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IOC Culture and Olympic Education Forum : Thesis on Culture and Olympism
In the human species individuals are born cultureless. Ancient Greeks successfully used sport in building up their brilliant civilizations. Impacts of culture and education on sport are undeniable. Sport is not only the exalting of physical activities. “To place everywhere sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to encouraging the establishment of a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of the human dignity”, as Olympism suggest, must be done.
So
Olympism = Sport + Education + Culture
All sports are full of certain cultural symbols and messages. It needs to disseminate through sport cultural values and, in the Olympic Movement, that is to avoid the cultural homogenization, to favour a policy linking sport with culture and education, by encouraging education programs, universities and sport institutions.
It is not only to give sports an artistic overlook and make them more elegant, but also helpful in refining basic nature of sport and enhancing their value.
IOC Culture and Olympic Education Forum : The ideal policy to link sport with culture and education
Of the three components of this topic: sport, culture and education, culture is the most important and the most basic. Distinct cultures are passed on without being expressly taught. Education is the process through which cultures continue to exist.
In traditional societies, sport and games developed from daily activities. Many of these activities were functional. The diverse societies in the world have over a period of time evolved what they identify as the sports enshrined in their cultural and educational values.
Currently in Zambia, there are two kinds of sport. The first is made up of the successors to the traditional games, widely played, which are purely social and recreational. The second is that of games that are originally from other countries. These sports were introduced in schools and in community centres, mainly in urban areas. A new aspect of competition was introduced where players were rewarded for winning. These sports, which developed out of the cultures which devised them, were introduced into Zambian systems of culture and education.
In a real sense, sport and education are both cultural activities that play major roles in shaping an individual’s personality and also give a people some identity through their traditions. Where a society treats sport, culture and education as interrelated factors of human development, people benefit from all three. They are fit, educated to meet the needs of the society and secure in their cultural identity.
IOC Culture and Olympic Education Forum : How do young people today see Art and Olympism?
Since Seoul 1998, our research group at the University of Mainz has examined, inter alia, how the ideas of Coubertin and the Olympic Games are reflected in the experience of young people.
In addition to the philosophical interpretation and educational application of Olympism, art, with its opportunities for “expressive symbolization”, is another of its essential elements. To what extent and how well this has been acknowledged has been the subject of little scientific analysis. Any discussion of the relationship between sport and culture has mostly been limited to the theory that sport is part of culture has mostly been limited to the theory that sport is part of culture or to a discussion of the similarities and differences between the two systems.
Sport itself has aesthetic qualities, which ensures closeness to artistic productions. Sportswear and equipment are becoming increasingly aestheticized. The experience of sports architecture and the opening and closing ceremonies on television or at the stadium is setting new cultural trends. By and large, each foreign visitor has a considered encounter with the culture of the Games’ organizers.
As regards the Cultural Olympiads themselves, however, there is often a blatant discrepancy during the sports festival between the high quality of events on offer and the low demand among the public.
IOC Culture and Olympic Education Forum : Culture straight from the Internet
As the title suggests, my intention is to present “Culture live on Internet” – a challenge in itself. There can be no question of confining it to a traditional, concept-based discussion, albeit with the aid of slides. A new approach is required, which can be outlined as follows:
- This paper (or rather the text, its written expression) will form not the ideas involved as a whole, but the main thread of the experience we are about to share;
- This means that the screen (or pages of this publication) is no longer simply a place intended for illustration and documentation; it offers sites that we will open and consult together in real time;
- The innovation involves breaking with the limits of a traditional debate and opening it up, outside those limits, to the whole network;
- Finally, it is essential to bear in mind that internet is evolving continually, at a speed hitherto unknown, and that the outcome – cyberculture – is being transformed almost as we speak;
- Which means we need to be prepared to break with our mental habits and open up to those required by the experience of the “Net”.
IOC Culture and Olympic Education Forum : Prejudice – the link that affects both the world of culture and the world of sports,
Let’s be frank, and not fear words:
- cultured people/intellectuals, are normally classed as “boring” or, at best, “utopian”;
- sports people, devoted to the development of excellence in physical performance, supposedly do not make much use of reason or thought processes.
The power of the media and the world’s leaders have long since categorized culture and sport – they are pure divertimento!
The media succeeds in efforts to devote each of these two worlds a specific area, a “ghetto” for a privileged few.
The world’s leaders, in their own way, do the same thing, with the exception of electoral campaigns, where the brilliance of sports heroes and those of art and literature should shine over their own images, which compels them to be seen frequenting these heroes!!
Should we go back, therefore, to the Ancient Greeks? The only ones in Western culture to understand that in man’s flight towards perfection, his best scores were thanks to the efforts of thinkers, artists and Olympic athletes?
Can the current modern market of the “polis” really ignore the “humus” of culture and sport?
Be on your guard, for the divertimento of sport and culture will become the water and oil of the future. The “content” industries will, tomorrow, be those which will overturn the earth and move the world and humanity forward. To ensure your own survival, it would be best to forget about the reactions of the market, and follow instead the feelings of the creative artists, athletes, scientists and philosophers!