New research asserts the Tokyo 2020 Olympic education programme continues the IOC’s unchecked influence over state sport and Physical Education spaces.
Dr Geoffery Z. Kohe (Lecturer in Sport Management & Policy, School of Sport & Exercise Sciences).
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) necessitate that cities planning to host, and eventual host, develop substantial educational campaigns as part of their preparation. In keeping with the IOC’s educational underpinnings, such campaigns serve to generate youth, school and public interest and illustrate local/national hosts’ commitments to utilising the Games to fuel longer term changes in sport and physical activity uptake. Moreover, creating Olympic educational projects provides an array of opportunities for state, private, non-governmental and corporate entities to collaborate on large scale and diverse projects across several educational and community domains (though, most often within primary and secondary schools). Here, the London 2012 Olympic Games ‘Inspire a Generation’ and ‘Get Set’ campaigns set the standard for Olympic education and provided a model for subsequent Olympic Games cities. Yet, there remains continued critique of Olympic education projects and their so-called legacy effects. This latest research on the Tokyo 2020 Yoi, Don! initiative by Dr Geoffery Z. Kohe (SSES), and colleagues in Japan and Taiwan, adds new insights to these debates.
As part of ongoing research on Olympic education, Dr Kohe and his team interrogated the planning, development, and implementation of the Yoi, Don! programme, collaborative partnerships, and initial issues that have emerged in its rollout across Japan’s educational networks.
As Dr Kohe notes, ‘Not only does this research reveal fundamental issues with regards to conceptualisation and content of the Olympic education, programmes, but our work also points to the ways programmes enable the IOC to utilise school sport and Physical Education as a space to entertain particular stakeholder relations that align with the organisation and its global missions.’
In addition, Dr Kohe adds, ‘consequently, young people and teachers have become, largely, docile and compliant consumers with limited opportunities to disengage from the Olympic establishment.’
For young people engaging with Yoi, Don!, and sport mega-event programmes in the future (including the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games), there still remain opportunities to challenge these educational interventions and retain young peoples’ freedom to engage with the Olympic Games, sport and physical activity on their own terms. Ultimately, the work here is of value for future sport mega-event planners using educational projects to push ‘legacy’ goals, state education providers working in concert with the sport sector, and schools and teachers who bear the burden of programme delivery.
Link to article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2021.1874308