With the excitement of March Madness fresh in their minds and the 2023 Major League Baseball season now in full swing, millions of inspired young Americans will eagerly sign up to play team sports this spring.
But many won’t play much.
Instead of learning life lessons through experiencing “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” on the court or the playing field, many will languish on the bench in disappointment and frustration.
K-12 coaches who banish players to the bench in pursuit of fleeting victories engage in an unethical custom that undermines a young person’s pursuit of moral and personal excellence by creating an unjust learning environment, generating discord, and damaging the child’s self-image.
Just as we expect classroom teachers to educate for character in an inclusive environment that nurtures and inspires, so too should we expect coaches to prioritize the cultivation of virtue and development of players as human beings rather than as means to satisfy instrumental ends (e.g., winning games and stroking a coach’s ego).
It’s time we demand the same ethical behavior from coaches on the K-12 playing field and basketball court as we do from educators in the classroom.
Perhaps we could start by learning a few coaching and ethics lessons from the ancient Greeks, considering they bequeathed us the Olympics, marathons, and the philosophical discipline of ethics itself.
Dr. Heather Reid, a former fellow at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, refers to Plato as “the first coach of virtue.” Athletics weren’t as much about winning as producing winners, Reid argues. “In discussing the educational value of athletics, Plato’s Republic never mentions wins or losses.” Rather than valuing athletic skills for their own sake, Plato valued athletic competition primarily as a means of producing individuals who possess virtues such as respect, discipline, courage, justice, and wisdom – qualities required to live well.
“Because sports involve physical activity and interpersonal interaction in a rule-governed environment, they may indeed be an excellent medium through which to habituate good moral character,” Reid emphasizes. “This was the role of sports in ancient Greek education. The cultivation of a kind of moral and personal excellence known as aretē.”
So how exactly does benching children undermine that aim?
Depriving children of equitable playing time subjects them to injustice. Some might recoil at the suggestion, but a closer look reveals an unjust policy that denies equal opportunity and degrades rather than lifts the humanity of a child.
Confining young athletes to the sidelines strips them of opportunities to participate in competition and develop virtue in the same way afforded their teammates. It relegates players to seasons of struggle to protect their dignity and avoid being diminished.
And why would a coach conduct himself this way? He’s calculated it’s in his interest, with little to no regard for the costs imposed on children. The coach uses the children on his team as a means to satisfy his own needs – perhaps as part of an attempt to relive the glory days or make up for less glorious ones.
The root of the injustice is the coach’s own selfishness.
He not only robs the benched player of opportunities to achieve excellence, but irresponsibly models a lack of it.
Benching also undermines a player’s pursuit of excellence by causing discord in their lives. The child may feel estranged from his coach after suffering the repeated humiliation of sitting through games as a uniformed and embarrassingly prominent spectator, exhausted not by physical exertion but by the drain of hoping for playing time.
Coaches sometimes fraudulently “virtue signal” by putting players in games during the last few minutes when the outcome is certain — checking the “I-played-the-kid” box but actually diminishing the child further in front of crowds of parents, friends, and fans. Teammates may then mimic the coach’s disrespect for the player. And parents and children argue about how to respond.
This destructive experience can threaten the player’s self-image, and the inner turmoil gives voice to lies telling him he’s somehow inferior. The player who once viewed himself as an able competitor begins lagging behind his peers as he misses opportunities to develop skills that can only be honed when playing in games.
And the coach inflicts other opportunity costs, too. Time spent traveling to and from games for which the player sits for hours on the bench could have been productively spent playing another sport, enjoying friends, reading books, or even doing algebra homework.
The coach robs the child of time. And time is life.
All of this loss and disharmony can erode confidence, academic performance, and relationships well beyond the playing field, often resulting in a downward spiral and damage to a child’s view of himself.
We have entrusted K-12 coaches with tremendous power in the lives of millions of children.
Coaches are teachers first. They should honor their moral obligation as educators to provide all players with equal opportunities to participate and pursue excellence.
Why should parents accept extracurricular coaching practices that do so much damage to their children?
And why should school boards and administrators accept that coaches paid to instruct children on school property be allowed to undermine the vital educational mission in the classroom?
No one expects equal playing time in Major League Baseball or the NBA.
But K-12 sports are not the NBA, and our children are not professional athletes.
It’s time to banish the K-12 bench.