Put down your boxing gloves, pack up your mallets. This isn’t meant to be incite-ful, just insightful. Let’s keep it civil.

Bad puns aside, the heat between jocks and band geeks has existed since time immeasurable, on the field, in the classroom, and in administrative offices. Last week we examined the benefits of music, why it doesn’t necessarily deserve to lose the funding that it is commonly, dare I say popularly, refused. This week we look at its competition, why it might be overshadowed for a place on the budgets of tight-belted school districts and whether that hierarchy is in the best interest of students. Moving forward, I will attempt to select one of the two, deem it superior, and elevate it to the next round of tightly competitive, academically enriching counterpoint.

Music is generally among the first classes to be cut, being dubbed “non-essential,” among other arguably valid costs. Sports, on the other hand, are boosted, in some cases to a priority standard. Is it a reflection of culture? Athletes are certainly venerated by many sports fans of all ages. Then again, so are pop stars. What’s the difference? Both have impossibly difficult windows of success, but both make an impossibly large sum of money for their achievement. Both are generally scoffed at being considered a profession, while both boast an extensive amateur class of performers (and yes athletes are performers, too). Both require years of training, diligent practice, and careful refinement, though requiring a different balance of physical and mental coordination.

The question “why sports?” is both suggested and answered by a basic analysis of American values.

Obviously, a gross generalization in the image above, it isn’t too much to say that Americans value predominantly their independence, thrills, and public image. Those are three things that go hand in hand with sports culture over music. Core values of sports are to “do the thing” better than anyone else. Musicians value excellence, but through cohesion. Core values of sports are to “do the thing” in short, repetitive bursts of energy with high and immediate reward. Musicians value emotional tension and release over longer periods of time. Core values of sports are to be proud of talent and publicly celebrate victory with glamor, branding, and association with others’ success. Musicians value class but in a narrower lens.

Unfortunately, even a satisfactory answer to why it is the way it is doesn’t explain the way it actually should be. Which one helps its students more? Values need to be left out, since Eastern vs Western cultural morality could be its own post/library of books written on just that topic. Student success is really the only thing that matters in the school system anyway. What are your kids learning, how are they using it, and are they emotionally stable? Three simple questions.

Going backwards, it’s easy enough to say that personality factors will affect the emotional stability of any given child in any given activity, accounting for anything from introversion/extroversion to neuroticism and valuation/definition of winning/success. The other two questions have to be answered out of context, and they sort of get answered in the same way. To combine and simplify them we could say what other subjects benefit from participation in either activity.

First and foremost, coming in favor of athletics, hard and fast science says that any for of physical activity results in generally improved health function. And that’s great, but one might argue that isn’t the point of a learning institution. It’s a valiant effort, but it doesn’t sound like the primary goal. How does it affect academics? It seems not at all. There are no correlations linking athletic participation to increased academic excellence, which is unfortunate given the challenge in balancing the responsibility of a sport with the independent challenge of getting through high school and college. Granted, some people only have the opportunity to receive higher-level education by way of their skill in a certain sport, but the numbers don’t support why anyone should get any more money at all simply for being good at “doing the thing” better than someone else. A point may be made on the account of kinesthetic learning, however, which would suggest that some people actually require movement to most effectively retain information. A counterpoint would say that’s what gym class is for.

Music, on the other hand, has connections to many other areas of learning including language and reading, and, well, all subjects for that matter. Music kids activate many areas of the brain to develop key academic skills and have a work ethic far beyond their peers. Their attendance rate is higher, as is their GPA. There’s even a case for playing an instrument as a means for activating kinesthetic learning pathways.

I’m trying really hard not to sound as biased as I probably am, but beside culture, there isn’t a very good reason for music to be getting the short end of the stick. At this point, the entire scenario has developed into a self-fulfilling prophecy where schools remove funds from arts programs because they believe they are ineffective, which leads to poorer instruction in the arts and less dramatic improvements (if any) in student performance for the sake of having an arts program void of quality. I know what I would pick if I were tight on cash and wanted my students to succeed.

What about you?