At a time when Beijing's Olympic mascots are endorsing everything from
children's clothes to bottles of beer, the Games' organizing committee has moved
to reaffirm its commitment to grass-roots Olympic education.
At a meeting in Beijing yesterday with Konstantinos Georgiadis, dean of the
International Olympic Academy, Wang Hui , vice-director of the Beijing Olympics
Organizing Committee's (BOCOG) media and communications department, said that
education covering the Olympic movement's history and philosophy was at the core
of preparations for 2008.
"Olympic education among teenagers and the promotion of the Olympic spirit
and ideals is one of our priorities in the build-up to the Beijing 2008
Olympics," she said.
"We want to spread Olympic knowledge and promote physical training in
schools, and these are things BOCOG is already deeply involved with."
So far 20 Beijing schools have been selected as models to receive special
Olympic education.
By the end of September 500 schools nationwide, including 200 in Beijing,
will have been chosen to receive the Olympic syllabus.
While expressing admiration for the scale of the project and acknowledging
the difficulty of reaching all the country's hundreds-of-millions of school
children Georgiadis stressed the importance of striking a balance between the
promotion and marketing of the Games and the promotion of the philosophy which
inspired them.
"I think we have to be very careful to make sure the wrong message does not
get across," he said.
"When I told my class at the university that I was going to teach them about
Olympic ideals they said 'We already know; they're about drug cheats and
bribery,' so it's easy for people to be cynical," he added.
After teaching the class, he said, the students gained a better appreciation
of the ideals behind the games and 32 of them went on to help manage venues at
the Athens Games in 2004.
"What I would say is, it is very important to make sure teachers are trained
properly in teaching young people about the Olympics, it is vital that the
teachers are getting the right messages across."
Covering ideals such as fair play and the enjoyment of participation, as well
as the aims of physical and mental improvement, a programme for Chinese schools
explaining Olympism and the history of the games has been put together by BOCOG
in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Wang said.
According to Wang, textbooks, examples of which were presented to Georgiadis,
are being sent to schools across China and teachers will be trained to teach
Olympic education classes.
"There was some concern that there could be some resistance to the Olympic
philosophy because it is seen as coming from the West," said Georgiadis, "but it
isn't specifically Western, it is a great universal philosophy that can apply to
everyone."
(China Daily 05/11/2006 page2)
