Education Week - September 12, 2018 - 20

COMMENTARY

16
'SILENCE IN THE FACE OF
INJUSTICE IS UN-AMERICAN'

16
THE PERILS OF
PUTTING STUDENTS
IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT

17
WHY I KICKED A BOOK

Edel Rodriguez for Education Week

Football Doesn't Belong in School
By Randall Curren
& Jason Blokhuis

ore than one million
high school students
participate in tackle
football programs at
their schools, during
which they each sustain hundreds of violent blows to the head
over the course of a season. According to our
analysis, the cumulative effect of rattling this
many brains this many times is that each
year roughly 264,000 high school students
suffer traumatic brain injury and cognitive
impairment that diminishes their ability to
think, learn, and succeed in school. We know
this from studies that have correlated the
patterns of players' head blows with traumatic brain injury and cognitive impairment,
using helmet sensors, functional MRI brain
scans, and tests of working memory.
The biomedical engineering professor
Thomas Talavage presented these findings
on behalf of the Purdue Neurotrauma Group
at a White House summit on sports injuries
in 2014. He explained that concussed and
non-concussed players alike demonstrate decreased activity in the portions of the brain
most vulnerable to impact and have greater
difficulty with basic cognitive tasks over the
course of a single high school season. About
half of the linemen studied and one-quarter
of players overall exhibit these symptoms.
As clinical evidence of the risks associated
with playing tackle football mounts, professional players and sportscasters have begun
to abandon the game. Notably, former NFL
linebacker Joshua Perry retired this year
after just two seasons, citing concerns over
his mounting number of concussions. Some
school districts-such as the districts of Maplewood, Mo., and Marshall, Texas-have
even begun reducing or canceling tackle foot-

ball programs. Nevertheless, the many high
school students who will continue to play football in the coming school year present school
leaders with some serious ethical questions.
Is sponsoring an activity that causes disabling brain injury compatible with educators' responsibilities to students? Are there
compensating educational benefits of playing tackle football that justify the risks?
Does the putative consent of players or their
parents relieve educators and administrators of their duty to protect students from
harm? The answers to these questions are
clearly no, no, and no.
Schools should not sponsor activities known
to cause cognitive impairment in a significant
percentage of participants. Nor should schools
sponsor, facilitate, or encourage activities that
directly undermine their educational aims.
For a quarter of football players, what happens on the field diminishes their capacity to
benefit from what happens in the classroom.
Beyond cognitive impairment, repeated
blows to the head often cause concussions,
with symptoms that include headaches,
memory loss, insomnia, and mood disorders.
According the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, the aggregate economic
costs of TBI ran approximately $76.5 billion
annually as of 2010. Moreover, the younger
children are when they start playing tackle
football, the more likely they are to develop
degenerative brain disorders later in life.
It is important to recognize that players
risk cognitive impairment even if they do
not suffer a concussion and regardless of
whether they tackle with their heads up or
down. Helmets help to prevent skull fractures, but they do nothing to stop the brain
from smashing into the skull each time a
player collides with another player or the
ground. Such collisions are inherent to
tackle football played according to the rules.
Are there compensating educational benefits that justify these risks? Many claim
that playing football builds character, but

20 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 12, 2018 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary

there is no evidence that it is distinctive or
cost-effective in this respect. Good judgment
is a key aspect of good character, and studies
show improved judgment in students who
participate in music, theatre, and community
service programs, but not in students who
participate in sports. The cognitive impairment caused by collision sports is scarcely
favorable to making good decisions. Even if
there were solid evidence that football is a
more effective vehicle for character building
than the alternatives, that would not justify
expensive tackle football for a few. It would
justify safer and more affordable club sports
for all students. Given what we know, the

Is sponsoring an activity that
causes disabling brain injury
compatible with educators'
responsibilities to students?"
risks of tackle football cannot be justified on
the basis of character development.
What about the benefits to students who
think they have a chance at a career in professional football? Should schools provide
that opportunity? The answer is, once again,
no. According to NCAA estimates, only 6.9
percent of high school football players made
it onto an NCAA team in the 2016-17 season.
Of these, only 253 were subsequently drafted
by the NFL or another major league, representing just 0.0239 percent of the original
pool of high school players. By contrast, about
25 percent of the original pool-264,345 high
school players-would have suffered traumatic brain injury and cognitive impairment. In other words, a high school football
player is about 1,000 times more likely to be

impaired in pursuing an education and other
career paths than to have a career in professional football. Those are not odds that could
possibly justify the risk to students.
What ethical or legal significance do student and parental consent have? In negligence suits filed when students are injured
while participating in school activities, school
districts routinely appeal to the doctrines of
consent and assumption of risk. But legal minors have a limited capacity to foresee and
assess the consequences of their actions and
cannot give consent that would legally or
ethically release coaches, teachers, and other
school authorities from their prior responsibilities to protect students' interests. In the
context of football, the limited capacity of minors to give meaningful consent may be further diminished by unrecognized concussive
symptoms and intense psychological pressure from coaches and peers. The legal and
ethical significance of parental consent is also
limited in this context. Educators and school
officials have duties to protect students from
foreseeable harm in the custodial and tutelary environment of the public school, and
consent offered by students and parents does
not release them from these duties.
In sum, there is no justification for continuing to expose students to the inherent hazards
of tackle football, however popular it may be.
The responsibility for harm to students arising
from these hazards falls primarily on school
officials, and it is they who can eliminate the
hazards by terminating the programs. n
RANDALL CURREN is a professor and the chair of
philosophy at the University of Rochester. He is the
author of Why Character Education? (Wiley-Blackwell,
2017) and the lead author of Patriotic Education in
a Global Age (University of Chicago Press, 2018).
J.C. BLOKHUIS is an associate professor in social
development studies at Renison University College,
University of Waterloo, in Ontario. He is a co-author
of The Challenge of Children's Rights for Canada,
2nd ed. (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2018).

http://www.edweek.org/go/commentary

Education Week - September 12, 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - September 12, 2018