Gilbert Doume, originally a Civil Engineer from Cameroon, moved to Senegal in 2008 to work on construction projects. After a few years in the industry, he decided to go freelance. That’s when Gilbert realised that he needed to expand his skills and up his career game. While searching for learning and development opportunities online, Gilbert came across Alison and the goldmine of online educational courses he could take for free to boost his professional skillset.
Expanding Horizons: Diving into Real Estate and Interior Design
One of the first topics Gilbert decided to explore was real estate. After that, he delved into interior design. The insights he gained from these courses made him more confident in his work. According to Gilbert, Alison is a fantastic tool for self-improvement.
It’s user-friendly, and as long as you’ve got a phone or computer and an internet connection, you’re good to go.
A Platform for Growth: Why Young Professionals Should Listen
Gilbert believed free online learning platforms like Alison can help young professionals level up and refine the skills they need to succeed professionally. He believes that the platform can truly empower people by giving them access to a ton of useful knowledge and career-building tools.
If you, like Gilbert, are looking to learn new skills or polish the ones you already have, join Alison and get access to thousands of free courses and professional tools.
Use your imagination to write the opening of a short story or poem inspired by this illustration, or describe a memory from your own life that this image makes you think of.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
The word tantamount has appeared in 74 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Feb. 8 in “Rihanna: Since She’s Been Gone” by Lindsay Zoladz:
That is what happened when Rihanna was absent from the Met Gala for a single year: A monument to missing her was commissioned. Multiply the intensity of that longing by seven to imagine the sort of withdrawal that has been afflicting the music industry for nearly a decade.
… But the bottom line is more serious: Because of the length of Rihanna’s hiatus, the stakes for her return keep growing. For a star with 14 No. 1 tracks on Billboard’s Hot 100 — and 63 songs on the chart to date — a middling return could be tantamount to a flop.
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word tantamount in a sentence?
Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.
Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.
If you want a better idea of how tantamount can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.
Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.
Are you a secondhand shopper? Do you enjoy sifting through racks, bins and shelves to find a bargain or a one-of-a-kind item? Do you shop at thrift stores or on websites like Depop? What about at in-person events like garage sales or flea markets?
Would you want to shop the world’s longest yard sale?
To the visitor driving in from out of state, the 127 Yard Sale seems like a kind of Ironman for thrifters. The “world’s longest yard sale” is a test of endurance and attention. Spanning six states, 690 miles and thousands of stalls, it traverses dramatic landscapes, delicate cultural terrain and two time zones. Seeing it all in the four allotted days — Aug. 3 to 6 this year — is enough to induce vertigo in even the most stable-minded deal hunter. But some of us are foolish enough to try anyway.
The event was designed to promote cultural and economic exchange. In 1987, Mike Walker, then a 28-year-old county executive in Jamestown, Tenn., conceived of it as a way to lure travelers off the Interstate and into the small towns along U.S. Route 127, from Jamestown to Covington, Ky. In the following decades, it spread south to Georgia and Alabama and inched north to Ohio and then Michigan.
The 127 Yard Sale is fluid, kinetic, alive. This makes it a bit hard to find its official beginning. Driving down 127, I started to see “yard sale” signs long before reaching its northernmost point in Addison, Mich. We asked some guys at a gas station where they thought it started. They pointed to a nearby Baptist church, and soon we were standing in an orderly marketplace on a plot of pine and grass. Here I saw the first arrays of glassware, the first piles of free naked dolls, the dubbed VHS tapes, the loose silverware, the lines of floating dresses.
This couldn’t be a contiguous sale — or could it? The Facebook group I’d joined suggested that Michigan was the sparsest section. But even here, we could hardly drive a quarter mile without spying a Sharpied invitation to a “Barn Sale” a mile away, or “Thousands of Items, CHEAP, 4th House on Your Left.” A subtle terror began to take hold — a respect for the enormous scale of the thing.
Ms. Waldman also shares observations about the people and places she encountered while traveling the route of the sale:
Mennonites became fixtures of the sale. They sold traditional items: dilly beans, horse-churned ice cream, fresh-cut flowers, wooden carvings and a heartbreaking number of puppies. Their children were shy but excitable in the face of so many nonbelievers. Among the piles of pilled Lycra blends and polyesters, their plain dress stood out. It read as luxury, utilitarian haute couture. I bought myself a bonnet at one of their stands. Nodding approvingly, the seller informed me: “Most of our customers are defiant women.”
Deep in farm country, the pull of northern industrial towns could still be felt. One couple had a baroque volume of German sausage recipes, published by the Oscar Mayer corporation. The owners knew it was one of their prize pieces. The husband grew up in Wisconsin near one of the sausage conglomerate’s biggest factories and told me that it shut down a few years back. There were only a few copies left, he said.
The number of sales increased in Kentucky. People were friendly, chatty, open about everything but their politics. The church may reign supreme here, but people don’t pretend to be purists. They’re frank about their lapses and relapses. I heard people telling their neighbors, friends and perfect strangers about treatment centers for opioid addiction, about loved ones struggling through it, about those who didn’t make it and where their graves are.
Sometimes the friendliness and good humored conversation masked an anxiety about making a sale. My boyfriend flirted with buying a chicken-shaped fan, discounted because of its missing tail. The two women selling it — good-humored friends who had helped each other through a series of hardships — were proud of the piece, and disappointed when we left without it. “We’ve only made $8 so far,” they said. They had a bunch of photo frames for sale, one of them containing a sign for a diaper raffle. A sign over another stall advertised “Old Bottles and Basset Hound Puppies.” The seller’s son held one of the fat-bellied puppies — $450 each — tenderly in his lap, sad to see them go. A nearby needlepoint wall hanging, listed for 50 cents, read: “Friends are the best collectibles.”
Students, read the entire article and look carefully at the accompanying photos, and then tell us:
Based on what you read and saw, do you want to go to the 127 Yard Sale next year? Why or why not? Would you want to travel all 690 miles of it, like Ms. Waldman did? What details from the article or from the photographs interest you the most? Why?
What has been your most notable secondhand acquisition, whether you bought it at a yard sale, found it on a resale site or were given it by a family member or friend? What do you love about it?
What do you enjoy about the experience of secondhand shopping? For you, is it about the bargain prices, the unique finds, the low environmental impact or something else? If you’ve never done this sort of shopping before, would you like to? Why or why not?
Have you ever sold any of your own items secondhand, such as at a neighborhood garage sale, at a consignment store or online? Would you want to participate in a massive multistate event like the 127 Yard Sale?
Have you ever encountered interesting people or places on a secondhand shopping adventure that you might not have otherwise, as Ms. Waldman did at the 127 Yard Sale? If so, tell us about a memorable experience.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling ending race-conscious admissions in June placed a spotlight on legacy preferences in higher education, a practice that mostly helps white and wealthy students.
Many selective colleges give a boost during the admissions process to the children or grandchildren of alumni, making them more likely to gain admission. But following the Supreme Court ruling, the Education Department opened a civil rights investigation into Harvard University’s legacy admissions policy.
“We Benefited From Legacy Admissions. And We Want It to End.” is a five-minute Opinion video that profiles five legacy students who wrestle with the advantages they enjoyed in the college admissions process.One Ivy League graduate laments, “It’s painful for me to think that all of my hard work in high school was so irrelevant compared to the fact that I was able to check the box that my dad went there.” Another says, “Legacy admissions is affirmative action for the rich.”
How persuasive is the video? Do you agree that legacy admissions should end? What factors do you think colleges and universities should take into account when considering whom to admit?
Students
1. Watch the short film above. While you watch, you might take notes using our Film Club Double-Entry Journal (PDF) to help you remember specific moments.
2. After watching, think about these questions:
What questions do you still have?
What connections can you make between this film and your own life or experience? Why? Does this film remind you of anything else you’ve read or seen? If so, how and why?
3. An additional challenge | Respond to the essential question at the top of this post: Should we end legacy admissions?
4. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)
5. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.
The Supreme Court ruling put a renewed emphasis on fairness in college admissions. The high court voted 6 to 3 to reject affirmative action programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, a decision expected to lower the number of Black students at selective college campuses.
Since the ruling, a handful of colleges have dropped legacy preferences, including the University of Minnesota and Wesleyan University. In an interview, Michael S. Roth, Wesleyan’s president, said legacy status had played a “negligible role” in admissions but that it was becoming a distraction and “a sign of unfairness to the outside world.”
The opposition to legacy preferences is bipartisan. President Biden; Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York; and Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, have all spoken out against the practice.
In a concurring opinion in the ruling on race-conscious admissions, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch criticized preferences for the children of donors and alumni, saying they “undoubtedly benefit white and wealthy applicants the most.”
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
The Supreme Court’s decision in June to reject race-conscious admissions at colleges and universities around the nation upended decades of law and the higher education landscape. The ruling will shift the makeup of many of America’s top universities as well as the prospects of students who want to attend them.
In this lesson, students will learn more about the decision and what it will mean for them. Through interactive activities we invite them to explore the questions at the heart of the debate: How much does diversity matter in higher education? To what extent do colleges and universities have a responsibility to be equitable, inclusive and fair?
Warm-Up
Part 1: Four Corners Activity
To help students begin to understand the intent of race-based affirmative action and the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision, you might start with a Four Corners activity.
Invite them to imagine they are admissions officers at a college or university. What factors should their school take into account when considering whom to admit?
Read aloud a variety of factors colleges might consider, allowing students to move into a corner of the room that indicates whether they strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree for each one. After each statement, give students time to reflect on and discuss their stance. (For more on conducting a Four Corners activity, see this resource from our friends at Facing History and Ourselves.)
We suggest starting with a factor that most students would probably agree with, such as grades or test scores, and then moving into increasingly more debatable territory, such as gender or the ability to pay tuition, and finally ending with race, the subject of the recent Supreme Court decision. For example, you might follow this sequence:
Colleges should consider a student’s _________ in the admissions process.
grades
test scores
potential to be a college athlete
gender
ability to pay tuition
legacy status (whether parents or relatives are alumni of the university)
experience in overcoming obstacles or adversity
race
This activity might provoke conversations about what the purpose of college is, what diversity is and to what extent it is important when it comes to education. It might also raise questions about what is fair. Wrap up the activity by having students write about or discuss the following questions, each of which touch on issues that have been used as a rationale for race-based affirmative action:
To what extent should colleges prioritize building a diverse incoming class of students? What does “diversity” mean to you? What factors should admissions officers be able to consider when it comes to building a diverse student body? What factors, if any, should they be prohibited from considering?
Do you believe that colleges have a responsibility to ensure that some students from disadvantaged backgrounds whose applications may not be as polished as those of their wealthier peers, have the opportunity to attend? Why, or why not? What if the university can admit only a limited number of students?
Part 2: The History of Affirmative Action
Have students watch this two-minute video from 2017 to understand the history of affirmative action. The Harvard case mentioned in the video was one of two cases decided by the Supreme Court in June.
Now, consider this question: In earlier decisions, the Supreme Court endorsed “affirmative action” — the taking account of race as one factor among many to promote educational diversity. But this summer the court ruled that race can no longer be used as part of the admissions process. What do you think: Should race be used as one factor, but not the only factor, in the admissions process to help make sure that college campuses are diverse? Why, or why not?
1. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. What were his primary arguments why affirmative action, even after so many years of being allowed by the courts, should now be ruled unlawful?
2. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent. What were her primary arguments for why affirmative action was still important and for why she disagreed with the majority decision?
3. The two cases decided in June were not identical. What were the two cases about? How were they different?
4. Who brought the lawsuits? For what purpose?
5. The 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger had been the key precedent before the June ruling. What was the court’s decision in that case?
6. What is your reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision? Which arguments do you find more compelling — those written by Chief Justice Roberts or those written by Justice Sotomayor? Why?
Going Further
What does the end of affirmative action mean for the future of higher education? What will it mean for students who are planning to apply to college in the near future? In these activities, which build upon one another, students can explore these questions further:
Invite students to share their reactions to the end of affirmative action in our related student forum.
Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s recent decision? Should colleges be allowed to use race as a factor in deciding which students to admit, whether to address racial discrimination or to build a more diverse student body? Why, or why not?
Students can read an article about young people’s reactions to the decision and then weigh in with their own thoughts in our public forum.
Explore what the college admissions process looks like now.
If students are confused about what the end of race-based affirmative action means for them, they might look at these resources from The Times:
Students can read one or more of these articles and then write about or discuss the following questions:
In what ways will the end of race-conscious admissions affect you: where you decide to apply to college, what you might write about in your admissions essay, or anything else?
Which changes are most concerning to you? Are there any that you think are positive?
What questions do you still have about how the court’s decision will affect college admissions? You might write these down and bring them to your guidance counselor to discuss further.
Envision a future of higher education that is inclusive, equitable and fair.
“With the Supreme Court’s recent ruling striking down affirmative action, the world of college admissions is poised for a transformation — which could also be an opportunity,” begins “How to Fix College Admissions Now,” a series from The Opinion section.
AS OF LAST WEEK, universities face a new legal constraint: the Supreme Court has profoundly restricted the use of race as a factor in admissions. Nothing in its decision, however, frees universities from their moral obligation to create on-ramps for talented students from all backgrounds. Talent exists everywhere; opportunity does not. Finding it and nurturing it remain entirely consistent with the mission of higher education and, indeed, vital to our democracy.
More than in any other setting, students who are raised in homogeneous neighborhoods and schools first encounter difference — class, racial, ethnic and religious — in college.
It is in college that many students first have the opportunity to form meaningful relationships and exchange ideas across difference and prepare for a society and a work force comprising people from all walks of life. The process of learning from one another is both rewarding and challenging; speaking as someone whose educational journey began with being bused to formerly all-white public schools and eventually took me to the Ivy League, I can say this was as true for me as it was for my peers.
Do your students agree? What should the goals of college be? What should schools prioritize during the admissions process? How can the process become more inclusive, equitable and fair now that race-conscious admissions is no longer legal?
We rounded up ideas from this series and elsewhere in The Times to give students the chance to rethink the college admissions process. For this activity, we imagine students working in small groups or individually to read one of these pieces, summarize its argument, and then decide to what extent they agree or disagree, and why. Then larger groups (as a jigsaw), or the whole class, can share the different proposed solutions and consider the questions above.
Since the 1960s, some colleges and universities have used race (a practice called affirmative action) as one of many criteria when deciding which students to admit. First, in the 1960s, some colleges wanted to open doors to Black students that had previously been closed because of longstanding racial discrimination. Later, many colleges considered an applicant’s race in an effort to create diverse student bodies. This summer, however, the Supreme Court ruled that race can no longer be used as part of the college admissions process.
What do you think? Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s recent decision? Should colleges be allowed to use race as a factor in deciding which students to admit, whether to address racial discrimination or to build a more diverse student body? Why or why not?
The teenagers seeking shade as their tour groups crisscrossed leafy Harvard Yard on Thursday knew that they would be among the first students to feel the effect of the Supreme Court’s ruling on race-based admissions when they applied to colleges.
What they didn’t know was exactly how it would affect their chances. But many high school students, visiting Harvard University and beyond, said they were concerned to see long-established admissions practices giving way to something new and unfamiliar.
“It makes me more stressed about the whole concept of college,” said Danyael Morales, 16, a rising senior of Dominican and Puerto Rican heritage at Boston Latin Academy, a public school in Boston. “And with the whole agenda of not seeing race, I feel like colleges are not going to see me.”
The court voted 6 to 3 to reject affirmative action programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The move is expected to lower the number of Black and Latino students at elite college campuses.
In Chapel Hill, N.C., most U.N.C. students are gone for the summer, but the student union swarmed with high school hopefuls trying on Carolina sweatshirts while their parents clutched admissions folders.
William Walker, who is Black, was visiting from Minneapolis to settle his son, an incoming freshman, at orientation. He discussed the decision with his family after the news broke. His daughter, a high school student, said it made her nervous about what college would be like for her, though Mr. Walker was not concerned, given her high grades and Advanced Placement classes.
He said his family would do their best to adapt. “You just adjust the fight. If Mike Tyson sends jabs to the gut, you rock and send uppercuts.”
Yosef Herrera, 16, a Hispanic high school student in Mercedes, Texas, said he supported the Supreme Court decision because he thought that affirmative action focused too much on race, often at the expense of other factors like ethnicity or family income. The policy can hurt people by inflaming racial divisions, he said.
When his time comes to apply to the Ivy League schools that he hopes to attend, Mr. Herrera, who is a co-chair of the High School Republican National Federation, said: “I think they’ll be fair. They’ll look at my application, and they’ll see what I’ve done as a person.”
The Supreme Court ended race-conscious admissions at colleges and universities. In other words, colleges can no longer take race into account when they are deciding whether to admit a student. How do you feel about this decision?
How important is diversity as part of the college experience in your opinion? How do you define “diverse”? Since colleges can no longer look at race, how else should they try to create a diverse student body?
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.” But colleges are allowed to consider other qualities that students are born into and do not control, such as their gender, whether their parents are alumni, and whether they are from an underrepresented state. Should colleges still be allowed to consider these qualities? If yes, how are they different from race? If no, why not?
Students can still write about how race might have affected their life experience in their essay. “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. Colleges can no longer consider race, but they can consider how race might have affected an applicant’s life: What do you think about that distinction? Will you consider writing about race in your college application?
Some colleges began using race-based affirmative action after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as a way to provide opportunities to academically gifted Black students who otherwise would not get a chance to attend schools like Harvard and Columbia because of persistent racism. In the decades that followed, some people argued that the time period when racism affected a student’s academic opportunities was over, while other people argued that many students were still affected by the history of racism in the United States and lingering systemic racism. What do you think? Do you think race-based affirmative action still has a role to play in repairing the damage of America’s legacy of racism?
The effect of race-conscious admissions has always been limited to a relatively small number of students applying to elite colleges. For the vast majority of students, these schools are not an option — academically or financially. Why do you think our society spends so much time and energy focusing on this subject? How else do you think the United States could strive for equity — racial or otherwise — when it comes to college?
Learning to code so that you can land a job in tech can feel daunting. That’s why we’re sharing inspiring stories from Codecademy’s community — to show how people like you (yes, you!) can embark on a learning journey and end up with a totally new career. We hope these stories serve as a reminder that there’s no single path to a more fulfilling work life.
Today’s story is a special back-to-school edition from Hisham Touma, a Codecademy Associate Instructional Designer who taught middle school robotics and computer programming before joining our team. Read more stories from Codecademy learners here — and be sure to share your story here.
Why I chose to learn to code
“When I was in high school, I was in an International Baccalaureate program, and one of the electives offered was computer science. Up until then, I’d never heard of programming. They made me go sit in for one of the classes as a sophomore, because the elective started in junior year. The teacher was teaching Java, and I was like, Ah, this is pretty cool. I signed up for the elective. Unfortunately for me, that summer I got a call from the principal of the school telling me that they couldn’t register me for the computer science class, because not enough students had signed up for it. I later found out that I was the only one that signed up.
Learn something new for free
That said, I actually wanted to learn programming. I liked airplanes and the concept of flight. I took a physics course in high school, and I realized I was kind of good at it. My teacher told me, ‘You know, rockets and airplanes have a lot to do with programming, especially the embedded systems. All of these computer chips are programmed with languages.’”
How I made time to learn
“Being incredibly curious, when I was 15 years old, I picked up a book on C++ called Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours. I basically started studying and just tried to the best of my abilities to teach myself C++, of all languages. The very first thing I did when I learned C++ was design calculators for physics that could calculate kinetic energy, just to practice programming. I liked it, so I just kept going and going. When I was a little older, I discovered Arduino and started playing with it, and continued to program.
I am a self-taught programmer, mostly from reading books and watching tutorials. In college, I majored in mechanical engineering with the intent of working for the aerospace industry. My focus was the field of computational fluid dynamics, which is basically the application of math and computer science in mechanical engineering.”
What got me interested in the job
“I have 17 years of teaching experience — basically any job I’ve had my entire life has been in education. My first job out of school, I ran the outreach program at my university for teachers trying to learn coding. I was teaching the teachers how to code. I used to be a robotics teacher at a school on the Upper West Side, and I coached the robotics teams, both FLL and FTC. And I also gave courses in computer programming, basic mechatronics, and electronic design.
Programming is 20% knowing the syntax and 80% knowing how to think.
Hisham Touma
Associate Instructional Designer at Codecademy
In 2017, I taught a summer program for middle schoolers on basic programming at the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, and in the very last week, we used Codecademy. Codecademy has the lesson plan already laid out for you, and everything is right there prepared for you in the learning environment to start coding. The students would basically go through the tutorials, and I was just there to help out and guide them if they got stuck. Mind you, these students were 12 years old, so naturally a lot of questions can arise.
Programming is a nice thing to know, not only just for the coding part, but just to teach you how to think. At that age, learning to code and computational thinking is more of a brain exercise than a career move. I like to see someone who didn’t know anything about this subject suddenly develop the interest that I did when I was a child. That’s probably the most rewarding part.”
Here’s what you need to get started
“I learned how to program in 2004, a year before YouTube came out, so all I had was books. Now there are way more resources, like Codecademy and YouTube — there’s just a wealth of information on the internet. With AI, now you don’t even need a book. If you get stuck, you can just ask a robot.
Programming is 20% knowing the syntax and 80% knowing how to think. There are patterns, algorithms, data structures, and all these conceptual ideas that you have to absorb to make programs and apps. Programming languages are how you implement those ideas.”
My advice for students learning how to code
“Revisit why you want to learn how to code. Say you’re someone who really likes video games and is very curious how they work. Perhaps your school doesn’t have a programming curriculum that focuses on game development? You may want to look at more coding courses that will guide you more towards programming video games, for example, in Python you have Pygame. Look back and remember why you started, and if you’re deviating from that, get yourself back on track.”
Conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Not sure where to start? Check out our personality quiz! We’ll help you find the best programming language to learn based on your strengths and interests.
Want to share your Codecademy learner story? Drop us a line here. And don’t forget to join the discussions in our community.
These last weeks of summer are “one last chance to be lazy” says a Times writer.
Do you like loafing? Or are you someone who would rather keep busy? Why? How do you spend a day when you have nothing to do and nowhere to be?
Does our society value idleness or despise it? Why do you think that is? Do you think our views of laziness should change?
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to hear loafers and idlers, including the heads of the Lazy Butt Club, extol the virtues of the not-so-busy life.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
No, not those cute animals with the horns and the beards. The Greatest of All Time.
Tom Brady. Serena Williams. LeBron James. Lionel Messi. Muhammad Ali. Roger Federer. What about Novak Djokovic, who just won his 24th Grand Slam? Or is it impossible, even foolish, to say?
In his essay “GOATs Are Everywhere in Sports. So What Really Defines Greatness?” published in July at the start of Wimbledon, Kurt Streeter considers how sports heroes become transcendent and why we have become so obsessed with the question of who is the greatest:
If you are reading this column, I have great news: You’re the GOAT!
That’s right: Among those who have happened upon this space, I deem you the Greatest Reader of All Time.
Then again, if you’re LeBron James, or Serena Williams, or Nikola Jokic — with that sparkling N.B.A. championship ring — well, you already know you’re the GOAT. Everyone has been saying so.
Driven by its pervasive usage around sports, five years ago the wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster entered the term GOAT in the dictionary as an acronym and a noun.
LeBron James is considered by many to be the GOAT in men’s basketball.
Defining the term as “the most accomplished or successful individual in the history of a particular sport or category of performance or activity,” a Merriam-Webster editor nodded to the pervasive use of Tom Brady’s name along with GOAT in a popular search engine as an example of why the acronym had become dictionary official.
Yeah, I know — this GOAT thing, it’s a little confusing. To be the greatest implies singularity, no? But now there are GOATs everywhere we turn.
Even worse than the acronym’s overuse is its doltish simplicity. There’s not enough nuance. Too much emphasis on outright winning, not enough on overcoming.
What are our options here? Maybe we should ban the use of the term outright in sports, following the lead of Lake Superior State University, which cheekily ranked the hazy, lazy acronym No. 1 on its 2023 list of banished words.
Mr. Streeter reflects on the origins of the term GOAT, and on the “craziness” of trying to identify the GOAT in a particular sport — but also on “the foolishness and the fun of it.” Then, after all of that ruminating, he goes on to name his list of GOATS:
Who’s the GOAT?
Well, to be honest, I’ve got four. Willie Mays. Joe Montana. Williams. Federer.
I can remember each for their sublime victories, of course. But also their stumbles. A 42-year-old Mays lost in the outfield. A fragile Montana in his twilight, playing not for San Francisco but Kansas City.
I was on hand to see Williams struggle and come up short as she chased that elusive last Slam. I sat feet from Federer as he held two match points against Djokovic in the Wimbledon final of 2019. Then the Swiss crumbled in defeat.
“For now it hurts, and it should — every loss hurts at Wimbledon,” Federer said at the post-match news conference. But, he added, he would persevere. “I don’t want to be depressed about actually an amazing tennis match.”
No one escapes disappointment and frailty. But if we do it right, we soldier on.
You know what that means? It means all of us can be GOATs!
Who’s the GOAT? Make your case for the best player of an individual sport — like basketball, tennis or hockey — or for the single greatest athlete of all time.
What’s your criteria for greatness? Is the greatest player the one you want to be batting in the seventh game of the World Series, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning? The athlete with the most rings — victories, championships or titles? The most impressive longevity? The biggest effect on sports, and the world beyond?
What do you think of Mr. Streeter’s nominees for GOAT — Mays, Montana, Williams and Federer? Would any make your Mount Rushmore of sports heroes? Why do you think his essay mentions seeing these four superstars in moments of “disappointment and frailty”? How do they figure in the intricate calculus of GOAT-dom?
Does the GOAT really matter? Should we care who is the best at something? Or should the acronym be banned from sports debates for being overused, “hazy” and “lazy”? Why do you think people love to argue about the GOAT?
If you’re not an avid sports fan, tell us who you think should be considered the greatest of all time in another field: The greatest rapper? Guitar player? Writer? Chef? Teacher?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
