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Background

Education is America’s No. 1 concern.

In an ongoing survey conducted by the American Sports Institute, school superintendents, principals, teachers, and parents are being asked two simple questions:

Question 1: On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being totally excited and 1 being totally apathetic, how excited are students about their academic courses? This does not include the social or extracurricular aspects of school.

Question 2: Are children natural or unnatural learners?

The responses to the first question range from 2 to 5. The response given most often is 3; there are a lot of 2’s, and rarely a 5.

The answer to the second question is always: Children are natural learners.

If kids are not excited about school but are natural learners, then something is seriously wrong with the way in which we are trying to educate America’s children. The problem with education today is not that students can’t do better, it’s that they aren’t motivated to do better.

Sport is America’s No. 1 passion. Author Joyce Carol Oates calls sport "America’s religion." Being an extracurricular activity, sport is not a requirement in our nation’s secondary schools, yet students voluntarily commit themselves to long hours of grueling work in order to participate in interscholastic and intramural athletic programs.

The Dilemma

With education being America’s No. 1 concern, reform is education’s main focus. From the national, to the state, to the local levels, legislators, educators, and parents alike are all struggling to find a way to reform education so that students are excited about their academic pursuits and motivated to put forth their best effort.

If a way could be found to reform education so that students were as passionate about their academic studies as they are about their participation in sports, education’s problems would be greatly reduced. No longer would the majority of America’s children be apathetic about their academic courses.

Current Perspective

Over the past 25 years, sport and physical education programs have been cut back in our secondary schools. The rationale for this has been several fold: 1) Traditional educators believe sport and PE classes are not essential to a child’s development; 2) Sports programs take away valuable time from academic pursuits; 3) Sport and physical education do not have academic credibility.

Given the current way of thinking toward sport, these three points are easily justified in the minds of most educators. There are a great many negative and exploitive aspects to sport culture. However, it is this perspective toward sport—not sport itself—that creates this way of thinking.

This perspective is not just that of educators. Many students hold this view as well. This is why so many of those who avidly participate in athletic programs see themselves as being apart from rather than a part of the academic world. It is the way educators and the public alike think about sport that keeps these students from excelling academically. They do not lack in intelligence; they lack a way to connect to academics through sport.

The challenge then is how to reposition sport in our educational institutions and in America. If sport were viewed in a different context, it could play a significant role in educating America’s children and establish itself as a viable player in the educational reform movement.

A Different Perspective

In all the legislation, meetings, articles, discussions, debates, curriculum proposals, funding programs etc., etc., etc., involved with the educational reform movement, there has not been one word anywhere on the role of sport...until now.

While many people believe that sport takes away from academic achievement, there is a program that has demonstrated that if you want to improve students’ academic performance and character, there must be an increased—not a decreased—emphasis on the study and practice of sport. However, this increased emphasis must be done in an appropriate way, not the way sport is currently being emphasized today.

The American Sports Institute, a San Francisco-area nonprofit educational organization, has created an educational reform program called Promoting Achievement in School through Sport. PASS is getting educators and students to rethink the nature and role of sport in education and in society at large.

PASS is a full-year, academic course in which students learn how to improve their grades, behavior, self-esteem, and physical performance. This is done by having the students set individualized academic and physical goals and then work toward achieving these goals by applying the positive aspects of sport culture to their academic and physical pursuits.

The PASS curriculum integrates several disciplines, including language arts, social studies, philosophy, psychology, and physical education. PASS teaches students goal setting, time management, critical thinking, problem solving, self-monitoring, and teamwork, and instills confidence and personal responsibility.

Researchers at the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL), one of 10 research centers administered by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), have evaluated the PASS program. They conclude:

• "The students in the PASS program report high levels of motivation and their achievement is at high levels."
• "PASS addresses the needs of the whole learner—intellectual needs, motivational needs, and other needs such as students’ physical and social needs."
• "PASS can become a model for defining those qualities of total school reform that are needed to both engage students and help them achieve high academic standards."
• "PASS is a model for total school reform."

Sport and Educational Reform Forum

While the PASS program has proven to be successful, its current impact on educational reform is limited. To begin the process of repositioning sport in our nation’s educational system, the American Sports Institute is producing the first-ever forum on the role of sport in educational reform. Entitled The Call of Sport: A Model for Educational Reform, this forum will play a seminal role in positioning sport as a credible player in the educational reform movement.

ASI will convene this forum that will look at significant educational change, a true re-forming of education, using the positive aspects of sport culture as the model for this change. Participants, including state and national leaders from the educational, political, media and sports communities, will examine ways in which sport offers principles, practices, and guidelines for improving teacher performance, increasing student achievement, and returning joy and enthusiasm to the learning process.

In Summary

At one time in Western civilization, during the height of the Athenian era in ancient Greece, sport was a part of the arts and humanities. The enriched, fulfilled, successful person was someone who continuously strove for excellence in an integrated and balanced physical, mental, spiritual way. The body and spirit were valued equally with the mind.

At the American Sports Institute, we envision a time when athletics will return to their rightful place of honor in the arts and humanities, and when physical education will assume a more integral and respected position in our nation’s schools. For it may well be that sport and physical education, reformed and refurbished, may provide the best possible path to personal enlightenment, educational reform, and social transformation in this age.

The forum The Call of Sport: A Model for Educational Reform will be an important step in turning this vision into a reality.