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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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Does school not regiment them enough? It’s definitely important to learn teamwork and to bond, but you can do when everyone merely plays sports, without making it an obsession that requires 1000 hours of skill training. Have a sports competition every week and control each time for skill, so that each time has a nearly 50% chance of winning. This incentivizes the prosocial qualities, plus exercise, without all of the waste. And having guys organize these themselves is better than having a coach tyrannically dictate everything — I don’t think most training has enough downtime to truly bond, or allow enough argument to truly involve teamwork.

Random question about US history - when did US high school and college sport become driven by semi-professional spectator sport? In the British schools which take team sports seriously (now mostly the more trad private schools, admittedly) the core of "Games" was and still is ubiquitous intramural competition, with the unathletic kids expected and supported to participate at their level. And if there were enough pitches, an external match would include "B" and "C" teams so as many kids as possible could participate extramurally. But school matches normally happened on games afternoons when the people who were not playing would be competing intramurally - not spectating. Typically most of the spectators at a British school football game would be the parents of the players.

Does school not regiment them enough?

Arguably not at all. A core component of regimentation is the idea of the regiment, IE being part of a larger whole.

Kids generally aren't trying to score higher on a test to bring the class' average up, they're doing it to bring their own average up.