. Those
qualities are so important in a person, they help students finish school and
they are what help people get a job and keep a job later on in life.
Dedication, drive, and responsibility may not sound like the three qualities
one would learn just by playing a sport. When people think of playing a sport
words as; distraction, jock, waste of time, and etc. Although not everyone
thinks playing a sport is a waste of time, this argument is for the people who
do believe that nothing good comes from it.
This however is not
an argument on the fact that only kids who play sports will be successful in
their lives; it is to show people that by playing a sport it can lead kids on
the right path in life that aren’t necessarily headed in the right direction. Playing a sport can be so much more to someone than just a
fun extracurricular activity; in some cases those “fun extracurricular” activities
are all any teenager has. Just like in the movie Freedom Writers no adult in those kids lives ever even thought
about giving them a chance until Ms. Gruwell came along and wasn’t willing to
give up on them. In the movie Freedom
Writers every faculty member in that school said “those kids shouldn’t be
here”. Ms. Gruwell might have been a teacher that was the only positive
influence on those kids, but just like playing a sport it’s an opportunity for
a positive influence because in some cases not everyone has one at home.
Sports in some cases
can be even more educational than just a regular classroom setting, because
most the time kids don’t enjoy nor want to be in school they want to do
something they have fun doing and that they feel good about
doing. Kids do not look at sports as being educational; which in fact maybe
that is why they learn such good qualities from it and take those qualities
with them throughout adulthood- more so than maybe something they learned in
class. One of the greatest things that comes from sports is the discipline it
teachers kids, because everyone knows you have to be follow directions from your
coach in order to learn and in order to play. And with every sport there is a
coach someone kids have to obey so just like Ms. Gruwell that coach is now an
adult influence and possibly the only one in their life. No one in life will ever
succeed without having discipline, and life will be a lot easier if that is
taught to someone at a young age.
Drive and passion
are two qualities that people wouldn’t think that could ever be developed by
playing a competitive sport. But as hard as it might be to believe it is true
those qualities come to people who care. Someone only develops passion and
drive by doing something they love every single day or as much as they can. And
from between the ages of 10-18 kids are at their most vulnerable point in their
lives; and every child needs to have something that they love and feel
passionate about. Mr. Keating in the movie Dead
Poets Society did a perfect job at showing his students how to be
passionate. Mr. Keating told his students “Boys, you must strive to find your
own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to
find it at all. Thoreau said, ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ Don't
be resigned to that. Break out!” Mr. Keating taught his students that it was
important to be passionate and to live their own life the way they wanted to
live it. And although the students in the movie Dead Poets Society weren’t relying on a sport to teach them good
qualities but that passion was taught to them through something besides just a
regular classroom setting.
Responsibility
in life is not something someone is born with or something someone can just
discover over night- it is something that takes time and typically comes with
age. Sports can also teach a kid responsibility over the time they infest into
it. Typically schools require a certain GPA for students to be able to be eligible
to play. That alone teaches kids to be responsible with grades-and being able
to get good grades is the first true responsibility a kid has. Playing sport is
similar to having a job when kids are young, they are required to show up, behave
in an orderly conduct, and act like a team player. If that doesn’t sound like
being responsible than what is? It is sad that the world we live in today and
the success people are restricted to is the amount of time they have invested
in school. Ken Robinson stated in How Schools kill creativity “success is based
on academic ability”, Ken was getting the point across of that a regular school
curriculum is not what shapes us into the people we all become and who people
form into. Therefore sports let alone any good extracurricular activity can
have just as big as an impact on someone’s life than going to school.
Education
doesn’t just come from going to school, it comes from living, making mistakes
and learning from them. No one ever got anywhere or became somebody by not
living and learning. There is so much more to sports than meets the eye, just
because someone has fun doing something doesn’t make it easy. A great thing a
sport is that 99 percent of the time they aren’t easy, they are hard work and
in the early vulnerable years of a kid hard work is supposed to be paid off.
And that is why kids take so much from playing a sport they can work there ass
off doing something and it’s important to them. Good things in life aren’t giving
to people; they are supposed to work for them. Playing a sport is a choice in
life, more often than not school is not a choice and kids are supposed to go
until they reach a certain age- maybe in life the things that aren’t forced on
people are the things that they learn from the most. Life is a journey and people
can learn something new every single day if that’s what they want. Anyone can
learn a basis school curriculum; it’s the life lessons people learn on their
own time that they take with them through life.
Work Sited
Dead Poets Society. Dir.
Peter Weir. By Tom Schulman. Perf. Robin Williams and Robert Sean Leonard.
Touchstone Pictures, 1989. DVD.
How Schools Kill Creativity. Perf. Sir Ken
Robinson. Sir Ken Robinson. TED, n.d. Web. 26 May 2014.
Freedom Writers, Dir. Richard
LaGravenese. By Erin Gruwell. Perf, Hilary
Swank, Scott Glenn, Imelda Staunton and Patrick Dempsey. Paramount Pictures, 2007, DVD.
No comments:
Post a Comment