Sports and Arts

Things are changing in my mind! Maybe there won't be 10 classes as originally planned...I'm thinking the sports and arts should be separate from school, perhaps with a semester or two required of each in the four years of high school. When I was growing up, my parents required me to participate in one sport and one music thing every year, and past that I could choose. I've taken basketball, soccer, gymnastics, swimming, and dance, and piano, violin, and voice, and I think I have very much benefitted from all of these.

That is why I wanted to require arts and sports of all of my students. However, I am recently finding out that schools in high-achieving nations like Sweden and Finland do not offer as many of these activities to their students, nor are the students as pressured into them as they are in the United States. They're considered distractions and like they put too much pressure on students.

I still think sports and arts are very important for an education, and at the younger level, students should be required to try these things, but I think at the older level, it can be hard to require students to do these things - particularly, for example, sports if they are uncordinated or art if they are not talented in it - especially if they do not enjoy it.

So, my solution at the present is to require students to participate in at least one sport or art (or maybe club like debate) every year but that they can choose from there. Perhaps there could be auditions and try-outs for certain ones and other general classes. For example, an audition choir and an open choir.