8TH INTERNATIONAL SESSION FOR EDUCATORS AND OFFICIALS OF HIGHERINSTITUTES OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION (2008)
Youth Olympic Games and Brazilian Initiatives: the dissemination of Olympic Values
Ana Miragaya, Brazil
The idea of promoting sports for children and youth is not a recent one. Baron Pierre deCoubertin (1863-1937), the ‘renovateur’ of the Olympic Games and an educator par
excellence, had in mind the dissemination of values through sports (DaCosta, 2006). He hadlearned from modern sport in England and, in particular, from public school education atRugby, that the moral strength of young people can be critically developed through theindividual experience of sporting activities and then extended to their adult life. Coubertin
wanted to make modern sport part of the school routine and through it introduce sports
education which would comprise body and mind. Coubertin spoke of what he considered to be“sporting education”, which was the title of the book he published in 1922, Pédagogie Sportive(Müller, 2008).
Coubertin wanted to reform the French system of education using modern sport toreach his final goal. To him, the success of the first Olympic Games marked theinternationalization of his educational visions (Müller, 2008).
Following Coubertinian tradition spread around the world through the Olympic Games, it
is possible to observe that there is a tendency to associate the development of Olympic values
and principles in children and adolescents to the school context they attend through sporting
activities. Today’s “Olympic Education” promoted by the IOC, the NOCs and the NOAs in many
countries is a one-hundred-year legacy originated in Coubertin times.
In Brazil, since the foundation of the Brazilian Olympic Academy in 1989, there has
been some research concerning children’s participation in sport and their development ofvalues, particularly related to the school environment. The results of the studies are presented
during the Olympic Forums (NOA of Brazil), where there is appropriate space for the discussionof Olympic values, especially fair play.
Recent examples of research that can be pointed out include a study done by Gomes(1999), who investigated honesty and solidarity from the fair play point of view among highschool students. The results showed that the sporting practice and values of sport can havedifferent meanings to the different social groups children belong to. Through observation of
handball games, application of questionnaires and interviews, Turini (2002) drew a comparison
related to fair play between two groups of elementary school students: the first group followed
the practice of ‘their own’ fair play and the second one followed the rules of the Charter of Fair
Play from Oeiras, Portugal. The results showed that the instructions from the Charter were
unfruitful while the establishment of their own rules of fair play among the young players
proved to be much more effective, following the “sports education” propagated by Coubertin,which included sport in people’s search for the ‘expérience personelle’ (Müller, 2008).
Brazil also has examples of sport events for the youth. Secondary students had theirnational games in 1960s as the last stage of local school competitions (state and municipal).
The Jogos Estudantis Brasileiros (Brazilian Students Games – JEBs) were created in 1969 and,in the following years, took on proportions of very large events with yearly games in many
Brazilian cities bringing together an average of 5,000 participating athletes. The JEBs lasted
until 1975, when names and organization were modified bringing them today to their 25thedition. It has been estimated that the 2003 event had around 1 million students of secondary
level participating in municipal and state competitions for the selection of the 2,400 athletes
that represented the 27 Brazilian states in the final competitions. Recent evaluations haverevealed that the success of the JEBs in the past and their present legacy were due to thesense of continuous improvement of coaches, directors and athletes, added to regional selfesteem. This sense of actualization influenced Brazilian sport so positively as a whole at thattime that today it is asking for the retrieval of its memory (Thompson, 2005).
Furthermore, in 2003, the Secretaria de Educação do RS (RS Secretary of Education)
promoted the School Games of Rio Grande do Sul – JERGS, aiming at students from 10 to 17
years of age registered in the public and the private school systems. This event had theparticipation of 497 municipalities, 10,300 schools and approximately 1,700,000 people
involved as assistants or in activities that would provide support to the Games. Actually,1according to DaCosta (1996), school games in Brazil appeared first in the 1930s, becoming
important sports events during the 1950s. Today, these games are located in five States of theBrazilian Federation with status of mega-events despite being disconnected from OlympicEducation.
Recently, the Social Service of the Industry in Brazil, SESI, has also begun a very special
sports project for the Brazilian youth: the Project Athlete of the Future (PAF). This program isbeing conducted in some States and will very soon be spread nationwide. PAF is a socialeducational program done through a variety of sport disciplines and cultural activities, which
are attractive to children and adolescents from 7 to 17 years of age, in particular thoseparticipants whose parents and/or relatives are connected to the Brazilian industry. The
participation of the youth is systematically done on a permanent basis stimulating thedevelopment of values through sport (Olympic values) and helping the young participants
develop optimal culture related to sports as the final aim of PAF is to privilege sport, educationand culture, with reflections within the communities in which they live (SESI, 2008).
PAF currently caters for 74,000 young participants, but it wants to reach as many
children as possible. Every two years some SESI regional units stage a Festival for the Youth,in which the young people who are already engaged in PAF from several small cities and towns
are brought together in healthy competitions, celebrating their young talents for sport as wellas the values and other lessons learned. In addition, every July, annual competitions called‘Young People in Action’ add to the enthusiasm of the participants, preparing them for thelarger festivals.
Since Coubertin started preaching his principles of ‘Pédagogie Sportive’, linking children,
adolescents and their educational environment to sport, it has not been very easy to separate
the youth who do sports through schools from the youth who do not attend school as
education is mandatory for all. It is therefore important to keep in mind that despite the factthat some investigations can be conducted in clubs and sports associations, the researcher has
to always consider the influence of sporting education upon the sport competitive school
environment. This rationale is one of the key points to be considered when we all are facing
the challenges of Youth Olympic Games – starting in Singapore, 2010 – which implies inpromoting Olympic values – not mentioning Olympic Education - in top level sports competition
for young athletes.
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Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, no. 33, pp. 157 – 173.
DACOSTA, L.P. (1996). Youth Sport in Brazil. In Worldwide Trends in Youth Sport, DeKnop, P., Engstrom, L., Skirstad, B. and Weiss, M. R. (Eds), Champaign—Illinois: HumanKinectics.
GODOY, L. (2002). Educação Olímpica no Ensino Fundamental. In TURINI, M. & DACOSTA, L.
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GOMES, M. (1999). Solidariedade e Honestidade: os fundamentos do fair-play entre
adolescentes escolares. In TAVARES, O. & DACOSTA, L. (Orgs.) Estudos Olímpicos.
Rio de Janeiro: Editora Gama Filho.
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THOMPSON, I. (2005). School Games in Brazil (JEBs). In DaCosta (Org.) (2005). Atlas ofSports in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro: Shape.
TURINI, M. (2001). Avaliação do Fair Play na IV Olimpíada do Senac, em Irajá, RJ. In
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TURINI, M. (2002). Comportamento Normatizado versus Comportamento Efetivo na Prática doFair Play entre Jovens Escolares, de Quintino, Rio de Janeiro. Dissertação de mestrado.
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