Guide Questions for Sports and the Educational Emergency

1. M. MacLuhan, advances the thesis that one discovers the code to a culture by looking at the way a
whole generation plays its games. To what extent is this true? Consider:
Formal Physical Education classes in schools
The kind of game splayed
The kind of spectator sports considered popular
Spectator behavior
How popular athletes are treated
Prevalent morals in sports
Competitive spirit
Fiscal expenditures
Personal expenditures

2. The episodes of violence among spectators in our own age once again raises the question about the
social, ethical and educational value of sport.
While this is itself a problem, what deeper problems could underlie this phenomenon?
What solutions can be taken or have been taken?

3. Increased access to consumer goods and free time has caused sport to grow as a leisure activity
known as amateur sport. It has led many people, youth and adults, men and women, to even become
fixated with physical fitness to the point of giving it and the body a certain cult status.
What does cult status mean? How is this a problem?
What solutions can be taken or have been taken?

4. Politics also enter the scene, making sport a means of channelling or strengthening social cohesions,
political consensus, and the popularity of dominant social currents which may suit any ideologies
whether democratic, totalitarian, right, left or centre.
How is this a problem?
Why does politics or why do politicians enter sports?
Can you think of recent examples, local and in other countries?
What have been the outcomes or what is the usual outcome when politics enters sports?

5. Sports have become consumer goods...

How is this a problem?
How did this happen?
Can you think of recent examples, local and in other countries?

Le temps est le sens de la vie (sens: comme on dit le sens dun cours deau, le sens dune phrase, le sens
dune toffe, le sens de lodorat). Claudel, Art Potique.