Education in sport

The development of modern sport as a global entity have been inextricably linked to the concept of education. Modern sport originated in educational institutes primarily in Britain during the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and was exported worldwide as an integral part of that educational system. Within these institutions, sport was originally seen as a device for building and demonstrating 'character', a rather vague term that is still used as a justification for its inclusion as an important extracurricular activity in schools and colleges today. As this review will show, sport in schools have been credited with teaching values of sportsmanship and fair play to participants, increasing athletes' educational aspirations, developing a sense of community and group cohesion among student, helping to reduce dropout rates, and giving poor and minority youth access to higher education.

However the educational 'effect' of sport has not been confined to educational institutes. It has been used to justify participation of all levels of society from community youth leagues to professional clubs. To this day, sport maintains a moral component, and individual participation in it is seen as worthwhile, an uplifting experience. Even professional athletes carry the moral baggage of sport genesis. They are supposed to be role models for youth, and their behaviour is often judged against a standard of morality rarely applied to other representatives of the entertainment industry such as film stars or rock musicians. In a symbolic sense sport has become part of what historian Eric Hobsbawm (1983) has called the 'invented traditions of culture. That is, it demonstrates to us that certain characteristics are true, and can be generalised at a societal level. When a few gifted athletes from low socio-economic backgrounds use interscholastic sports to advance their education and/or become extremely wealthy as a professional, many people use this as testament to the belief that society is 'open' and that everyone has the opportunity to be successful if they follow 'society's' rules. In American high schools these rules are literally written on the locker room walls. For example slogans such as 'there is no 'I' in team', 'quitters never win and winners never quit' and 'show me a good loser and I'll show you a good loser', teach us that we should sink our individuality into the greater goal of team victory and never cease to strive for success. After all America is a nation of 'winners' and we should be satisfied with nothing less than being 'number 1'. The failures of English soccer and cricket teams in international competition in recent years have been interpreted as symbolic of a general air of pessimism in the nation, and a 'wilful nostalgia' for what has been perceived as a more positive sporting era in the past.
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These Introductory comments illustrate two problems with regard to the issues of education and sport, one substantive, the other organizational. First, although sport is a global concept, organised sport in educational settings is more evident in some countries than in others. For example, in Germany and some Scandinavian countries organised inter-scholastic athletes is almost non-existent. Furthermore, the issue of sport in higher education sis primarily applicable to the United States where the educational value of quasi-professional sports in colleges is hotly debated. This means that a lot of the research reviewed on this page applies to countries that ...

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