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Unusually for me, an actual link
Nov. 28th, 2006 08:45 amSomeone posted this article to Yalsa-BK yesterday, and I thought it was creepy enough to be worth sharing again - it's by a young adult author, Robert Lipsyte, about the corporatization of high school sports and the pressures on young adults that that corporatization brings. It is very very creepy.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=lipsyte/061121
The things that freaked me out the most were the little details - as someone who in high school played sports (I was soooo bad that even if something like this went on in my high school I would never have known) and was a geek on the fringe of the school culture, I loved hearing from the students who straddled two worlds.
But overall, the article just made me scared. It seems to me that keeping kids out of the work-decision making loop in their teens makes them intensely vulnerable - they have many of the same potentials as adults, and if the adult world forbids them to use that potential at their own direction in an adult way, they they are being set up for exploitation.
That's how I see it.
And the kids I work with, the ones who aren't brainiacs, who are maybe more invested in the physical side of life - is their choice between this kind of creepy exploitative sports thing and gangs? I mean, what positive options are left for people, if they're not the kind who can make their own through art/study?
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=lipsyte/061121
The things that freaked me out the most were the little details - as someone who in high school played sports (I was soooo bad that even if something like this went on in my high school I would never have known) and was a geek on the fringe of the school culture, I loved hearing from the students who straddled two worlds.
But overall, the article just made me scared. It seems to me that keeping kids out of the work-decision making loop in their teens makes them intensely vulnerable - they have many of the same potentials as adults, and if the adult world forbids them to use that potential at their own direction in an adult way, they they are being set up for exploitation.
That's how I see it.
And the kids I work with, the ones who aren't brainiacs, who are maybe more invested in the physical side of life - is their choice between this kind of creepy exploitative sports thing and gangs? I mean, what positive options are left for people, if they're not the kind who can make their own through art/study?
