R: Put Your Kid in a Sport Before a Show

Ancient Athenian education took place largely in the gymnasium. For Athenian youths, the gymnasium was the site of ethical and philosophical instruction, alongside training in all the sports of the Greek world. Indeed, the gymnasium was a favorite haunt of philosophers–Plato was a fearsome boxer before he took up philosophy full-time, while Aristotle founded a school of philosophy based in the Lyceum gymnasium. Gymnastic instruction was balanced with at-home tutoring in letters and music, where youths learned their Homer and Hesiod, and perhaps a bit of flute or lyre. The Spartans neglected this latter element, discarding letters and music entirely and instructing young men solely in the arts of sport and war.

The affirmative may embrace this Spartan spirit by extolling the necessity of imbuing physical fitness from a young age. “Train up a child in the way he should go,” says Solomon, “and even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). Healthy, disciplined children will be healthy, disciplined adults. Raw youths may fall into dissipation and sloth when they go off to college, but strong young men and women raised on the baseball diamond and soccer pitch will understand the merits of hard work, self-mastery, and discipline. Youth sports teaches valuable skills like teamwork and decision-making, while providing a convenient avenue for kids to build wholesome friendships (and not odd friendships like they may forge backstage during a fifth-grade production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown).

The negative may favor a more Athenian approach. Sports are all well and good, but the important thing in raising children is to raise thoughtful, serious, well-rounded adults. Signing up your son or daughter for piano lessons or dance class is by no means selling out to some kind of liberal expressivism but rather a conservative testimony that the good, true, and beautiful are the things our kids should value–the permanent instead of the passing; subtlety over brute strength. There is a story that when Charlie Parker was a young saxophone player in a jazz band, he missed a chord change and a bandmate threw a cymbal at his head. Humiliated, Parker went to the woodshed in his backyard and relentlessly practiced his instrument until he emerged the most brilliant saxophone player of his day (this is the origin of the phrase “woodshedding,” for those familiar with the jazz world). Music teaches discipline better than any sport, and theater is among the best avenues for raising mature adults.