Sports and studies

Around one month ago, Minster for Education, Heng Swee Keat, the opening ceremony for the National School Games. Throughout the rest of this year, schools will be competing with each other for glory in many different sports.

In his opening speech, Mr Heng highlighted that participation in sports can build up values such as respect, resilience, care and harmony – which are at the core of the values in 21st Century Competencies. As a result of this, he also highlighted how MOE is going to boost the Physical Education curriculum.

Why are we mentioning all these information? After all, this happened one month ago.

sports
Toronto Raptors guard Jeremy Lin brings the ball up court during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Sunday, March 17, 2019, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

All these came about because of the accomplishments of an Asian-American basketballer, Jeremy Lin, who graduated from Harvard. He entered the National Basketball Association (NBA) under the radar. Nobody knew about him until the coach threw him into the starting lineup in desperation. And since he became the starting point guard, the New York Knicks has won the following 6 games. While he might not eventually become a mega-star like Yao Ming, he has proved that he can play basketball and might end up to be a star of his own right.

Jeremy graduated from Harvard with an economics degree. While he was not in the dean’s list, he had a decent grades. He is only one of the many examples of athletes that also did well in school.

In fact, there has been many studies that proves that there is a link between fitness and academic results. Students that were the fit tended to score better than their peers.

So parents, encourage your children to exercise. Take up a sport. It will help your child’s fitness and academic results.