Joel Nathan Rosen
A decade prior, the author examined the extent to which contemporary critiques of sport reflect an increasing tendency to equate sport with pathology, especially in terms of the discussion of youth participation and the interpretations of the self-concept relative to youth sport participation. Reflecting a more wholesale societal shift that places the self at the center of the debate, sport—and youth sport in particular—was being presented as either unwilling or unable to foster a more reflexive outcome, exposing it to a wide range of criticisms for which there are few defenses, especially in terms of its clash with an ever-evolving therapeutic ethos. The question now becomes whether the previous critique remains accurate given the sheer time lapse and any further cultural shifting that may have resulted since.
Introduction
A very different set of guidelines underscores the discussion of sport as we make our way into the 21st century. Particularly (though not exclusively) in the American experience, sport was once considered a bastion of positive socialization and a reinforcer of sound moral codes, but sport is rarely spoken about in these terms anymore. Addressed in increasingly negative tones, the discussion of contemporary competitive sport is often enveloped in a cloud of despair, a far cry from less critical and unashamedly partisan triumph of the human spirit debates as expressed throughout much of the late 19th and 20th centuries, not to mention the historical reverence sport once enjoyed throughout history.
Primary to this shift is the re-evaluation of the once vaunted sport builds character motif that played such a vital role in America’s wholesale embrace of sport. But the shift itself, though it remains relatively if not wholly unclear, continues to mark a profound yet problematic direction in the overall debate surrounding sport criticism and its social and cultural links with modern life. In essence, if sport does not build character, if it no longer or simply cannot buttress acceptable behavioral patterns, provide sound moral training and socialization, and any of the other standard expressions relative to sport uttered through America’s past, what role does sport play—then as now? Furthermore, what do such circumstances suggest about sport’s continued place in the social landscape beyond the banality of commercial interest and local or regional bragging rights?
Youth, Sport, and the Modern Self
Though such debates are often fractious and highly contentious, if there is any single sport-related concept that galvanizes many of the critics of modern sport, it is the socializing effect sport has on youth, especially as it relates to the development of the self. Ironically, perhaps, this effect also appears to present the largest chasm that separates the more traditional from the contemporary analysis. This connection between an emergent sporting ethos and the existence of a self-reflective component receives minimal, often at best peripheral, focus from commentators immersed in the subject who seem content to offer it a similar treatment, as do the more tradition-bound theorists—a sort of intellectual given that needs little or no tangible theoretical development. Still, while the dual ideals of sport and the self-concept are rarely paired directly per se, they do indeed serve to inform one another’s place in debates surrounding youth participation.
That the self, as we have come to recognize it, even appears in the periphery of sport literature marks a radical departure from the more traditional commentary related to 20th century sport. It was not so much a case that sports promoters and advocates ignored issues of the self and similarly constructed concepts relative to their critiques, but rather that these constructs were assumed to be a part of the total sport experience and a bi-product of the participatory nature of sport, as well as the ebb and flow of success and failure relative to the competitive process itself. By and large, sport commentators tended to place their collective focus on the issues pertaining to socialization, the assimilation of ideals and values, and the salience of lessons gleaned from such a tightly controlled environment, leaving the more particularist aspects of individual developmental concerns and the reflexive psychological ramifications of sport participation to the realm of behavioral science. Gradually, however, the issues of a positive self-concept and the search for the proper degree of self-fulfillment and -development (especially in children) through participation in sport has been wrestled from those who once espoused that youth sport served as a mechanism for building character, whose advocacy has been replaced with, among others, the notion that participation in sport may be more problematic to the development of the individual than many of the pioneering voices or their detractors may have imagined.
Most contemporary writing on youth sport continues to shift away from the traditional ideals of sport as character building, potentially patriotic, and even a necessary part of youth development—and deservedly so. Many continue to point out that much of what was frequently considered to be a matter of common sense and hence a part of the overall sport-friendly consensus that developed in American culture, was at best based on spurious research and, at the very least, agenda based—particularly at the levels of patriotism, implanting Americanist ideals in immigrant children, and the acceptance of war. For example, in their substantive discussion of what they deemed the myth of school sport, Miracle and Rees develop their thesis on the basis that the institutionalization of school sport was neither a great social construct nor a positive convector of socialization in the lives of 20th century youth and communities, and the greater realm of human relations:
Americans’ beliefs about sport seemingly require no proof. Certainly if we look for scientific evidence to support popular, cherished beliefs about sport, we shall be disappointed. Studies purporting to demonstrate proof for the sport myth either have examined small, special populations or they have used flawed methodologies. No studies capable of withstanding rigorous scientific scrutiny offer much support for any tenets of the myth. If the sport myth is to be supported with convincing scientific evidence, the research has yet to be done.[1]
This assessment continues to hold up to scrutiny more than two decades later. And indeed, more recent and seemingly dramatic shifts in the discussion further support the appearance of a noxious backlash aimed at what many acknowledge to have been a markedly divisive institution, one that is beset with contradictions, reinforcing the traditional order rather than challenging it.
The Therapeutic Ethos
A jumping off point for understanding the context of the contemporary debate over the self and its place in contemporary discourse was and remains to be James Nolan’s highly regarded The Therapeutic State (1998). Despite its age, it is as salient a critique of post-Cold War (and even post-911) life as exists. Nolan posits that therapy, which he portrays as “a soft remedy to the harshness of life in a highly rationalized society,” has become the baseline for much of what many Americans know about our world and ourselves.[2] Throughout, Nolan constructs a view of society that positions the self, rather than a collective, as the moral arbiter, and therapy as a cultural expression of progress that ultimately becomes a new frontier by which modern government legitimizes itself. In this sense, an emerging therapeutic ethos offers a complex and challenging world a ready set of interpretable explanations for modern injustices and hardships. It reinterprets life as a process of navigating diseased minds and scarred psyches through spaces in which either successful healing or the trauma of denial or relapse dictates the means by which a modern society conducts its daily affairs. And among the more central factors affecting this change remains the notion of self-esteem.
A growing penchant for exploration into the construction of individual self-esteem marks a rather provocative departure from the more traditional human-centered notions that once expressed progressive designs through a much more collective, rather than individuated, approach to healthy psychological development. Nolan traces this evolving trend toward an increasingly passionate and driven self-esteem advocacy that he claims “speaks of its advancement as no less than one of movement proportions.”[3] This embracing advocacy has in turn charged itself with the daunting task of bringing the joys and benefits of increased self-esteem (particularly in youth) into public spaces, even in the face of mounting scientific skepticism, resulting in what Nolan deems “a conspicuous arrival”[4] of the emotive self in the contemporary discussion:
Clearly, the self-esteem philosophy sees itself as a cushion to the harshness of life in the machine…Thus it is clear that the self-esteem movement views the nature of our rationalized society as repressive, disempowering, mechanistic, and hostile to our natural humanness. Yet, in spite of this evident disapproval of the bureaucratic nature of the modern rationalized world, self-esteem advocates wholly endorse the [current] order.[5]
An emergent orthodoxy grew in tandem. It shadows a great deal of contemporary life in virtually every social milieu as feeling good has begun to take precedence over doing good [my italics]. In terms of a continuum between youth, self-esteem advocacy, and any accompanying peripheral elements, there exists a parallel form espousing a character component containing a mélange of accepted and acceptable behavior too imbued with the language of self-esteem acquisition that affects just about every feature of the youth experience. For example, little of what transpires in a given school day is free of such concerns, though recently we have seen a popular backlash brandished at such popularly-driven debates as creative spelling and social (or peer) promotion. Regardless, as counselor increasingly continues to be folded into the role of teacher, and as students continue to find themselves the focus of emotive concerns rather than performance standards, it becomes apparent that school, with its artificially enhanced gloss of esteem, has become a radically different place in the 21st century, and particularly in terms of where actual learning fits in this nascent model. As one commenter observed:
Wherever I went…I found a striking degree of conformity about what is considered to be the business of school and the job of teachers. Everywhere I visited…I heard the same things over and over again…I found idealistic people eager to do good [sic]. And everywhere, I found them being told that the way to do good [sic] was to prepare themselves to cure a sick society. To become therapists, as it were, specializing in the pathology of education…What matters is not to teach any particular subject or skill, not to preserve past accomplishments or stimulate future achievements, but to give to all that stamp of approval that will make them feel good about themselves [her italics]…Self-esteem has replaced understanding as the goal of education.[6]
Or as NYU humanities professor Herbert London notes in a syndicated column:
Kids may be happy about a school because the classes are easy, or the basketball team is having a winning season, or they’ve discovered puppy love. But none of these conditions enhance what children know.[7]
In other words, the main means by which teachers are to conceivably cure their students is through the promotion of self-esteem, and nothing in the school environment is free from this therapeutic model, which is where we come back to the discussion of sport.
Youth, The Self, and the Recoil from Contemporary Sport
Prefacing a discussion of youth sport participation by claiming that “there simply is no magic age beyond which participation in youth sport programs can be delayed so as to guarantee that such [problematic] outcomes will not occur,” psychologist Michael Passer of the University of Washington in Seattle rhetorically asked whether we allow our children to participate in sport too early on in their development.[8] He then went on to develop a register of what he felt were the perceived risks intrinsic to participation in youth sport:
- The potential suffering of one’s self-perception of physical confidence
- The onset of long- and short-term competitive anxiety
- Decreasing popularity with teammates and peers due to poor performance
- The possibility for psychic bruising (said to effect one’s ability to assimilate into sport at an older age)
- A perceived general decrease in self-esteem levels[9]
This type of precautionary-based breakdown remains a common component of contemporary treatments of youth sport, treatments that typically present sport as fraught with inconsistencies at best, and in all likelihood, hidden hazards. Even those who support the maintenance of some form of youth sport draw heavily upon the psychosocial ramifications, rather than any other array of perceived benefits in this debate. For example, in an article posted on the American Psychological Association web page entitled “Sports Lift Esteem in Young Athletes,” Maureen Weiss of the University of Oregon throws her support over to school sport because “[p]hysical activity and sports have tremendous potential to enhance children’s self-esteem and motivation,”[10] while Ronald Jeziorski, a physical education specialist in the Santa Clara (CA) School District, drawing liberally on older traditions, endorses sport based on a more utilitarian concern maintaining that youth participation in sport is acceptable insomuch as participation can equate to higher grades and better and more manageable behavior. And Tara K. Scanlon of UCLA reminds us in that same APA report that while sport can serve as an achievement arena for youth:
[W]e need to show that what they have learned on the field applies in other areas of life. Learning how to work with peers and adults and the joy of mastering skills are just a few things that can be learned in that environment if it’s done right.[11]
In this respect, even those who maintain a positive link to some aspect of the traditional sport model seem skeptical unless the requisite esteem and character issues pertaining to the self-concept are structurally upheld. Still, there remain much less accepting discussants whose disdain for sport centers on what they deem to be the more dehumanizing, anti-human effects sport has on individual development.
In exploring the development of sport relative to school and mass culture around the turn of the 20th century, education historian Joel Spring once remarked:
While athletics was promoted as a cure to technological society, that very society turned it into a commercial enterprise. Athletics became big business. The naiveté that led to the belief that athletics could cure society’s problems overlooked the fact that without any fundamental change in the social and economic structure, athletics would be turned into a business enterprise. This occurred in public school and college athletics as well as professional sports.[12]
Here Spring anticipates the coming focus on sport as more than potentially corrupt and imbalanced, but as increasingly unable to fulfill its promise to liberate in such a way that may actually serve to exacerbate the affects of what could be construed as potentially devastating psychological outcomes. There is a strong dose of such rhetoric coursing throughout contemporary sport landscape, be it popular or academic, a sense that what many commentators recognize most about our so-called sport obsession is not sport’s failure to serve, but to serve properly. By attempting to expose sport as corrupt or corrupting, many commentators eschew the discussion of why society was so compelled to co-opt sport and simply revive the older, more Victorian-based methodology that advocates a co-opting of sport as a means to serve a higher cause—the promotion of more self-friendly and fashionable values and sentiments.
By saying little about at-large social inequities, commentators dating back to the post-World War II period began and continue to depict sport from a sort of what are you doing for me now [my italics] perspective relative to changing perceptions of social progress. Isolated away from society, sport’s themes can be posed as indefensible, especially as they pertains to its effect on esteem in child participants. Here exists a plethora of reflective commentary aiming to expose the unsavory element within the structure of sport that sees it primarily as a matter of psychosocial pathology. For example, as Bredemeier and Shields observe:
In a competitive situation, most people become more ego oriented and less task oriented. Consequently, sports tend naturally to stimulate an emphasis on the ego orientation, which can have negative consequences for moral behavior.[13]
Others see anything related to competition as a matter to be endured, feared, loathed, reformed, and in some cases, even abolished altogether.
Perhaps more than any other school of thought, contemporary strains of humanism that ironically suggest more than a mere hint of misanthropy have escalated the attacks on sport as a matter of social and psychic preservation. Often viewing competition as somehow separate from its social moorings, these critics extend the analysis of competition into what they deem a dehumanizing absence of cooperation within the framework of the competitive paradigm. Their understanding of competition places it squarely in the realm of pathology, posing concerns as a matter of mutual exclusivity. For example, when popular education lecturer Alfie Kohn poses the question of competitiveness in schools as a matter of mutually exclusive goal attainment, while at the same time professing “that by its very nature competition is always unhealthy,”[14] he is viewing competitiveness solely through the lens of winning and losing, critiquing the aftermath through a more narrow scope as an experience whose potential serves to place both sides in peril. This debate is underscored by an acceptance that competition has no hint of a human centrality, but rather acts to inhibit creativity while promoting conformity and discouraging risk-taking. As Kohn claims, this presumed outcome does not serve a progressive, human-centered order; it subverts human efficacy through the extinguishing of “the Promethean fire of rebellion.”[15]  In this regard, Kohn is able to reverse the more traditional view and pose anti-competition as both socially healthful while at the same time morally sound.
On the other hand, critics of the humanist position have countered that this particular brand of humanist criticism is more agenda-laden and less a tribute to human activity then a statement on human frailty, a point reflective of many raised through Nolan’s work. Whereas Terry Orlick, another influential opponent of competition who draws liberally on the traditions of John Dewey and Bertrand Russell, can pose the anti-competition position as one which takes into account a caring approach that allows for a child’s early experiences in sport to be positive, nourishing, and one that may promote further involvement[16], others see these sorts of stage-managed sporting environments as destructive to the spirit of achievement and goal-attainment. For example, in his critique of the trend toward what he deemed friendly games in British grade schools, Alex Standish observes that the absence of competition from children’s games in effect threatens to remove the motivation component to succeed along with it, and the results of what began as an earnest expression of compassion on the part of school administrators threatens to deprive children of both the thrill of competitive passion and the development of indispensable physical skills.[17]
In Closing
This recoiling from competitiveness, and particularly in competitive sport, that has become notably prominent in today’s discussion, seems to have resulted from sport’s inability to reconcile the changing values and moral instruction informed by the therapeutic ethos. Whereas Dragnet’s Detective Friday on 1960’s era television may have been able to tell us then that “baseball teaches young Americans fair play,” few would embrace that position in today’s climate given the treatment of professional and otherwise high-profile sport, especially as it relates to child-aged participants. The much more likely debate to be encountered seems to be driven by both the prurient value behind today’s more spectacle-laden sport industry and the continued exhibition of insensitivity relative to someone such as retired baseball star Albert Belle, who on CNN Television in December 1998 once remarked, much to the dismay of youth advocates, “When I step out on a field, it’s a war zone out there!” Certainly the more recent scandals regarding a perceived epidemic of domestic violence among National Football League players (sans anything close to evidence) plays right into these same concerns, so in essence, it would appear that in the decade since I first posed this discussion, what we have seen is less of a challenge to these assumptions and more of an indication that such fears have been realized, though these fears seem more grounded in moral panic than in actual circumstance.
Figure 1. A preoccupation with the self can be seen in such widely disseminated images such as this 2002 photograph of a South Georgia tae kwon do school window. Photo courtesy of the author.
It must also be noted as well that rarely will contemporary analyses of youth sport reference the leisure and enjoyment components of sport participation. Rather, critics seem compelled to reflect upon concerns such as psychological and physical risk, poor socialization, the unhealthy aspects of an overdeveloped sense of hyper-competitiveness, and even the maintenance of traditional social inequality, anxieties regarding sport which are often mirrored in popular thought throughout the contemporary order. Indeed, plastered on the large windows (see Figure 1 above) of a martial arts school in Savannah, Georgia are imposing reminders of the school’s more fundamental goals and objectives: self-control, self-discipline, self-confidence, and self-esteem. But the more typical if not recognizable scene consisting of athletic intensity along with lots of smiling, sweaty, loud, and obnoxious young students working hard, but obviously enjoying themselves, belies the adult intentions of finding the proper mix of esteem to go along with the traditions of the sport. In that sense it would appear that the only members of that particular strata who fear the worst are the organizers/adults/parents themselves who see this pursuit as part of a much grander scheme based on a litany of larger psychosocial concerns, a matter that serves to reinvigorate the growing assumption that something is amiss when it comes to the relationship between youth and sport, a notion that has come to underscore the spirit of today’s discourse.
That the self should emerge as a contemporary axiom for commentary in any child-related endeavor seems a rather likely direction given both the academic as well as popular attention that it receives today. Still, this focus is fraught with contradictions and potentialities that serve to impair critical discussions concerning the relevancy of sport in children’s lives, as evidenced by the varying degrees to which those who critique such issues present it. Hence, by welding psychology-based critiques of the self concept, and especially the role that self-esteem plays in youth development, to contemporary sport-criticism, critics offer a pattern of analysis that serves to highlight a much more problematic nature growing within competitive sport while casting further misgivings in regards to its continued place in the lives of young and promising participants.
[1] A.W. Miracle & C.R. Reese, Lessons of the Locker Room: The Myth of School Sport (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1994), 222.
[2] J.L. Nolan, The Therapeutic State: Justifying Government at Century’s End (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 283.
[6] R. Kramer, Ed School Follies (New York: Free Press, 1991), 209-210.
[7] Herbert London, “Happiness in School Should Not be Confused with Knowledge,” The Savannah Morning News, January 10, 2000.
[8] Michael Passer, “At What Age are Children Ready to Compete?: Some Psychological Considerations,” in Children and Youth in Sport: A Biopsychosocial Perspective, ed. F.L. Smoll & R.E. Smith (Boston: WCB Macgraw-Hill, 1996), 81.
[10] Maureen Weiss, Ronald Jeziorski, & Tara K. Scanlon, “Sports Lift Esteem in Young Athletes,” The American Psychological Association, www.apa.org.
[12] Joel Spring, “Mass Culture and School Sports,” in History of Education Quarterly no. 14, 495.
[13] B. Bredemeier & D. Shields, “Moral Development and Children’s Sport,” in Children and Youth in Sport: A Biopsychosocial Perspective, ed. F.L. Smoll & R.E. Smith (Boston: WCB Macgraw-Hill, 1996), 390.
[14] Alfie Kohn, “Why Competition?” The Humanist. 40 No. 1 (January/February 1980), p.15.
[15] Alfie Kohn, No Contest: The Case Against Competition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), 15.
[16] Terry Orlick, “Enhancing Children’s Sports Experiences,” in Children and Youth in Sport: A Biopsychosocial Perspective, ed. F.L. Smoll & R.E. Smith (Boston: WCB Macgraw-Hill, 1996), 130-131.
[17] Alex Standish, “No Winners in Friendly Games,” in LM no. 123, 37-38.
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Joel Nathan Rosen, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA and Editor-in-Chief at the TSI Press in Fairlawn, NJ. The original article from which this material is drawn preceded his book The Erosion of the American Sporting Ethos: Shifting Attitudes toward Competition (McFarland, 2007). His latest project is a more broad-based examination of celebrity culture and narcissism in the 21st century.