Sport — Personality — Education

Abstract

Learning Opportunities in Sport*In a wise and knowledgeable dissertation on the justification for the teaching of sport we find at the end, after everything that need be said on the subject today has been properly dealt with, the following sentence: "If we were to proceed far enough, it is conceivable that we might pose the question whether sport is meaningful at all".Well, today I would like to proceed as far as this with you. For the question is not only conceivable, it is a necessary question, especially for the man who is not exactly plagued by fundamental doubts but wishes primarily to solve a practical problem: what should children and young people learn about what goes on under the name of "sport" and claims so much attention and expense?If one is to answer this question, one needs standards. And one arrives at these most easily if one tries to imagine there were no such thing as sport in our world: what then?In the first part of my paper I should like to examine the suppositions (certainly not original) that this suggests to us. In a second part I should then like to examine the question how sport becomes a school subject, or, in reverse order, what school makes out of sport. This will reveal a discrepancy between the anthropological, social and individual needs which express themselves in sport and the artificial product with which education responds to these needs. How to overcome this discrepancy is the problem which I will deal with in the third and last part of my paper. What Would Happen If There Were no Such Thing as Sport?If one wishes to involve others in this question, one is obliged to let them know what one means by sport. For my purposes it is enough to say: sport covers everything for which the term "sport" is used, including fishing and mini-golf, even motoring, and if Mr. Smith -although he could quite well go by tram -takes a fortyminute walk to work, the term "sport" includes this exercise too, provided he expressly looks on it as "his sport".Let us then take all this away from modern man and at the same time take away many things that are not identical with sport but that owe their existence to sport: the crowds of spectators in the stadium and before the television screen, sporting fashions and even the educational method of "physical exercise"; and let us then examine our losses as well as our possible gains. * Translated from German. A more detailed German version is published in: Sportwissenschaft 2. 239-257 (1972). 91Sport -Personality -Education a) Real Needs that Would Remain UnsatisfiedIt is not difficult to imagine the impoverishment that normal life would suffer.We need movement. Without sufficient movement, while enjoying more than sufficient food, many people suffer from obesity, circulatory troubles, muscular weakness, stiffness of the joints. Without sufficient movement they cannot enjoy their food or their rest, they are unpleasant to look at and come prematurely to depend upon the ministrations of others.We seek competition. The sporting contest is a form of intra-specif...