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Elitism and Competition in School Sports:
Losing Children to Win Games
Gerald W. Neal (United States)
When is competition a problem? What role should competition play in school sports programs? What are the benefits? The costs? Who benefits? Who loses? In this article, I raise and examine these issues, and argue against the all-too-common situation where young athletes are manipulated by adults so fixated on competition that they no longer question its impact on those children. I challenge the assumption, widely accepted in some contexts, that young adolescents need competition to grow stronger, and to develop athletically and personally. The problem is worse in those societies—my own being a case in point—that have allowed competitive sports to infiltrate the educational system to such a degree that interscholastic athletic events, held as early as the sixth grade, are turning children into fierce competitors.
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