In the world’s smartest countries, school is about learning. Full stop. There is no confusion about the academic hurdles kids must clear to have full and interesting adult lives. Kids play sports, of course, but outside of school, through recreation centers, club teams or pick-up games on dirt fields with no adults in sight. 

When these same kids come to the U.S. to live or study abroad, they are surprised by the Olympic villages they encounter in our high schools. Here, school is about learning, but it’s also about training to compete in games that the majority of kids will never get paid to play. It’s about pep rallies, booster clubs, trophy cases and cheerleaders decorating football players’ lockers after they fill them with brownies. 

Those messages shape kids’ priorities. When I surveyed former exchange students about their impressions of America, 9 out of 10 said that teenagers here cared more about sports than their peers back home. “Doing well at sports was in the U.S. just as important as having good grades,” observed one German student. 

This mash-up makes school more fun, without a doubt. “The biggest difference was definitely the school spirit,” one student from Finland noted. “It was amazing to see how school wasn't just about the grades. In my home country, school is just for learning.” 

The problem is the dishonesty. By mixing sports and academics, we tempt kids into believing that it’s O.K. if they don’t like math or writing — that there is another path to glory. Less obvious is that this path ends abruptly, whereupon they get to spend 50 years in an economy that lavishly rewards those with higher-order skills and ruthlessly punishes those without. 

Kids notice when they have a sub in math class because the football coach (I mean teacher) has an away game. It is not lost on them that their local newspapers devote an entire section to high school sports and say nothing about the trials and travails of the AP English class. This hypocrisy eats away at the focus and integrity of our schools. 

Imagine if medical schools dedicated hours of every day (and a chunk of their budgets and staff) to the culinary arts — to perfecting tiered wedding cakes and artisan breads. We could argue that this approach keeps med students from dropping out, but we would sound insane. 

Competitive sports is not about exercise. If it were, we’d have the fittest kids in the world. It’s about a fantasy with a short shelf life. If we want to build school spirit and teach kids about grit, hold a pep rally for the debate team. Those kids are training to rule the real world.