I’ve been reading Jonathan Haidt’s latest book, the Coddling of the American Mind. Although I’ve enjoyed his books in the past, this book has been, for me at least, a bit of a mixed bag. In fact, it reminds me of some of the problems with liberal allies who are blind to their own privilege. They are certainly better than enemies, but they often talk over the smarter arguments of those directly affected.
To understand my critique, let’s dig into the arguments they are putting forward in this section of the book, what’s good about their arguments, and why they fall short of grasping the whole picture.
The chapter starts by talking about two types of justice that humans seem hard-wired to demand:
- Distributive justice: people are getting what is deserved, based on their contribution
- Procedural justice: the process by which things are distributed and rules are enforced is fair and trustworthy
Violating these principles of justice results in outcry and pushback. However, the other inherent problem is that elements of these are subjective and personal experience for someone in a minority group will often differ greatly from someone in a majority group. There is also some question about how different contributions are valued. Ultimately, the underlying problem is that existing systems favor status quo. You have to make a case to change what currently exists, and to do so, you have to convince those in power who currently benefit from the status quo. That’s a tough pull.
“Humans naturally favor fair distributions, not equal ones; when fairness and equality clash, people prefer fair inequality over unfair equality.”
The book then moves on to talk about where the left goes too far to succeed against the status quo: in dictating equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity (or fair process). The example cited is pressure placed on universities in 1996 by the Clinton administration to clarify that federal funding would be contingent on Title IX compliance, and that compliance would be evaluated based on outcomes, including demonstrating that sports programs mirrored the gender balance of the student body (which skews female across American universities at this time).
One result of this shift was a school with two rowing teams, one (the women’s team) fully funded by the school, but the other (the men’s team) not funded at all. Outrageous! This is why conservatives decry the loss of white male privilege and state that women are being coddled while men have insurmountable obstacles, right?
Well, taking a slightly closer look, the funding for male sports at the school in question is still significantly higher. Why? In a word, college football which is a very expensive sport in terms of equipment, uniforms, and coaching, more than most other sports. It is also a sport that has had little interest for female students. As the book points out, there is a disproportionate interest between men and women in playing team sports. Women enjoy exercise and athletics in equal amounts to men, but they don’t gravitate toward the same (often expensive) team sports men do.
“The men’s football team is gigantic and costly, and there is no women’s football team. The university as a whole is still spending far more money on men’s sports than on women’s sports, and if you endorse equal outcomes social justice, you’ll say that the unequal treatment of rowers is necessary to compensate for the money spent on male athletes elsewhere. But when you leave campus, that argument is not going to convince many people. . . . This is why quotas generally produce such strong backlash: they mandate a violation of procedural justice (people are treated differently based on their race, sex, or some other factor) and distributive justice (rewards are not proportional to inputs) to achieve a specific end-state of equal outcomes.”
The authors concede that it’s clear that some kind of bias is operating here, but they are slow to draw conclusions that question the supremacy of football and male interests. Instead, we veer into correlation not equaling causation.
Here’s where they lost me on two fronts.
Is Football Sacrosanct?
There are a lot of unstated assumptions in this whole mess of university athletics.
- That the desired outcome is an equal number of participants (this was behind the Clinton Title IX instruction).
- That the dollars spent (by the university) per student is not the measure of success, although this is the economic benefit the participating students receive, without which they have to self-fund.
It’s possible that football, which is so expensive, should actually be given credit for the revenue benefit it brings in. Any sports program can do this, but football is uniquely positioned to do so in current American culture. It shouldn’t be “sacrosanct” as it is seen in general, but revenues should offset costs in evaluating the program.
But if you concede this, which I think you must, you must also allow that the university can increase the return of any sports program through coach selection, recruitment of athletes, and advertising choices.
Do Sports Need to Be a Special Class?
The biggest issue I see with all this reasoning is that the discussion of Title IX is only related to sports. Why wouldn’t we evaluate something that factors in the interests of the student body more broadly?
- Women may be less interested in competitive sports. What else are they interested in that requires funding?
- Women may be discouraged from participating in competitive sports. What is the university doing to encourage women to participate more? Does the discouragement predate university? When does it start? How does it need to be combated at university level if it started in childhood?
- Is the team sports environment anti-women somehow? Is it a hostile environment? What is the university doing to fix that?
- Are team sports sufficiently valuable that all this effort to get women to join is worth it or are the things women are already interested in equally valuable? How do we know?
If women are less interested in team sports, but more interested in individual sports like track or gymnastics, why not add programs that appeal to women in proportion to the student body size? Are there other programs women might be interested in that are similar to sports in terms of funding needed (e.g. choir, theater, arts, literature, science competitions, chess tournaments, debate, newscasting programs)? Why are these not considered toward the ratios desired? Why are team sports a special case?
I suspect these are discussions universities are having. The book just didn’t tee them up.
Conclusion
Ultimately, something’s wrong when outcomes aren’t equal. That doesn’t bother those whose needs are being met. They have every reason to ignore it and preserve the status quo. If we concede to conservatives that unequal outcomes are just a byproduct of fairness, then we have missed glaring issues in both distributive justice and procedural justice.
This is the same reason that it matters that women on the whole are making only 77 cents on the dollar, although income equality is closer (usually 92 cents on the dollar) when considering like jobs. The 77 cents problem points to undervaluing the contributions of women in two key ways that have largely been absent from the male-dominated debate:
- Underpaying for work that women are traditionally encouraged to do like child care, teaching, nursing, cooking. Our economy disproportionately rewards fields that have largely excluded women or created barriers to entry for women.
- Expecting women to do disproportionate unpaid domestic work in their own homes (and even each others’ homes) that puts them at a disadvantage in the workplace (e.g. more sick time to care for others, less availability, emotional labor costs).
But these are harder problems to solve. The only way we solve them is when we acknowledge them, and measure outcomes.
When I was an executive at American Express, we had Affirmative Action quotas to be sure we had a robust pipeline of minority (women and racial minority) candidates for all positions. If we didn’t, we had to re-post a position. But we could hire the person we felt was most qualified. Without tracking outcomes (which we did), it would be very easy to see the same results over and over. Just because you interview more minorities (potentially against your will) doesn’t mean you hire more minorities. We had to discuss and defend our decisions. Until you measure outcomes, you don’t know how you’re really doing, but many would defend their hiring by saying they just didn’t have the right candidates because not enough minorities had the qualifications being sought.
But how do you enforce actions when it’s across the entire system? Who is responsible for determining how much teachers and nurses are paid vs. engineers and programmers? How do you hold an executive responsible when minorities didn’t get the education or work experience being sought for their open position?
Universities are in the unique position of having an administration responsible for placing a value on both sports and theater, science and arts. Limiting the evaluation of outcomes to team sports is a male-centric viewpoint.
This is one reason I have never really found the priesthood interesting. It’s a male program, created by men for men. If women had been involved in it, it would look very different than it does. It’s more hierarchical and less collaborative than organizations women tend to create. Involving more women going forward will doubtless alter how decision making occurs in the church, and that’s worth anticipating. But barring all women from decision has many significant downstream impacts. Decisions made without the input of women are much weaker than those with more diverse input.
And that’s the core problem with this book. It’s written by two men about problems with the left’s approach to solving problems, and the main criticism is that it’s not convincing conservatives. That’s an important problem to solve, but the key to changing that is to have diverse perspectives sitting at the table, and the GOP is overwhelming white and male. The book acknowledges the disincentives for those in power to listen to those who are not, but doesn’t apply its own logic to solve it.
What do you think?
- How do you create fairness when those making decisions are getting what they want and setting a higher value on their own contributions?
- Are equal outcomes important or just equal opportunity and fair process? Defend your answer.
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
”Who is responsible for determining how much teachers and nurses are paid vs. engineers and programmers?”
The marketplace.
Or, the invisible hand.
I can’t tell whether you are against college football (because it’s an expensive program designed and run by men) or LDS priesthood (because it’s an expensive program designed and run by men) or both. Maybe you’re against all expensive programs designed and run by men. How do you feel about the Marines? Casinos? Video games?
Here’s a different take on things. Organizations need good team spirit and a sense of identity and commitment. Nothing does this like a common enemy. Football gives the university and campus community a common enemy (the football opponent of the week) that everyone can unite to cheer against. The Church needs a common enemy to unite the members of the Church. Satan works but is inconveniently distant most of the time. Secular modernity (“the World”) works better. For Ezra Taft Benson, it was Communism that was the worldly enemy. “Anti-Mormons” as a vague and undefined group works, too. So football is good for the university because it generates common enemies to get the troops worked up and united (including rich alumni — football keeps them involved with the school). It helps us understand why the Church so persistently creates and emphasizes enemies, from Korihor to “the mob” to Communists to gay marriage.
Ji: that was a rhetorical question because while it’s obviously the marketplace, our existing marketplace was created by mostly male consumers (who hold the lion’s share of wealth). But, yes, it’s the only marketplace we have.
Dave B.: I’m not against football, and I pointed out the benefits it brings to universities (economically), but programs women are interested in can also rally the troops (U of U did this pretty well with gymnastics, and volleyball can be a draw). My daughter participates in show choir, and every show is sold out. My point is that the Clinton approach assumes sports have to be a separate category, and that the authors give football a pass (no pun intended) because it’s expensive. If schools want to give women equal access to funded programs, there are options. But they don’t. They just want to get credit for doing it.
The priesthood specifically doesn’t make sense in the common enemies argument. Women share those common enemies and don’t have it. My only point about it is that like these programs, it was created the way men create programs (making it less appealing to women), and like these programs, it’s used to bar access for women because it’s sacrosanct. Making room for women to participate is not a priority.
Why doesn’t the plan of salvation implement equal outcomes, then? Is something wrong with it?
I’m also struggling with the notion that something is “wrong” if outcomes are unequal. I agree that unequal outcomes may indicate unfair processes or unequal opportunities, but the unequal outcomes may simply reflect unequal inputs. It matters what you’re measuring. If you are examining outcomes by race, then we should suspect that unfair processes or unequal opportunities exists, since race is rarely relevant to anything we might bother measuring. That’s also mostly true for sex or gender, but there are limits. The sexes have different roles in reproduction, so it may be perfectly logical that members of each sex make different choices throughout their lives based on those roles. Or it might be unfairness. It’s really hard to know for sure.
Your question: Are equal outcomes important or just equal opportunity and fair process? Defend your answer.
There are several problems with emphasizing equal outcomes. One of those problems is illustrated clearly, though not intentionally, in the OP. The problem is this: Who decides what outcomes are important, and how will they be measured? The OP makes a point that universities are potentially under-supporting or under-funding womens’ activities and interests, or perhaps that society fails women by not emphasizing team sports. And this inequity is even more inequitable because , as the OP notes, the population of universities “skews female across American universities at this time.”
Something just happened. There is an inequity in university attendance by gender, though it is an inequity that favors women, not men. I’m going to borrow again from the OP’s bullet points under the section “Do Sports Need to Be a Special Class,” though I’m going to make some substitutions in language.
• Men may be discouraged from participating in university education. What is the university doing to encourage men to apply and enroll more? Does the discouragement predate university? When does it start? How does it need to be combated at university level if it started in childhood?
• Is the educational system environment anti-men or anti-boy somehow? Is it a hostile environment? What is the university doing to fix that?
I suspect the OP may argue that an inequity in university enrollment by gender is necessary in order to combat the OP’s preferred inequity-to-be-righted, namely the gender pay gap stated in the OP. This only reinforces my original contention: Who decides what outcomes are important, and how will they be measured?
Related questions include: Once we pick someone(s) to determine what inequities should be given priority, how confident can we be that those someone(s) will continue acting justly? If we are going to give that kind of power to government, would you be happy with someone from the opposite party or political spectrum wielding that power? Would it create opportunities for unfair, unjust, inequitable, or even tyrannical outcomes?
Inequality is a fact of life. Even if we focus on equal outcomes for generations, inequality will still be a fact of life. We cannot change that.
Equal opportunity and fair process lead to unequal outcomes. I am fine with that. I am less fine with sacrificing individual opportunity on the imperfect and incomplete altar of equal outcomes.
Well. I was elected to student government at Cal State LA. We killed the football program. (Actually the council before us killed it but we had to affirm that to keep it dead).
Only 20% of programs, when properly measured, turn a profit. It looks like more, but the analysis is off (BYU did a properly balanced analysis before building the “new” stadium, one that reveals the flaws in most models).
Overall academics would be better off if football was either cancelled or moved to a different cost/revenue model.
Statistically, outside of academia and the government, companies with affirmative action initiatives are more profitable than those without. That suggests that women and minirities are generally under recruited and hired from a purely economic model.
I know. I haven’t addressed the core of your essay.
But as one of the token conservatives at W&T I thought I’d chime in on economic realities and on “facts” that really aren’t facts.
So. From pure facts. Econometric facts. Football=bad economics (ie loss of net revenue) , private sector affirmative action = good (ie more profit).
Not that there isn’t stupidity (eg people calling for profitable football programs to be killed, etc. and the funds diverted , when that would mean less money at a school).
But my school was better off without football.
BTW, for nurses pay:
http://time.com/money/4542739/highest-paid-nurses/
For engineers:
https://interestingengineering.com/10-highest-paid-engineering-majors-in-the-us
As someone employed at a large financial institution we look at both disparate treatment (intentional discrimination) and disparate impact (unintentional discrimination) of loan applicants. For example if only women are required to take a screening test (perhaps a minimum credit score) it’s disparate treatment. If you test all applicants and only women are eliminated based on the results of the assessment that’s disparate impact. We’ve found that it’s super easy to accidentally implement policies that promote disparate impact but on the surface seem procedurally fair. I don’t know if this framework is easier to adopt than equal outcomes vs equal opportunity, but I see similarities.
To me it seems that thinking about sports instead of all university activities is unfair from both an outcome and a process perspective – but it’s complicated in real life. The best suggestion I have is to allow women to participate in decision making process at all levels, even if the existing structure was originally set up by men for men and the first women must be shoehorned into a man’s organization – and see where football ends up. On a related note, I wonder if women would bring more attention to the health detriments of football players. As others have pointed out the whole system is flawed.
In the short to medium term, I see benevolent (intentional?) sexism as the guiding principle in the LDS church and in many large organizations, including sports departments.
Threadjack:
a commentor: “Why doesn’t the plan of salvation implement equal outcomes, then?”
eternal being + never ending progression + Atonement of Jesus Christ = everyone eventually exhalted
It’s clear that “plan of salvation” doesn’t mean the same thing to both of us. Good luck with your speculation. It goes far beyond what has ever been revealed as canon, and contradicts other canon,
Fantastic post, Hawk.
With respect to question one, I think the answer is relatively simple. Those in the majority have to give the microphone to those in the minority and let them direct the conversation. To me that doesn’t mean those in the majority can’t be part of the conversation, and they obviously must be part of implementing whatever strategy is designed to rectify inequalities (particularly institutionalized inequalities). But it’s simply ridiculous for those who have never experienced the kind of inequalities they are ostensibly seeking to remedy, to be the ones defining either the nature or scope of the problem, or what equality for those who have and do suffer from such inequalities should look like.
With respect to question two, the answer, for me, is also simple. True equality can only be defined as equality of outcomes. The reason this is fairly self evident, in my mind, is that the majority in this country (gender, race, sexuality, religious, etc.) has been banging the drum of equality of process/opportunity for generations, and very little has fundamentally changed. The same majority demographics still hold the levers of power in every meaningful segment of our society as have for hundreds of years. This is not an accident. Equality of process/opportunity is simply cover for the majority to pay lip service to the concept of equality while not having to actually worry about equality being achieved (which would necessitate them losing their monopoly on power, wealth, etc.), because they control those processes and opportunities. What the hell good is equality of process if it unfailingly leads to manifest inequalities? This is the kind of nonsensical worldview that leads white supremacists and sexists to conclude that white men must be superior, because we have equality of opportunity and still minorities are not able to achieve equality of outcomes. Rubbish. The deck is heavily stacked, and will never, ever yield equality of outcomes (even statistically representative ones) unless we formulate our policies to achieve them.
It seems to me discussions like this are impossible unless there’s some objective notion of what counts as “deserves.” A lot of the problems arise because deserve is an unstable often socially defined notion. Yet it’s essential to ideas of justice and arguably equality as well.
A commenter: “Why doesn’t the plan of salvation implement equal outcomes, then? Is something wrong with it?” Why would you say it doesn’t have equal outcomes? Here’s what equal outcomes looks like: women, men, people of all races are saved proportionately to how many of them there are. If 50% of people are men and 50% are women, yet 25% of men are “saved,” but only 5% of women are, that’s unequal outcomes. But I don’t know what basis you would have to claim the outcomes wouldn’t be equal (proportionate to the populations). Given that God is no respecter of persons, I would assume His judgments would be just, therefore, we should expect roughly equal outcomes. We won’t know until judgment day I suppose. When early church members barred black men from the priesthood and black members from the temple, that was definitely creating a process that was unfair, and to justify it, they claimed that blacks were “less valiant.” That’s a perfect example of telling yourself what you want to hear so you can believe the process is fair because blacks got outcomes (barred from participation) based on their input (less valiance). Whites could congratulate themselves on their assumed pre-mortal valiance and still feel that the process was fair. Gender complementarians give themselves a pass in a similar manner.
DSC: It’s true that outcomes may be unequal if inputs are unequal (yet the process can be fair), however, when entire categories of people are systematically providing a “lower” input, there’s something wrong. We don’t know what that is until we investigate. A comedian once said about affirmative action, when you ruin an entire race of people’s lives for multiple generations, you can afford to send twenty of them to college.
Longtime Lurker: I love your comment. Yes, the fact that women outnumber men on campuses is exactly the sort of question we should be asking. Many articles have been asking this very question–what is it about the academic environment that is hostile to men? And there are many examples of problems, starting in childhood, that cause boys to tune out and girls to excel. Cutting recess is a big one. So, yes, I think that’s exactly the right kind of thinking–we should be looking at ALL unequal outcomes to try to find out why they are unequal and what we could do better.
Toad: I agree with your suggestion. The more we involve diverse perspectives in decision making, and turn the mic over to them, the more likely we can understand how systems are unfair to minority perspectives. When we only hear from those for whom the system is explicitly designed, we double down on status quo. Having said that, the church is concerned with unequal outcomes in church attendance, and to date, women stick with it better than men do. They appear to fear that giving the priesthood to women would cause even more men to leave by making them feel less important, even if it is an artificial construct. I can’t say if that is what would happen or not. There’s less concern about involving women because even though it’s not built for us, most women are sticking with it. That’s generally true in religions, though.
I am against college football for a serious reason that is being ignored. Repeated blows to the head by big, strong, fast people causes brain damage. Big surprise. I am too tired to go on a rant against CTE- Chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Look it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NFL_players_with_chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy
I realize I am dodging the difficult questions posed above. I have nothing useful to add to that discussion
Except it seems characteristic of idealistic people to be straining at gnats and swallowing camels.
Why would women want equal funding and participation in activities that literally scramble their brains?
How to solve the problem? Simple.
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to play football.
Stop watching football games.
Like, millions of people stop watching NFL because a few fools take a knee. While tens of thousands of players will develop a severe, dangerous (to family and friends) dementia and die young.
Lily:
Why doesn’t the plan of salvation implement equal outcomes, then?”
Originally it did, Early Mormonism believed in graduated universalism. The Book of Mormon has too much Campbellite Protestant influence on this topic. But the DC better explains it. All 3 kingdoms (not mentioned in BoM) are kingdoms of glory. Different degrees of heaven with progress from one to the next possible. Until the 20 century “clarifications.” Some commentators need to read DC76 for what it really says and then in that context many old sermons confirm it.
But I agree that is not what is taught today.
Mike: I agree about the ethical problems raised by football (and boxing for that matter). To answer your question, though, women don’t want to participate in football. The point of the OP is that when we base funding decisions on a specific category like “team sports” without including areas women are more interested in (e.g. individual sports, theater, arts, etc.) we force universities to make strange decisions about how to allocate funding. This was a mistake during the Clinton administration in how they advised schools to comply with Title IX. Their focus on “equal outcomes” is defined too narrowly to make good sense, and therefore, it has unfair side effects (e.g. men’s rowing team is not funded but women’s is). But the problem isn’t with “equal outcomes” like the book purports. It’s with how narrow or broad the categories are that are being considered.
Mike there wasn’t agreement on progress between kingdoms. Certainly some well into the beginning of the 20th century believed it. It was a popular view in the early Utah period but hardly universal. I don’t think D&C 76 really addresses it though. I believe the earliest purported reference to it is Richards claim of Joseph Smith teaching it in 1842. Richards certainly taught it in Utah.
I’d say though that even if one accepts progression between kingdoms that equal outcomes doesn’t naturally result.
This depends on your political point of view. In us congress Republicans 12% women, democrats 37%.
In Australia LNP 21% ALP 44%. Which one do you suppose is conservative.
We had a non binding ballot on gay marriage last year, and it was sufficiently appearent to the conservatives that mormons were in the anti gay marriage group, that the extreme right of the LNP have been recruiting members, to try to take the party to the right. The problem with that are threefold 1. The LNP are now unelectable. They got just under 30% of primary votes in a recent Victorian state election. 2 The church is associated with the extreme right, which are anti woman, anti almost everything including climate change, like Utah Republicans. 3. The part of the LNP that recruits mormons is actively abusive of women, and women parliamentarians are resigning from the party to sit on the cross benches, because of the abuse.
The new Victorian gov has a cabinet 50% female.
Equality for women is no longer an issue except for the extreme right? Everyone else sees it as essential/normal.
As for American football: not played in any major way except in America. No international competition. In the last 5 years we have a professional mens cricket team and womens team. We have a mens rugby team and a womens rugby team, we have a mens soccor team and a womens team. All have national competition, and international competition.
We find it amusing that America has world series, where no one else competes.
Pay rates are determined by how people are valued. After thefinancial crisis an overseas bank (Japanese I think) and found out its whole executive combined were paid less than the CEO of the failed USbank. The relative pay of teachers, nurses etc is different countries. It doesn’t have to be the way it is in America.
Looks like your perspective on equal outcomes looks very different from that of Lily, where it means all must be exalted. Besides, if we truly believe our doctrine, then it’s clear that the celestial kingdom is going to be filled with Chinese, Indian, and African children. What a beautiful thought.
“How do you create fairness when those making decisions are getting what they want and setting a higher value on their own contributions?”
An important step is getting a diverse group of decision makers. I’m not talking about a token female or minority on a board of directors, but rather a group of people that can support and build with each other.
“Are there other programs women might be interested in that are similar to sports in terms of funding needed (e.g. choir, theater, arts, literature, science competitions, chess tournaments, debate, newscasting programs)? Why are these not considered toward the ratios desired? ”
I think it is very difficult to compare equality and impact of non-sports to sports. Theatre and arts are not as one-sided as football when it comes to gender. Bottom line is that the Clinton paradigm, while not perfect, is somewhat measurable, I think. Also, comparing women’s participation in art to men’s participation in sports sounds a little like separate-but-equal. (Side note: I’m not sure that title IX distinguishes between individual and team sportS…)
“This is one reason I have never really found the priesthood interesting. It’s a male program, created by men for men.”
Today’s statement of the obvious 🙂 A synonym is “brotherhood”.
Nothing prevents women from creating a program by and for women.
“If women had been involved in it, it would look very different than it does.”
No doubt. But who would participate? It would be fully pleasing to neither men nor women.
“And that’s the core problem with this book.”
Books do not have problems. PEOPLE have problems. The problem is not in the book.
“It’s written by two men about problems with the left’s approach to solving problems”
Which of course the left is unlikely to read and the right finds bland statements of the obvious like “duh”. Haidt’s contribution tends to be “If you keep doing what you have always done, you will keep getting what you have always gotten.”
Turn Saul Alinsky around. His tactics (“Rules for Radicals”) are aimed at the left and tend not to work on the right (and not at all with libertarians). These rules work on emotional leftists and were intended to be used by Community Organizers to organize the left. Libertarians cannot be organized and I’m not sure you get very far organizing the right. I have a doubt that a thing called the right exists; it is simply part of everything not left, which DOES exist (herd, hive, group).
“the GOP is overwhelming white and male.”
And Democrats everything else. Got it.
Prophets and Jesus do not seem concerned with EITHER form of equality.
The Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Talents do not concede or advocate equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, or equality of starting positiion in life. Equality cannot be measured and usually does not exist. Equality of some sort exists before God but not among humans on Earth.
These parables share one important concept: What matters is what you do with what you have been given. Spending a lot of time looking at what someone else has been given is not usually advancing your own talent.
When you haven’t got what it takes to be an engineer, play football.
But it is a substitute for WAR so all hail the NFL and FIFA.
Angela C:
There is a more subtle aspect to this problem with college sports for both men and women. Somewhere between age 3 and adolescence, there is loss of perspective of the intrinsic value and purpose of athletics in the development of the person. Where is the true discipline, the integrity, the teamwork, the sacrifice and sportsmanship? It gets lip service, only if it leads to winning. Not as a personal value and lesson of life to be applied in a family, career, church or community service. It is not as physically destructive as football but it is psychologically not harmless and a big waste of too much of the best years of youthfulness. The focus is on winning and prevailing at the next level, all the way to the Olympics. At any cost. We have the everyone-gets-a-trophy mentality and the kids all know that is BS. But when it matters we set them up to usually lose and if they win we re-set them up to lose at the next level. Through multiple levels.
Sometimes seeing another way helps illuminate what is being done. Here is an example:
About a dozen years ago, my then lanky son joined the high school track and cross country team. Up to that point he had showed no interest in sports, although he is blessed with enormous natural talent. (He was interested in real boy scouting done right and that proved far more valuable than any sport). The coach, a physics teacher, held a yearly unforgettable parents meeting. It lasted 5 minutes. He made the same 3 points.
1. These are students first, athletes second. If they are not succeeding in their studies (like physics and math) they have no place on the team. Some team members might volunteer to be tutors but that was on them not him.
2. We will win with humility/gratitude and lose with dignity. Sort of implied no cheating or sore-loserism or whining.
3. Exercise is a life long activity, even a habit he intended to instill in all of his athletes. He didn’t say it but he was taking the obesity epidemic by the horns, and was more interested in outcomes 20-30 years down the road than at the end of the season.
So what did practices look like? The school was huge with 30% students bused in from government housing projects on the south side. A few of the kids who were going to be competitive were mostly off on their own teaching and competing with each other. Somehow they won the region twice and got second twice. He had a state champion long distance runner and a kid from Sudan who won the state 400 and 800 meters. It turns out that it only requires about 5 minutes of smart coaching a day to win high school races. (That is the attention span of a high school kid).
The rest of the team, hundreds of them, were at every stage of fitness from nearly making it into the top ranks, to average kids, to kids manifesting obvious problems with obesity. He spent most of his efforts with those kids.It was awesome to go to a 10 school meet and half of them were on that one team. The last half or more of the pack in any race was 99% from that team. I recall him telling one overweight kid, if you even finish this 5K without stopping it will be a major victory for this team and for you. All these boys and girls went out for track, not to win but to become fit (and maybe more attractive) and develop habits that will help keep them fit into their 70’s and 80’s..
In contrast a man lived near the school who won Olympic metal in an individual event and Gold on a relay team with Michael Johnson (1996, 2000) He was a volunteer coach and the boys wanted nothing to do with him. He was attractive and he coached no more than a dozen older high school girls in 200 m, 400 m, 800 m events. (There were rumors, that the relationships might have been more than platonic- age of consent here 16.) That team always had 6 or more girls who could do around 55 second 400 m. races. They were perpetual state champions in the 1600 m relay and faster than many boy’s relay teams. I heard one of the senior girls describe the secret to their winning. Coach make us go to bed crying every night, from the pain of training and from the fear of not winning. He make us cry every day during practice. It still never be good enough.
Now which attitude is going to be more beneficial to the most young people? Yet which attitude, or some watered down variation, is what we perpetuate on our youth? Which attitude makes it even possible for 4000 NFL athletes to have CTE? Which attitude is almost essential to compete at the college level in any sport?
Here is the kicker. Which approach requires the most money?
We as a society need to rethink about all that money spent on a high school and college athletics in terms of the obesity epidemic and maybe even the opiate epidemic. I would like to see something that puts more emphasis on a skill set actually useful in life for a broad spectrum of people, not this focus on spectatorism of elite athletes. I would nominate people like the physics teacher as coach of the year.
PS. No this is not an excuse-making exercise why my son didn’t make it to the Olympics. My son worked hard and eventually was ~6th fastest in long distances his senior year. But he didn’t even care where he placed. He never ran a race where he finished first, second or third place. Not once. He ran against himself and for the sheer joy of vigorous exercise. And because he liked to tutor other kids in science. And because it pissed the football coach off when he refused to play for him (by senior year he had the size, strength and speed to become a good college level say, defensive end) and told him he had better things to do with his head than hit other people with it.
Michael 2: I read the Parables of the Sower & Talents as sharing two contradictory messages. The Parable of the Talents is demonstrating meritocracy: if you are given 5 and make them 10, you get more. If you are given one and do nothing with it, it gets taken away and given to someone who is better at investing. The Parable of the Sower is really about the atonement and how we don’t merit anything, and we should be grateful for whatever we get. Some people work all day for a penny, and some work one hour for a penny. It’s the opposite of a meritocracy. Nobody’s worth more than a penny, and even the latecomers get paid for a full day of work. The Parable of the Talents doesn’t contradict our desire for fairness because it’s fair treatment. Each person is judged proportionately on their results, based on what they were given to work with. The Parable of the Sower causes a huge fairness problem. Everyone’s paid the same, regardless of how much work they do, but that’s how the atonement works. Nothing we do is every good enough or merits such a reward.
Equal opportunity plus a fair process is the only way that works. Unequal outcomes have always existed, and will always exist. In the past educational and employment opportunities were not always fair. They may not be completely fair today, but great strides have been made towards that goal. The only way to attempt to have equal outcomes other than assuring a fair process involves some type of force/coercion and that never goes well. There are too many variables that go into outcomes to reduce it to a sex or race based problem is too simplistic and provides no avenue for addressing the real problems. The gender pay gap is one of the problems when the gap is due to an unfair process. I do not believe that inequality of outcomes is mainly because of racial discrimination either. The American Asian population has the highest median income of any of the ethnic groups. I think that maybe culture is more the problem with unequal outcomes more so than gender bias or racial bias.
Glenn
Hawkgrrrl writes “Some people work all day for a penny, and some work one hour for a penny.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sower is about equal opportunity, more or less; seeds are distributed randomly and equally but considerable variation exists on whether they are going to grow according to the kind of soil (or whether the seeds reach soil at all). The implication is that some people will readily embrace the gospel and stick with it, others will embrace but abandon, and many won’t touch gospel.
The parable you mention is a great parable about fairness versus contract. In that parable the master hires laborers during the day; and pays each the same whether he worked all day or was barely in time for refreshments: It is not “fair” according to labor theory of value. But it is “fair” in the sense of a day’s pay for the poor regardless of how much labor is actually performed; and yes, spiritually it means that salvation is offered to all if you do any work at all. (No mention is made of anyone getting a “penny” having done NOTHING).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Workers_in_the_Vineyard
“we are all the eleventh-hour workers; to change the metaphor, we are all honored guests of God in the kingdom. It is not really necessary to decide who the eleventh-hour workers are. The point of the parable—both at the level of Jesus and the level of Matthew’s Gospel—is that God saves by grace, not by our worthiness. That applies to all of us”
This certainly applies to Mormons; what could be more “11th hour” than being born in the United States in the 20th or 21st Century and NOT having travailed over the past 2000 years of disease, war and misery? Punch a few tickets and its off to the Celestial Kingdom!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX “”Nationwide, there are currently 1.3 million more boys participating in high school sports than girls. Using a gender quota to enforce Title IX in high school sports would put those young athletes at risk of losing their opportunity to play.”
The solution is simple. Half that 1.3 million simply identify as women and now you have gender parity. Problem solved!
Another way to think about the issue more visually:
http://www.publichealthnotes.com/equity-vs-equality/
Michael 2: I was mixing up my parables! You are right about the Parable of the Sower. I was thinking of the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. That’s the one that raises hackles about fairness. Actually, your comment about us being so privileged we are the 11th hour Vineyard Workers reminds me of a funny story. My teen daughter’s Sunday School teacher said that some people were given more challenges in this life because they are so strong and valiant and can handle them. Immediately my daughter thought of the people we served building houses in Cambodia or the refugees we hear about in the news or the people in third world countries. Then the teacher went on to explain that she was talking about them! Somehow in her mind, a kid living in Scottsdale who gets a car for her 16th birthday and has access to clean water and food and is free from disease and has her own credit card, these are the kids who are strongest because of all the adversity they are facing. Right.