Читать книгу Alternative Models of Sports Development in America. Solutions to a Crisis in Education and Public Health онлайн

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In Europe, participating in a local sports club or even in school sports is open to all students who desire to compete, regardless of their grades. While education is stressed (and study time is even provided for athletes at many local sports clubs in Europe), absolute academic criteria for practice and competition in sports clubs are rarely, if ever, in place or, if in place, enforced. In my time researching in Europe, I found no sports club in Germany or the Netherlands that enforced an academic policy or eligibility standard. However, clubs allowed for study time, many even offered opportunities to study at the club, and students were able to miss practice and/or games to study or attend class. It is primarily left up to the parents to decide if any penalty should be applied for not meeting academic expectations. Given the absence of eligibility criteria and the disconnection of sports and school in Europe, it would be difficult to determine by comparison whether the American interscholastic sports system prepares participants better than the European club sports system does. One could draw inferences from academic performance levels, US-based university college board exam scores of American and European prospective college students, and other criteria, but it is difficult to say one system is better educationally that the other because of a lack of hard data. However, I hypothesize there is a potential correlation between academic performance and the presence or absence of highly competitive sports and elite development within the two systems that needs to be examined via future research.