Word: decathlons
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When Jim Hatem set out to prepare his students at Los Angeles High for this year's academic decathlon, which has become a kind of Super Bowl for brainy high schoolers, he anticipated a rigorous curriculum focused on the three Rs. Instead Hatem, a science teacher and volunteer coach, opened the prepackaged U.S. Academic Decathlon Association study materials and was stunned to discover bizarre questions asking, for example, what year the daughter of jazz great Charlie Parker died (1955). "This crap is the antithesis of everything education's supposed to be," Hatem fumes. Says Mark Johnson, who coached Los Angeles...
...revolt by educators against what they consider inappropriate testing has now reached even the arena where the very best students compete. Founded in 1981, the decathlon has come to be regarded as America's premier academic tournament, attracting young scholars from 2,200 schools in 38 states. Every spring, schools field teams that match wits in 10 subject areas from economics to arts, with the best teams advancing to national competitions. Successful teams bask in media limelight normally reserved for athletes, while enhancing their schools' reputation...
...next six years, he did his best to impress. He was editor of his high school paper. He made the academic decathlon team. He became an activist in his community. He won nearly every award his high school had to offer...
...shot put, a plow disk as a discus, a pitchfork handle as a javelin. He cut a bamboo tree into a pole and vaulted onto the garage. That was the beginning of a career that took him to the 1960 Olympics in Rome. Going into the finals in the decathlon, he needed only to clear his usual height of 14 ft. 10 in., in the pole vault to win a bronze medal. But he pulled a groin muscle and had to withdraw...
...Thorpe, winner of pentathlon and decathlon in 1912 Olympics, stripped of medals for having accepted $25 a week to play baseball...