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 program 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 May 11, 2006)