Prof. Dr. Shigeo Shimizu
University of Kobe - Faculty of Human development -
Department of Human performance and Expression
INTRODUCTION
1. TRIPLE CHANGINGS OF CONCEPTION
2. COUBERTIN'S SPORTS HUMANISM
3. BEYOND COUBERTIN
4. SOCIO-PROFESSIONAL INDEPENDENCE OF THE SPORT
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@It is the greatest pleasure for me to have this opportunity of speaking to you about my historical and pedagogical studies. I express also my gratitude to all the members of the Organizing Committee of FISU/CESU of Fukuoka, for the various considerations on this conference. I have arranged my works under the title as you look at in the proceedings distributed.
@The sport, at the period of the end of this century presents tremendous extensibility to penetrate quickly into every field of human activity, so that we can hardly imagine the configuration of its field of scientific researches. Whatever the majority of people may pretend to proclaim an official definition of the sport, the sport so called is transforming itself. One may be content to regard its potential fertility or namely its social growth as the humanization of sports, the other one, however, recognizes in the same context the dark side of the sports world or even the ideological implications of the humanism. In any way, the definition of the humanism always involves ambiguity, or pluralism which is apt to make a resonance of notions between the humanity and humanitarian. In fact, the humanism occurs somewhat we can not help to imagine the occidental human centered notion based on the Christianism. Both, the sport and the humanism, will evade the frame of discussion without any common bases of understanding of < the sport >, of what is what one calls
< the humanism >.
@It is to the above mentioned questions that this paper attempts to present the origin of thinking brought on the humanization of sports by Pierre de Coubertin and his historical thought upon the transformation of the pedagogy.
@Various discussions dealt with this well-known person have been accumulated mainly on account of his contribution to reviving the Olympic Games:
- what the Neo-olympism is;
- how and why he revived the Olympic Games;
- how and when he has come up to decide himself to do so;
- what the background and the purpose of this brave enterprise was;
- what the real origin of his family is;
- how he has undergone misunderstanding come up from the sports world then rising; etc., etc..
@It should be said that Coubertin is one of the most interesting person who attracts academic attention of the sports world. His figure could be completely familiarized to be looked as man of business around the sports world.
@As early as in 1975, Y.-P. Boulongne (1) has demystified the icon of Pierre de Coubertin, analyzing Coubertin's political position and pedagogical thought by brilliant documents study on many first-class resources. It is well known that N. Muller (2) has achieved, after Boulongne, a complete inquiries, under the support of the IOC and the IOA, for Coubertin's enormous original texts, and published them into 3 volumes for the selected copies with certification and analysis, in which Muller emphasizes the importance of the pedagogical view point for the evaluation of Coubertin's works. After their archival studies, MacAloon's psychiatric interpretation (3), by the lecture of Coubertin's novel: Roman d'un raille, has revealed real situations of young Coubertin having done an adventure of reviving the Olympic Games, in refer to the prosperous situations of American sport in those days. In Japan, this later one only too much attracts attention of the academic population.
@Preceded by these important studies in relation with different stances for the vision of today's Olympic sports, the following discussion of this paper will be developed in quite another point of view to make clear Coubertin's way of thinking on the sports humanism, and to replace his idea of the social reformation to the long-spaned historical changing of the principal conceptions concerned.
@Retrospecting the changings of doctrine of the modern french physical education, it is to be briefly said that the triple changings of the conception of human body or bodily performance are subsequented during the period from the Ancien R gime along to 1820s, and from 1830s to the end of the 19th century and at last from the beginning of the 20th century up to 1930s.
@On these three periods, the first one broken up the Renaissance's view of the bodily performance, turning into a philosophical concept of EL PHYSIQUE (the physical) and into the Encyclopedist's view of the intelligence. The Renaissance's view of the bodily performance put on the long tradition, reinforced during the Medieval period, looking certain Tombeau or Esprangeo as indecent, while the fencing, the dancing and the riding are called Les arts academiques, clearly distinguished from Les arts mecaniques.
@Know-how of the education of the physical was systematized by Amoros (1770-1848) for making the theory of the pedagogy of gymnastics: Education physique, gymnastique et morale. (4) His pedagogy of gymnastics, deeply influenced by the French moral science of those days, seeks consistently the consolidation of the bodily performance and the moral sympathy inter mediated by the epistemic. Therefore, Amoros pretended it is scientific, but he was always tortured by the opinion looking the athleticism as the funambulism. (5)
@The second period proceeded to develop the organization of the modern gymnastics, while the conception of athleticism, which was considered on those days as an pastime activities, gradually moved itself into a symbiotic domain with the gymnastics, but always underwent overwhelming suppressions come up from a term of the opinionated view of educationist avoiding acrobatism or funambulism, and from another term of the prestigious opinion of the modern health sciences justifying orthodoxy of the modern gymnastic method. Through this process, the gymnastics caught by modern scientific theories, took form of an Encyclopedia of physical exercises, but it was overcome at about the end of the century by the biological theory of physical education, transferring static or mechanical view of the physical toward the concept of the muscle on which G. D many (1850-1917) could build up a new theory of rational physical exercise closely joined with the human volition. (6) The concept of the natural gymnastics also was on the rise. The methode naturelle by G. Hébert (1875-1957) became to be great success from the beginning of 1910s. (7) The rationalism and the naturalism, though these principles are seldom in concord with each other, every one attack fiercely the sport, regretting the situation of popular sport.
@During the third period, the concept of the sport lastly appeared for declaring common place between gymnastics and physical education. In the meantime the concept of athletic emulation was barely accepted as a form of human volition by the pedagogical world; long traditional view of educationist, that has condemned the exhumation of emulative volition for dangerous vanity or funambulism, was turned over to make easy to develop a popular view of new bodily performance in the pedagogical circumstance.
@Appearance of P. de Coubertin (1863-1937) coincided with such a swirling evolution of the concepts. The historical view of civilization in his Pédagogie sportive (8) was going to change the human intelligence encounter to the growth of this popular view of bodily performance. He would have been not only emancipator of the concept of sport but also integrator of the concept of sport derived from the perspective of revolutional view on the intelligence for the 20th century.
@Coubertin's notion of civilization is neither such a advancing course of evolution as cultural refinings, technical progress, urbanization, specialization of social organization or social classes, nor such an antithesis of the Enlightenment's notion as mere improvement of material life distinct from the spiritual culture. This later view has been broadly accepted under the influence of the New Kantian. His notion rather seems to be more closer to an organic concept of history of O. Spengler (1880-1936).
@Approximate to Spengler's relativism for the destine of the European civilization, that runs necessarily through some stages just like as a life-cycle of human being: the birth, the growth, the snile and the death, Coubertin embraced in his historical view the notion of the cosmopolitanism, nevertheless he could never consider that he is engaged by the declination of Europe.
He criticized fundamentally the Encyclopedist's system of knowledge and the optimism of the simplist's view of linear progress attaining step by step from the barbarous to the civilized. His view is sufficiently free from the Euro-centrism, but he could not leave his affections for the European civilization, even if he was conscious about its relativity being one of the civilizations on the earth. He made positive effort to find something what will provide eternity to it, enduring the hellenic energy in its root begun to weaken.(9)
@His Olympism reveals an athletic aspect of the humanity derived from the above mentioned view of the civilization. It is not mere notion, but practice. He persevered in his thinking almost to the religious practice; it became lastly the RELIGIO ATHLETAE, an universal expressiveness of human instinct imprinted and incarnated by every civilization. His Olympism is, however, a form of practical movement in regard to his history of civilization. His PEDAGOGIE SPORTIVE otherwise insists to transform the humanity on the earth, wide spreading SPORTIVITE to intermission the relation between intelligence and moral. For the humanity's sake, Coubertin considered the eternity of the Sportivite as regenerative energy of civilizations. According to his history of civilization, an eternal pendular dynamism of the democracy oversteps to one end and back to another, on this planet. He convinced that it should turn back even if the motion was surplused by any political form, and he sometimes expressed this by the word EURHYTHMIE (10)
@Sportivité should be, for Coubertin, referred at the same time to the psychological concept as well as to the historical concept. Contemporaries of H. Bergson (1859-1941) or S. Freud (1856-1939), Coubertin argued against the pretending prestige of the mecanico-mathematical theories to which submits the physical training method in the field of the physical education, attempted to convey an important research field to the sport psychology by presenting presumable concept of Memoire des muscules (11) and effectively he brought forth to hold the Olympic congres of 1913 at Lausanne. N. Müller's recent work is remarkable for making clear the role of series of the Olympic Congress held by Coubertin. (12)
@It could be said that our notion of the kinesthesia is very closer to his Memoire des muscules. Attempting himself to describe psychological phenomenon in the sport motrics, he was conscious that possible research field of < moto-scriptives >, if we call it, will contribute to bring success to his everlasting hope: Marriage de l'esprit et le muscle and that thus will be better way leading the humanity to transmute modern pedagogy based on the desuete Encyclopedism. To the teaching method, he dared to propose the aviation intellectuelle rather than the intellectual mountaineering. His imagination certainly inspired men of literature such as J. Giraudoux (1882-1844), H. de Montherlant (1896-1972), M. Prevost (1901-1944) to establish Association des ecrivains sportifs. It was the dawn of the sport literature in France. They devoted many texts to the sport; Prevost especially attempted to describe the kinesthesia of sport motricity in his Plaisir des sports. (13)
@Whatever Coubertin may not be psychologue as specialist, amount of his arguments on the pedagogical aspect of sports still prove that he was so keen to find inside the human body an interface of alternative transference between muscular factor and human consciousness, (14) that, leaving kinetics of human body aside, he describe athlete's motion perceived almost only in aspect psycho-analys t. It should be said that his mémoire des muscules is a practical keyword necessary for representing the Olympism, worthwhile the humanity changings.
@His humanistic thought discerned the possibility of the sport to reform humanity. This conviction was strongly held in him still before reviving the Olympic Games, even in his later years where he struggled against the growing corrupt of the organized sport, counseling again and again responsibilities of parent s, teachers and organizers. Une campagne de vingt-et-un ans (1906), Notes sur l'éducation publique (1901), L'éducation des adolescents au vingtieme siècle (3 vols., 1906-1915), Pédagogie sportive (1922), Histoire universelle (3 vols., 1926?) and great many other writings taught us that his fighting was aimed to a radical changings of the humanity by means of reforming the adolescent and adult education firstly based on the sport activity.
@The relevance of his proposal and movement is extremely important, if we are going to remind today's prosperity of the sport sciences. In fact, Coubertin seems to recommend the very reflection on the raison- tre of today's numerous ad-hoc doctrines of the physical education and the sport; that is equally to be said for the situation of today's pedagogy. Any modern pedagogues considered more courageously than him the problems of the physical education and the sport as problem not of methodology but of the finality of the education itself.
@Perhaps we can not overcome such the paradigm of modern pedagogy as we have learned with famous J. Locke (1632-1704) or J.-J. Rousseau (1712-1778), if the physical education and the sport remain in the future being content with the status quo of the bodily education being served to highly specialized knowledge system established on the bases of school education as a whole. And if the pedagogy allows implicitly to give sanction for these situations, the pedagogy can not surpass the modernism of the concept of body, knowledge and moral. It is on this context that Coubertin mentioned the NEO-ENCYCLOPEDISME. (15) It implies criticism for knowledgism, cerebralism or scientifism of the university-toped education. (16) Really he was suspicious about the child-psychology flourished under the influence of the modern education movement, and in the contrary he wished to build up an andragogy by establishing a worker's university plan.
@Since university is a productive system grading the socio-professional groups in refer to its scholastic classification to which depend deeply all the teaching subjects thought every steps of school education, Coubertin's New Encyclopedism seems to suggest that, through the course of the socio-professional formation of adolescent coming up to university, the physical education and the sport should become a continuum of discipline presupposing certain perspectives of socio-professional situation. Among various subjects included in each steps of school education program, the studies of social structures, for example, must become to teach the positive meanings of the sport professionals deeply connected with all over the other socio-professional fields, and the studies of the social history also to teach the past of the sport professionals so far as one of fields of human professional activities contributed to inherit the civilizations and the humanity.
@In this regard, Coubertin's view of professionals developed earlier in his discourses, under the influence of Le Play's movement of the Réforme sociale, for reforming the secondary education program is no more relevant. It is eminent success for him that, declaring the changings of view of the intelligence and the moral, (17) he dissipated old view of bodily performance against the sport, whereas he was apt to take only such a negative process of socialization as corruptible phenomenon of popular sports. The process caused would have been considered as appearance of a new socio-professional field in the circumstance, even chaotic, of the sport popularized. He pronounced hundred men fascinated themselves to doing sports must exist for five admirable specialists, while he criticized against their muscular specialism side by side the physiologism, running away from the psychism he recommended.
@It is obvious that Coubertin's view of professionals (18) was contradictory to the concept of sport professionals, which would have been able to be considered as a factor of the social transformation he desired ambitiously. His Olympism, certainly may be based on global view of the history of civilizations, did not lastly overcome the Britannic amateurism he criticized; after him, the Olympism has been often confused by the amateurism. At the fin-du-siècle of the 20th century, we should realize that, beyond Coubertin, we have to consider much more how to transform a gigantic social structure of the intellectual professionalism against the sport professionals than how to investigate the method of teaching sports techniques. Perhaps the growth of the international federation of each sports may be looked as the development of the socio-professional groups of sport, but their social and economical states are not yet very tight in comparison with that of the other great many socio-professional fields.
@In considering the world-wide and up-to-date conjuncture of the sports, it seems to be in the distance past when the sport, organized and defined by the idea of the amateurism so called, was generative. Everyone is conscious of it after the structural changing of the sport world. Nevertheless, it is to be said that the idea of the amateurism as a regulation of sports administrators has non of effect to bring some positive influences on their principle of act in coming century.
@The 20th century has made the way for the indoctrination from sport to people: popularization, nationalization and internationalization. Through all of those positive processes, the formula of sport was offered to people from the to p, whatever visible or invisible, and the Amateurism has become a technical discipline of doing sport: how to do, how to administrate it, or even, how to educate it. The amateurism was so far a principle of those who affect to offer sport in the arena, in the school or in somewhere else, on the newspaper, on the television, etc..
@On the contrary, the coming 21st century will emancipate those who are willing to rejoice themselves the expressiveness of sport from such bases of the regulation as above mentioned amateurism. It is necessary that the sport should be defined not by the discipline going to confine these individuals but by < the expressiveness > (Coubertin would have wished to refer it to his notion of the sportivité ) going to liberate them again, likely as the time when the sport could emancipate itself from the prejudice stigmatizing it as the indulgence, the funambulism or the snobbism; really at the Fin-du-siècle it had to take form of movement against to the reinforcement of national systems of scientific or natural gymnastics. There was happened enormous conflicts between different national methods, and between gymnastics and sports.
@Looking back to the historical facts, it is surprising that it has taken in Europe almost a centennial years from the beginning of the 19th century that the sport became to be worthy of an educational element. The Britannic amateurism underwent during the 20th century a metamorphic change into an institutional idealism of doing sport. We are still now captured more or less by this educationist's attitude.
@In coming century, or coming centuries along, players, spectators, pedagogues, readers, journalists, artists, jurists, administrators, executives, men of industries, merchants, etc. etc., no one will be indifferent to the sport; each one may be a consumer in touch with the product of the expressiveness of sport. Sport will become highly cognitive matter of people. the expressiveness of sport will be heighten by various professional cooperations among which should be expected to take an intellectual part those who expertise the sports technique as professional domain.
@In this respect, it is necessary that we come up to make a historical view of sport as socio-professional field.
Among those who profess certain special field of the human existence by respective virtuosity, the importance tends to be accepted on some intellectual specialties: medical doctor, artist, jurist, economist, etc., while athletes, even if they attain to the highest special ability, are actually condemned for their profession. Why ? Because sport degrade itself by the doping, by the trickery, by the violence, by the hooliganism, etc.. No, such discussion has been repeated alike from a decade of centuries ago. We are not going here into the meander of historical details about the conception of the profession. In any way, we should not forget the importance of the social function of the expressiveness of sport now-a-day and in the future.
Since the education is human activity fulfilling requirements for each individual to be able to achieve one's socio-professional function, it is not enough for the education in the future to teach the practices of individual healthy life by doing sport; it is necessary for the education to build up an advanced common understanding on the socio-professional domain of sport; why, in teaching social studies, for example, the school education does-it keep silence for it ? How to become the profession of sport should be there an equal part of importance referring to how to become lawyer, to become mathematician... This is also to bring an accusation against the Encyclopedism of the 20th century pedagogy.
Thus comprehending the sports humanism, it seems that the amateurism is surely suggestive, so far as it means respecting of socio-professional importance of the expressiveness of sport; remember that loving sport was its origin.
@Thank you very much for your attention.
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