Every week our local newspaper has a sport section with reports on the games of the boys' and girls' high school teams, with the names of top scorers highlighted. I don't see stories writing up the results of say math competitions. (Which could be interesting, at least to some. You could print an interesting problem and describe how someone solved it.) In the high school there is a large trophy case for past athletic titles. I don't see the equivalent for academic competitions. Our town has a sports hall of fame where players and teams from decades ago are inducted.
Sports are honored. Academics are not. And this is in an affluent Boston suburb where high percentages of parents have college and graduate degrees. My gripe is not that sporting achievement is honored but that academic achievement is not, at least not much.
Exactly the same phenomenon that we see in our district, which is one of the best in our state and has a very high percentage of well-educated parents. Sports achievements are visible everywhere on weekly basis if not more frequent. Academic achievements are mentioned in online and print newspapers a few times a year: at graduation time or when national merit scholars are announced, etc.
