Extracurricular differences
A post by Jim Hirsch on Chicago Classical Music on high school athletics versus music education made me think about the difference between Europe and the United States.
In the United States, sports are mostly associated with schools and therefore, rivalries are mostly between schools. In Europe, however, sports are mostly associated with villages or city neighborhoods and therefore, rivalries are mostly between competing towns or urban areas.
In the village where I grew up there were two elementary schools. There was a minor ongoing rivalry and competition between them, but there was only one football (soccer) team in the village with players from both schools. And whereas American schools have their own jazz band, marching band or even orchestra, in Europe such ensembles are connected to towns.
I can only imagine that this difference stems from a deeper rooted history in Europe. Rivalries between towns probably predate the existence of sports teams, and even schools. Another factor is proximity; towns in Europe are close to each other, whereas in the United States you might drive for hours to find a neighboring town.
This difference also means that a child’s social life and extracurricular activities in the United States revolve much more around a school, rather than a town or neighborhood. Public schools in the United States are largely funded by local property taxes. Poor districts receive poor funding for their schools. And in addition, the sports teams and musical ensembles connected to the schools will also receive poor funding.
A+ Illinois, an education advocacy group, stated in January 2006:
“Illinois continues to be one of the worst perpetrators of inequitable spending, with some of the largest gaps in per-student spending between high-poverty and low-poverty school districts in the nation.”
“The state’s over reliance on local property taxes to finance public education contributes to education inequities.”
This means that students in poor districts have access to poorly funded extracurricular activities, including, for example, a poorly funded jazz ensemble, marching band or orchestra. Provided that those schools have enough funding to offer such activities in the first place.
It shouldn’t happen that an underprivileged district must unavoidably deal with poorly funded schools and consequently also unavoidably deal with poorly funded social and extracurricular activities.
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