The All-Sports Ministry of PA NJ & DE - Executive Summary Start-Up Budget & Prospectus

CIRCLE Working Paper 44: February 2006
Sports, Youth and Character: A Critical Survey
54 Council of Europe, R (95) 16.
55 Council of Europe, R (95) 16; McPherson and Brown, “The Structure, Processes, and Consequences of
Sport for Children,” p. 273.
56 Shields and Bredemeier, “Moral Development and Behavior in Sport,” p. 586.
57 Duquin and Schroeder-Braun, “Power, Empathy, and Moral Conflict in Sport,” p. 354
58 Miller, Bredemeier, and Shields, “Sociomoral Education Through Physical Education,” p. 114.
59 Terry D. Orlick and Anne Pitman-Davidson, “Enhancing Cooperative Skills in Games and Life,” in Smoll
et al., eds, Children in Sport, p. 152.
60 Randy Bonnette, Ron E. McBride, and Homer Tolson, “The Differential Effect of Indirect Instruction in
the Teaching of Sport Skills on Critical Thinking and Self-Esteem in Early Adolescent Boys Placed at Risk,”
Sport, Education and Society, 6 (2001), p. 192; Shields and Bredemeier, “Sport, Militarism, and Peace,”
p. 370.
61 Bonnette, McBride, and Tolson, “The Differential Effect of Indirect Instruction,” p. 192; Vicki Ebbeck
and Sandra L. Gibbons, “The Effect of a Team Building Program in the Self-Conceptions of Grade 6 and
7 Physical Education Students,” Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 20 (1998), p. 306; Ewing et al.,
“The Role of Sports in Youth Development,” p. 31.
62 A good summary description can be found in the American Legion code of sportsmanship. A player
pledges: “I will keep the rules; keep faith with my teammates; keep my temper; keep myself fit; keep a
stout heart in defeat; keep my pride under victory; keep a sound soul, a clean mind, and a healthy body.”
63 For a good discussion of sportsmanship, see Anthony Skillen, “Sport Is for Losers,” in McNamee and
Parry, eds., Ethics and Sport, pp. 169-181.
64 One answer to this question is: because sport in all its forms supports an unjust social system. For
example, according to George Sage, Power and Ideology in American Sport: A Critical Perspective, 2nd
ed. (Champaign, Illinois: Human Kinetics, 1998), “sport socializes young athletes to accept authoritarian
leadership and the norms of segmentation and rationalization in the playplace. . . [T]he discourse
of building character through sports turns out to emphasize forming traits admired in the capitalist
workplace” (p. 265). According to Rod Beamish, “Karl Mark’s Enduring Legacy for the Sociology of
Sport,” in Joseph Maguire and Kevin Young, eds., Theory, Sport & Society [Oxford, JAI, 2002], p. 31,
sport supports the power of dominant classes by indoctrinating youth with the beliefs and values that
sustain that power. And according to Jeremy W. Howell, David L. Andrews, and Steven L. Jackson,
“Cultural and Sports Studiers: An Interventionist Practice,” in Maguire and Young, p. 161,
Contextualizing youth soccer within the political economy of suburban American affluence
uncovers soccer’s role in sublimating the very real social class relations . . . through which
a suburban landscape of the powerful (white middle class) is bounded and experienced . . .
[P]articipating in youth soccer is commonly viewed simply as a lifestyle choice, thereby effectively
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