If a school was stopping one of extra curricular activities due to lack of funds , which program would you choose sports or music?

Music is so important says the old band director.

@jazmina88 Your a old band director?

I taught school in the 80s. i love marching band. beginning band. show choirs.
It helps math skills, psychological well being and all around intelligence.
got my music degree at Murray State!!

@jazmina88 Wow! Impressive. I have a feeling music will not win in this question. We shall see. I love music and sports. It would be a hard choice for me.

As much as i love music, i think the children should be encouraged to be more active and stay healthy. I know both subjects can be done out with school, but feel that sports would be more beneficial health wise for the future of the children.

Music. There are opportunities for students to play sports on their own. @tiny_dancer, I disagree that sports promote health; PE promotes health. Sports promote competitiveness, and in some cases aggression. People are rarely injured in marching band or orchestra. You can sustain injuries in high school sports that can cripple you for life.

If it was a rural school, I’d vote to keep music funded. It’s very hard to find private music teachers outside cities and suburbs. The community would probably do private fund raising to keep sports going, not as easy with music. The football team might have to wear the logo of the feed store on their jerseys, but it would continue to exist. Unfortunately, I don’t think most voters would see it the way I do. I totally agree with @jazmina88 .

@tiny_dancer PE and organized athletics are different things. In most states a local school board wouldn’t be able to cut funding for PE, as it’s a mandated part of the curriculum at the state level. There’s usually no mandate that school boards fund organized athletics though.

Music helps kids with other subjects such as Math by using areas of the brain that are not normally used. Certain instruments also help with your heart (such as string instruments because of the bowing motion). I would say to keep music because it would benefit children more than sports would. If kids really want to do sports they can do them outside of school. however it’s hard to find teachers for certain instruments outside of school and even if you find one lessons are very expensive.

If you have ever seen the marching bands of today, or drum corps….it’s crazy how fast they move. Precision fast, it is a sport.

It’s not all sitting. Very intense and disciplined.
teamwork.

Music should stay. As @JubalHarshaw mentioned, PE is mandated in most states as part of the curriculum, so the children will get some physical activity from that. Music is not mandated at all. There are also multiple leagues and programs outside of school that offer sports, but not many that offer music (aside from private lessons). Playing in a group and seeing how all the music fits together is an amazing thing (in my opinion) and I would hate to see that go away for future generations.

As much as I hate sports (and hated it even more when I was at school) I still think that it is important to have in schools because, for many kids, that is the only real excercise they will get in their whole week. Music is important but not so much for health reasons.

Edit – Having read some peoples points about sport and PE being two different things, I would say that, providing PE was still in schools, I vote music!

@Leanne1986 But the sports aren’t mandated for everyone, and honestly the kids that are playing sports at school are the same ones that are playing them outside with their friends during the summer and when school isn’t in session. They really don’t add any extra physical activity for children in general in my opinion. If the sport team wasn’t there, those kids that really like sports would still be outside playing. That’s not something that they can really do with music.

@Seaofclouds I edited.

@Leanne1986 Lol, I saw that, your edit posted right after my post posted. :)

Stop sports. Keep the music! But then, I’m a musician. I made my kids start with the piano at age 4.

Some sports, like Football and Basketball, pay their own way with ticket sales to games.
Other sports, like field sports (javolin, discus, long jump), are cheap, but really don’t do much.
A music program adds a lot to the student, but never recovers the outlay.
Not an easy question with obvious options…

I hate myself for saying this, but music. I love music. I would have preferred to study music over taking athletics by a long shot. But going by numbers, there are more students taking athletics as an extracurricular. You would be taking more opportunities for scholarships away from them. I’m torn.

It’s such a tough decision. My campus had a wonderful music program with far a better track record than our football team.

If we are referring to P.E. and not athletics, then wipe P.E. out altogether.

@muppetish Why would you wipe P.E. out? It has positive health effects for children and is already limited enough. There is a strong push to increase the amount of P.E. children are getting these days because even though it’s part of the curriculum, it’s not daily exercise in most schools. P.E. has been proven to have positive effects on children’s weight status and with the growing number of children that are overweight, it shouldn’t be taken away.

@muppetish I don’t seriously think schools should do it, I’m just a kid with a grudge. P.E. was torturous for me.

That’s a hard decision. Both are great, but I’m going with cut the music class. Sports teach kids to deal with rules and group activity.

@BratLady You dont think bands are a group activity?? It’s a band of people.
Rules!! have you ever played an f sharp in the key of b flat??

Personally, I prefer music, but that’s just my thing.

I’ve worked in many schools that did have to make the choice between the two, and I always thought it interesting how they made the choices.

Public schools in the US almost ALWAYS gut music before sports. I think there are a number of factors here. In the school I taught in that was a prime example, it was a rural and poor area with a very low property tax rate. Most of the parents couldn’t afford the instrument fees and other things. They actually kept the music department—sort of. It became an after school club. But not many people were in it. The sports program brought in a lot of alumni and fairly good revenue, so they kept it.

In the private or charter schools where I worked, they mostly kept music. The parents tended to be more well off and wanted their kids to learn music. Also, to be honest, starting up most major sports programs can be really expensive—so it’s cheaper not to have them. One boarding school where I worked had a T-shirt that said “xx High School Varsity Football Undefeated 30 years and running” The joke was that they never HAD a football team. However, these schools actually did have a small sports thing going on. Mostly volley ball and basketball. Once again because those are relatively cheap sports—football and soccer tend to be more expensive to maintain the grounds. None of the private schools ever had baseball teams either.