Mike Sager What I Ve Learned Analysis

From early age, sport and physical activities played significant role in a society. Indeed, sport and physical activity have only positive meaning in people’ minds. In 2009, Mike Sager’s “What I’ve learned” that was published by the popular magazine Esquire. Mike Sager interviewed famous rapper Snoop Dogg who said “It is so easy for a kid to join a gang, to do drugs... we should make it easy to be involved in football and academics.” His words best describe actual situation in the life of the youngsters. There is no doubt that today’s teens face significant social pressure and have to deal with leisure time that they are spending involving in criminal activities or drug and alcohol usage, because of several problems that they are dealing with

Furthermore, programs that combine sports with academic instruction and character development are even more effective, as they teach crucial skills such as team-building, leadership, and sportsmanship. For example, the Hope Center Wilderness Camp in the United States offer a program for teens aged between 12 and 17 years. The program runs from 8 to 18 months with an average stay of 14 months. It aims to provide quality care and treatment in friendly environment with emphasis on health, safety, education and therapy. Once the participants leave the program, a worker supports family for 6 months. Eighty-five percent of participants do not offend or bully other children in the 6 months after the program. (Clagett 1989, pp. 92,

For example, martial arts not only teach kids the way of defending yourself or how to beat your offender; contrariwise, it does not contributes kids to involve in a fight. Martial arts helps young people to obtain self-discipline. Research published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine on a study of early teenagers found that children and adolescents are largely inactive, but found that this tendency was upsetting, since according to the survey responses of the kids, they have higher self-esteem when they are involved in more intense physical activity. The researchers stated that increased high-level physical activity is an important part of helping kids develop self-esteem. As such, parents should encourage kids to get active and get involved as higher self-esteem can help kids be better-grounded and better stand up to peer