PART TWO

The History of Olympic Education

4 The Father and Grandfathers of Olympic Education: The Nineteenth Century

Although the term “Olympic education” has only a brief historical record, the educational concept, purposes and targets to be achieved through Olympic education are embedded in the extended historical context of the Olympic movement as already documented. Of course, Olympic education is a child of the modern Olympic Games movement which started in the 1890s, however, the ideas and ideals of this educational concept not only go back to the roots of the British public school reform of 50 years earlier, their real source goes right back to the European origins of regular physical education as a part of general education in philanthropic reform schools at the end of the 18th century. In this part of the book, a first historical journey takes us back from Pierre de Coubertin’s time to those real roots of Olympic education about 100 years earlier (Chapter 4); a second journey begins with the foundation of the IOC and traces its development forwards 100 years up to the 1990s (Chapter 5) in the form of a case study of Germany. It serves as an example of the long-lasting battle of the world’s two dominating political systems after the Second World War: Western-style democracy vs. the Eastern-style of a communist society, until perestroika politics in the Soviet Union and the “velvet revolutions” in Eastern Europe eventually led to the reunification of the two Germanies in 1990.

4.1 From Pierre de Coubertin to Thomas Arnold

While still a young school boy in his age of 12, Pierre de Coubertin had already read the French translation of “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” (1857), the biographical Bildungsroman by Thomas Hughes, who from 1834 to 1842 had himself been a pupil of Thomas Arnold’s at Rugby School. As a young man of 20, Coubertin travelled almost every year from Paris or Le Havre “across the channel” to Great Britain. In the 1880s he visited about a dozen of the most celebrated public schools, seeking discussions and the exchange of views with numerous headmasters and housemasters, and this naturally included Rugby School. During these years, games and sports had become a permanent feature of the day-to-day life of English public schools, although not as lesson subjects. Pierre de Coubertin admired Thomas Arnold, because decades after his death – partly due to the wide international distribution of Hughes’ famous book – he was considered one of the great school reformers and promoters of sport. It is said that we have Thomas Arnold to thank for the fact that sports, particularly team games such as cricket and football, have found their way into school life as an educational tool for ethical and moral character building – being subsequently disseminated further by those of his charges who themselves went on to become schoolmasters and headmasters. “In no part of school life was self-government so highly developed as in games and sports” (McIntosh, 1965, p. 182).

Fig. 2 Thomas Arnold 1795-1842.
Source: Bamford, 1960, n. p.

The truth is that cricket was being played at Rugby and boys were already chasing balls around even before Thomas Arnold’s appointment in 1828. But it is also true that Arnold not only tolerated his pupils’ self-organised afternoons of games and sports but actively promoted them by way of the school’s system of self-government. To him, sports and games were not merely important for his pupils’ physical development and masculine physique – they also constituted elements of which training in social responsibility and moral behaviour were to be concomitants. Thomas Arnold’s school reform made English physical education an element of a higher-level Christian and moral upbringing. Thomas Arnold was not ashamed to personally show his pupils at play on the playing fields to those of the many visitors to Rugby who expressed an interest. Arnold’s friend of many years, Freiherr Christian von Bunsen, at the time the accredited Prussian Ambassador, was one such visitor who came to Rugby in 1839 to watch his son play football, and in that same year even Queen Victoria insisted on watching the game at Rugby.

Coubertin’s Olympic principle of a modern “religio-athletae” finds its religious roots as an educational principle here in the ethics borne by the Anglican doctrine. Because Thomas Arnold was not only Headmaster of the public school of Rugby, he was also “the Reverend Dr. Thomas Arnold”, an ordained priest of the Anglican church. His educational concerns were really twofold: “intellectual excellence”, with particular emphasis on classical languages and Graeco-Roman history, and “moral principles”, which were to be promoted both by religious instruction in the Christian doctrine, including the sermons at church services, and by practical learning and behaviour in everyday school life. Games and sports belonged to this practical learning at the school; they were one element of the Christian education to “righteousness”, you might say a kind of secularised church service. The little known study carried out by John Lucas (1975; 1976) summarises this historical core very aptly when he describes the principle of Olympic education going back to Thomas Arnold as “muscular Christianity”. In his investigation of Pierre de Coubertin’s ideas about the introduction of the Olympic Games, Lucas comes to the following conclusion: “This French citizen, but spiritual ‘child of Albion’, was emotionally and intellectually dominated by the impossible dream – the apostolic mission of introducing untrammelled ‘muscular christianity’ to the whole world.” (Lucas, 1976, p. 52).

In 1888, Coubertin summarised the results of his years of studying and travelling to England in his book “L’Education en Angleterre” (Education in England). There he refers to two central principles of public school education: strengthening the body by means of sport, and at the same time developing the character. This original educational idea essentially corresponds to the concept that Coubertin’s successors subsequently defined as the core task of an “Olympic Education”. But now we know why Coubertin himself never coined the term “Olympic Education”: his concept of Olympic education was effectively anchored in that of his traditional sports education. For him, for this reason, “sporting education” is the same as Olympic Education, namely sporting education on the English pattern. And so, during the early years of the Olympic Movement, Coubertin always spoke only of “l’éducation anglaise” or “l’éducation athlétique”, because it was precisely English physical education – running, games such as cricket, football and tennis, and rowing – that had so charmed and inspired Coubertin on his visits to England.

How closely this English-style sporting education oriented Coubertin spiritually and morally towards the educational ideas of the Christian religion became clear following the foundation of the IOC in Paris in 1894 and the Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. He borrowed his Olympic slogan “citius, altius, fortius” in 1894 at a Congress at the Sorbonne from his friend and longstanding advisor Father Henri Didon, who himself ran a French boarding school in Normandy (Arcueil) on the model of the British public schools. At the Olympic Congress in 1897 at Le Havre, convened to discuss the pedagogical message of the Olympic Movement (cf. Naul, 1998b), following the Athens Games, Father Didon spoke about the “moral influences of athletic sports”. The English Headmasters’ Conference, an association of public school headmasters, was also invited to address the Congress on the topic of “character building and personality development through sport”. As its representative the organisation dispatched the Reverend Robert S. de Courcy Laffan to Le Havre, where this Congress was taking place. At the time, the Reverend Laffan was headmaster of Cheltenham College.

It was at this Congress that Coubertin and Laffan met for the first time. After hearing Laffan’s address – in perfect French – Coubertin was so enthusiastic that before the end of the Congress his new friend had been co-opted into the IOC. The Reverend Laffan remained a close associate and adviser to Coubertin for over 30 years. In 1905, after many years of Olympic squabbling in Great Britain, the British Olympic Association was finally founded, with Laffan’s enthusiastic support. Steve Bailey described Laffan as “the Evangelist” of the International Olympic Movement in Great Britain (Bailey, 1998, p. 73).

If we describe Pierre Coubertin as the father of Olympic Education then he must surely share this legacy with his friends and pedagogical advisers Father Didon and the Reverend Laffan, which in no way diminishes his service to the cause. But the common spiritus rector for all three educators was undoubtedly the Reverend Dr. Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby School. So we are justified in calling Thomas Arnold the grandfather of the concept of Olympic Education.

4.2 From Thomas Arnold to Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths

But in the same way that Pierre de Coubertin has to share his paternity of Olympic Education, even Thomas Arnold is not the idea’s only grandfather. In the 1820s, after completing his studies in Oxford where he received his Master’s degree in 1817 and, despite a number of adversities, was subsequently also ordained, Thomas Arnold assiduously studied German. While still a student in Oxford he was described thus: “He walked and swam and was proud of his exercise” (Bamford, 1960, p. 11). It was at this time (1817) that he first...