This is a values education mandate. Some of the specific positive values referred to in these principles include a respect for balance in the human character between aspects of mind, body and spirit, an understanding of the joy found in effort, an emphasis on peaceful behaviour, and respect for others (here described as preservation of human dignity). The principles, while somewhat awkward in their English wording, also include direction for an Olympic pedagogy. That is, the fundamental principles seem to suggest components of a possible teaching and learning strategy. Note the references to such strategies as “blending sport with culture and education,” setting “good examples,” and encouraging participation in sport as an educational situation in which these values can be developed.

It is hoped that this paper will inaugurate a worldwide discussion on the topic of Olympic pedagogy. In a post-modern milieu is it even thinkable to speak about “universal fundamental ethical principles” as the Olympic Charter does? It is true that ethical issues such as fair play, violence, cheating, abuse of performance enhancing drugs, commercialism, equity, etc. receive much media attention and are frequently addressed in papers and presentations at Olympic sport and physical education conferences. They seem to have worldwide relevance. Unfortunately the pedagogy of these issues is rarely addressed. How are fair play/ethical behaviours learned? How can they be taught, and how can this teaching be supported? The literature also appears silent on the cross-cultural issues. How, for example, is fair play understood and experienced by people in different cultural contexts?

Educators, like all people, are products of their own cultural, political and educational milieaux. They see the world through the filters of their particular educational and systemic orientations. Hans Georg Gadamer (1989) describes this filter as a “horizon” defining the boundaries of understanding between people. Thus, for example, this paper is somewhat defined or boundaried by its dependence on Euro-American understandings (literature) available in English. It is also somewhat boundaried by the North-American, specifically Canadian, orientation of its author to schools, educational systems and curriculum.

Values development or values/moral education is a complex process that takes place in all aspects of the lifeworld of children and youth. In traditional cultures, influences such as the family, the immediate community and religion were the key factors in this process. These factors continue to have a significant influence. In most countries today, however, the responsibility for developing values is also assigned to schools in formal teaching settings Global influences such as TV, the internet, population displacement because of war and migration, and the living together of people from many different cultures further complicate the processes of helping children and youth develop positive values.

Gibbons et. al’s study, used empirical measures to test before and after responses in the areas of moral judgment, moral reason, moral intention, and prosocial behaviour. These measure were either based on or correlated closely with the stages of moral development model developed by Rest (1986). The researchers note that, “Although the products of this study (i.e., changes in quantitative scores) were highly visible, the processes by which these changes occurred were less discernible” (p. 254). It is the “less discernible” processes and the pedagogical decision-making that contributes to these processes that have now become the focus for curriculum theory related to ethics and moral education.

In exploring this shift in perspective and its implications for Olympic education, I want to highlight the works of four scholars: Martha Nussbaum (1986) - a philosopher, Carol Gilligan (1982) - a psychologist, and Nel Noddings (1984) and Maxine Greene (1995) - both educational philosophers and curriculum theorists. Their work provides a critique of cognitive-based, moral development models¾in particular the tendency of these models to simplify complex human interactions, and also to discount groups of people that don’t fit the model. Their work also offers helpful direction for curriculum development in ethical/moral education in the new century. Thus their work has profound implications for Olympic educators.

“Our Anglo-American philosophical tradition has tended to assume that the ethical text should, in the process of inquiry, converse with the intellect alone; it should not make its appeal to the emotions, feelings, and sensory responses. Plato explicitly argues that ethical learning must proceed by separating the intellect from our other merely human parts... The conversation we have with a work of tragic poetry is not like this. Our cognitive activity, as we explore the ethical conception embodied in the text, centrally involves emotional response. We discover what we think about these events partly by noticing how we feel; our investigation of our emotional geography is a major part of our search for self-knowledge.” (p. 15-16)

In A Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development by Carol Gilligan (1982), a former student of Lawrence Kohlberg, questioned the conclusions that Kohlberg reached about the moral reasoning of women and girls based on his model of the “hierarchical stages of moral reasoning.” She points out that Kohlberg’s (and Piaget’s) studies, carried out to develop the model and its descriptors, were based on sample populations of boys and men. She also notes that Kohlberg, like Freud and Piaget before him, all observe that somehow girls do not fit their models. When women do not conform to the standards of psychological expectation, she says, the conclusion has generally been that something is wrong with the women (p. 14).

“…boys play out of doors more often than girls do; boys play more often in large and age-heterogeneous groups; they play competitive games more often, and their games last longer than girls’ games…Boys’ games appeared to last longer not only because they required a higher level of skill and were thus less likely to become boring, but also because, when disputes arose in the course of a game, boys were able to resolve the disputes more effectively than girls…In fact, it seemed that the boys enjoyed the legal debates as much as they did the game itself, and even marginal players of lesser size or skill participated equally in these recurrent squabbles. In contrast, the eruption of disputes among girls tended to end the game.” (p. 10)

These gender differences that are noted in early childhood with respect to children’s games are even more obvious, Gilligan notes, at puberty. According to Piaget, she says, “children learn the respect for rules necessary for moral development by playing rule-bound games and Lawrence Kohlberg adds that these lessons are most effectively learned through the opportunities for role-taking that arise in the course of resolving disputes” (p. 10). Gilligan suggests that “rather than elaborating a system of rules for resolving disputes, girls subordinated the continuation of the game to the continuation of relationships” (p. 10). Gilligan argues that:

“Sensitivity to the needs of others and the assumption of responsibility for taking care lead women to attend to voices other than their own and to include in their judgment other points of view. Women’s moral weakness, manifest in an apparent diffusion and confusion of judgment, is thus inseparable from women’s moral strength, an overriding concern with relationships and responsibilities.” (pp. 16-17)
“The reluctance to judge, “she suggests, “may itself be indicative of the care and concern for others that infuse the psychology of women’s development and are responsible for what is generally seen as problematic in its nature” (pp. 16-17).

“Many of us in education are keenly aware of the distortion that results from undue emphasis on moral judgments and justification. Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory, for example is widely held to be a model for moral education, but is actually only a hierarchical description of moral reasoning. It is well known, further, that the description may not be accurate. In particular, the fact that women seem often to be “stuck” at stage three might call the accuracy of the description into question…”
“Women, perhaps a majority of women, prefer to discuss moral problems in terms of concrete situations. They approach moral problems not as intellectual problems to be solved by abstract reasoning but as concrete human problems to be lived and to be solved in living…Faced with a hypothetical moral dilemma, women often ask for more information.” (p. 96)

Noddings recommends that schools should be “deliberately redesigned to support caring and caring individuals” (p.182). She describes four fundamental strategies for nurturing the ethical ideal: dialogue, practice, confirmation and modeling. Most sport and physical educators would argue that sport played in the spirit of the Olympic ideals offers a context within which all of these strategies can be applied and practiced. With respect to confirmation, Noddings highlights the importance of the teacher’s special relationship with a student.

“A teacher cannot “talk” this ethic. She must live it, and that implies establishing a relation with the student. Besides talking to him and showing him how one cares, she engages in cooperative practice with him. He is learning not just mathematics or social studies; he is also learning how to be one-caring. By conducting education morally, the teacher hopes to induce an enhanced moral sense in the student…Everything we do, then, as teachers, has moral overtones. Through dialogue, modeling, the provision of practice, and the attribution of best motive, the one-caring as teacher nurtures the ethical ideal.” (p. 179)
“Teachers model caring,” she suggests, “when they steadfastly encourage responsible self-affirmation in their students” (Noddings, 1988, p. 222). Such a statement could be made with equal conviction for a coach’s special relationship with his/her athletes.

Highlighting the critical role of teachers as “one-caring” in their relationships with students and as models of ethical action should be a prominent component of future Olympic educational initiatives. Every teaching/coaching day is filled with hundreds of instant pedagogical moments. In each moment, teachers and coaches have to make an appropriate response. It is in those important instant pedagogical moments, when a teacher or a coach makes a response that inspires, or affirms or encourages or corrects a student or athlete, that they have the opportunity to gently nudge them along the route to fair and ethical living.

The ideas and conclusions of Nussbaum, Gilligan and Noddings point Olympic educators away from learning values through a teaching and learning process based on resolving ethical dilemmas through cognitive and well-reasoned application of universal concepts and principles, and towards a teaching and learning process that is much more complex, that helps young people to explore their emotional as well as their intellectual responses to ethical issues; and that emphasizes care and compassion for others. Olympic educators need to move away from the safety and certainty of teaching rules, penalties and universally applicable principles, and move towards an imaginative, holistic, diverse but inclusive vision for teaching Olympic values.

To try and understand what this “move towards” a new vision for the pedagogy of Olympic education means, I am drawn to the work of Maxine Greene. In Releasing the Imagination, Greene emphasizes that teaching and learning – in schools as well as in sport - are matters of “breaking through barriers¾of expectation, of boredom, of predefinition” (p. 14). “It is imagination,” she says, “that opens our eyes to worlds beyond our experience¾enabling us to create, care for others, and envision social change” (book jacket). Imagination has to be part of all good teaching and good coaching. Simply lecturing about basketball will not develop a basketball player. Somehow teachers and coaches communicate ways of doing things that allow learners to put into practice in their own way what they are seeing, hearing and experiencing. “To teach, at least in one dimension, is to provide persons with the knacks and know-how they need in order to teach themselves” (p. 14). This is a form of inventiveness, a use of imagination.

Greene celebrates the arts in this process. “Encounters with the arts have a unique power to release imagination. Stories, poems, dance performances, concerts, paintings, films, plays¾all have the potential to provide remarkable pleasure for those willing to move out toward them and engage with them.” (p. 27). I would argue that this “imaginative” journey also takes place in physical and sports education as students link mind and spirit in the development of their physical capabilities and in the “agon” with an opponent.

Maxine Greene suggests that it is through the stimulation of the imagination that children come to see themselves and the possibilities of their world in a different way. She emphasizes the fine arts as the place where children’s imaginations can be best stimulated. Images from the VISA “Olympics of the Imagination” program for the Sydney Olympic Games demonstrate the power of an imaginative and exciting event like an Olympic Games to bring the ideals of sport, peace, friendship and fair play together in artistic representations.

Pierre de Coubertin seemed to understand the importance of emotion and imagination as pedagogical tools. In his planning for the promotion and staging of Olympic Games, he integrated symbols, ceremonies, music, pageantry and culture. And ever since the first of the modern Olympic Games, the world has been inspired every four years with emotional stories of athletic triumph and disappointment. These stories act as models and as confirmation for future generations of potential high achievers. An imaginative approach to the teaching of Olympic values is necessary in order to help all of us break through the barriers of tradition and prejudice that sometimes wrap us up in despair over doping, violence and cheating. Olympic educators need to help their students and their athletes see the world in a different way, see each other in a different way, and change behaviours so that they act in a different way. If we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem.

Furthermore, as de Coubertin suggests, this stimulation of imagination also takes place in the striving for physical excellence. Engagement of the whole body in the physical domain engages not only the physical, mental and intellectual domains, but also the emotional and imaginative (e.g., positive visualization), and, according to the traditional teachings of our First Nations people, the spiritual domain as well (Ghostkeeper). Mind, body, spirit (and emotion) come together in a sublime performance of any kind – athletic or artistic. De Coubertin suggests that whether you are climbing a mountain or playing rugby, the effect is the same.

I would argue that imagination must be an organizing principle for all future Olympic education educational initiatives. The reason the Olympic Movement brings sport and culture together is because together they stimulate the imagination and motivate all of us to strive for “a better and more peaceful world.” When master teachers are engaged in Olympic education initiatives, this principle is clearly evident in the work that they do with students. They engage their students in art, music, storytelling and role-playing.

Today, every city bidding for an Olympic Games is required to outline its plans for an Olympic education initiative. The challenge for all who believe that sport and physical activity provide a context for learning about life is how to realize these aims. As de Coubertin himself writes, it is not enough to talk about them; they must be practiced. The legacy of Olympic education, particularly at the elementary and middle school age level could serve as a ‘bridge’ between the striving for excellence by elite athletes and the reaching for dreams by a young child jumping over a school bench. What greater legacy could there be?

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	Feature	No.41 June 2004