From my weekly dose of pain (a Google Alert for the term "transferable skills"), this gem from an article about former high school athletes:
Identify and parlay athletic transferable skills! Athletic transferable skills are skills learned in sports that can be transferred to other areas of human development and life experiences. For example, kids who learn through sports how to set goals, manage their schedule, work successfully with teammates, and develop leadership skills need to be specifically encouraged and shown how to use those skills in the classroom, their future careers, and practically every imaginable aspect of life.
Don't get me wrong, it's fairly clear to me that high school athletics provides fantastic training for basic life and job skills. It's just funny to me how this term ('transferable skills') gets used to justify not only graduate school, but also high school basketball.
At the college level, people argue endlessly over whether inter-collegiate athletics is a net fiscal benefit to the institution or net drain. I have no interest in rehashing that, but we'll know for sure which side is in the right if the athletics department is ever reduced to arguing that it imparts a lot of "transferable skills."
ReplyDeleteThe main thing I learned from high school athletics is that you can try really hard at something and still come up short...
ReplyDeleteand that is a good thing to learn... loser. lol
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