Education in Sport

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 trad...

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...sts to interpret this

tradition using a number of theoretical and methological perspectives.

These include empirical approaches designed to test the usually

anecdotal evidence given to support competitive sports programs in

schools and colleges. This research tries to assess what changes occur

as a result of participation in interscholastic athletes. Other

approaches from a Marxist and critical theory perspective have

challenged the underlying assumptions of 'equality' in society and how

sport can help to perpetuate social class race and gender

inequalities, and encourage practices such as dieting, drug taking and

aggression which endanger physical and mental health. In particular,

feminist research has revealed the way sport can reinforce patriarchy

as the natural order of social relationship between male and females.