| The relationship of interscholastic sport to the educational process has variously been maligned for distorting the goals of education and lauded for building character and life skills. In the United States, sport is ingrained in the educational process at all levels. However, for many countries, notably European, sport delivery has been the province of sport clubs, while schools focused on education. The popularity of interscholastic sport, however, has resulted in increasing numbers of school sport programs globally. In order to explore comparative aspects of sport in the educational process, this study examined the attitudes of 1,820 middle school students from Finland, Germany, Japan, England, the Republic of China, Taiwan (ROC), and the United States. In addition to differences between the countries, the research assessed gender differences and differences between sport participants and nonparticipants. It was found that students in the United States rated interscholastic sport the highest, while German and Finnish students expressed the lowest, albeit generally favorable, levels of support. The attitudes expressed by the Japanese, Taiwanese, and English typically fell between the two extremes, except for items where the importance accorded to interscholastic sport by the Taiwanese sample received the least support. Overall, students attributed to interscholastic sport the benefits of fitness, physical skill development, and making new friends. With the exception of the German students and the sport participants from Japan, winning was not as important as other participation factors. Generally, all the students expressed pride in their schools and sport teams, reported enjoyment in watching interscholastic sport, and indicated interest in being on a school sport team. Among the nonparticipants, 53% indicated that they would like to participate on a school sport team. Although nonparticipating subjects from Taiwan indicated that there were other school activities more important than interscholastic sport, they, paradoxically, expressed strong desire to be on a sport team. For U.S. students, sport was revealed as a social activity that had to compete with other social engagements. Overall, this study demonstrated that students viewed interscholastic sport positively and that students tended to keep sport and education in perspective. |
