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September 17, 2005
Athletics and academic integrity
Yesterday in FYC we were talking about types of claims (facts, opinions, beliefs, prejudices, and superstitions) and I was illustrating each. Religion provides a good example of beliefs, but I said there were other types of beliefs, too—for example, my belief in writing and education as generalized Good. I illustrated prejudice by limning a writing teacher (not me, I specified!) who expects her female students to be better writers. Such claims, I explained, are derived from evidence (in this case, essentialized statistical data about gender and academic socialization) but can then feed stereotyped prejudice.
A more troubling example (and one that I'll use in Tuesday's class) is the LSU case. It involves findings—by the NCAA—of academic integrity violations. That's a (socially constructed) "fact." But the fact easily turns from a type of claim to evidence for a prejudice against athletes.
I hate that some athletes are robbed of education, shoveled through a system and used solely as capital for that system. I hate that grades can be changed by corrupt administrators and that faculty can be strongarmed (good metaphor, eh?) into preferential treatment for commodified athletes. And I hate that documented evidence of such incidents becomes evidence for an academic prejudice against athletes, an assumption that they are anti-intellectual ignoramuses, an assumption that can be reduced to the ludicrous belief that brains and brawn don't mix.
Posted by senioritis at September 17, 2005 05:41 AM
Comments
Amen, sister! :-)
Posted by: Billie at September 17, 2005 04:49 PM
You should check out the article written on the "All Baseball" blog. This is supposedly a serious blog, but if you scroll down to the Sept. 5 article about "I'm not ready for some football", or something like that, there is a horrible tirade against the sport of football in general. Which didn't bother me that much, but the assumptions made about the student-athletes were horrible and offensive. If I knew how to give you the URL for the site I would, but I don't. I'll just paste in the address: http://www.all-baseball.com/
Posted by: Lasley at September 18, 2005 01:08 AM