I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t confront some sort of stereotype this week. While I’ve done my fair share of addressing grievances of minority groups in America, I have done little to explore the labels assigned to celebrated groups on campus — especially athletes. While most of us realize that the image of the dumb jock is very much pervasive, I can’t shake the suspicion that the notion of athletes being intellectually inept is perceived as being closer to a phenomenon rather than a stereotype.
In my experience as a Writing Center tutor and tutor for the Athletics Department, I have come to the conclusion that intelligence is largely a power structure through which certain racial and linguistic traditions are privileged over others. While most of us easily classify the difference between “book smart” and “street smart,” it is easy, on a college campus, to refer to “book smart” when using the word “intelligence.”
In every sense of the word, I find that athletes are discredited. In Scott et al.’s 2008 article, “In-Season vs. Out-of-Season Academic Performance of College Student-Athletes,” 325 Division I colleges and universities suggested that athletic performance in student athletes was better outside of competition periods. What this implies is that poor academic performance is a matter of situation and not inherent ability. Although this may seem straightforward and almost intuitive, this calls for more compassion and classroom assistance towards athletes. Rather than to be socially dismissed as mentally inferior but physically stronger (as if that is a perfect tradeoff), shouldn’t there be more compassion for a group of us that have been systematically dismissed of their academic ability based on physical ability?
When I see professors pushing this responsibility of cultivating inspired academic interests to tutors and “more effort,” a part of me dies. I die because I realize that there is not one culprit, but by promoting the strongest athletic program possible, some things are negated. In my angst, I look for statistics of student athletes becoming famous athletes, and I cringe. What if these careers don’t work out or injuries happen, and they are left with few choices in life because their academic interests haven’t been properly cultivated or pursued?
I have tutored peers and fellow students who inspire me intellectually, but they receive bad grades because of linguistic barriers or sloppy self-presentation. As a professor, I completely understand subtly or unconsciously writing off soft-spoken students or students who are often absent, and I cannot begin to imagine the helplessness of walking into a classroom and knowing that your intelligence is most likely perceived by the class (or even the professor) as inherently inferior. I am a strong believer in the self-fulfilling prophecy, and even though I don’t have perfectly calculated answers for how to improve the stigma of student athletes I think the mental recognition of their intelligence is a place to start.
In fact, why don’t we start with acknowledging the fact that athletic ability is a facet of intelligence? I hate to end on quotes that date back to my Myspace page circa 2005, but to quote Einstein, “if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” With this in mind, let’s begin by extending compassion to those among us — even if they are the strongest and most revered.
__________
Follow Justina Huang on Twitter: @huanderwoman
