Project 119- Leave No Future Olympian Behind! – Part 2

 

RAY SUAREZ: Professor, tell us about the nationwide sports school system. How does it work?  

SUSAN BROWNELL: The Chinese sports system consists of about 3,000 sports schools of different types. So the sports schools at the local level are spare-time schools where children can go after they attend their regular classes.

Then, if they move up the scale, if they’re good enough, they’ll be recruited into a sports boarding school. And there they have exited the regular educational system and they board at the school where their education may not be — may not get the attention that probably it should get.

And from that point, maybe they will be recruited onto the provincial team. The provincial and municipal teams are really the backbone of the Chinese sports system. And once you get onto that team, you’re essentially a professional athlete, although they don’t like to use that word. They prefer to call them “specialized athletes” and to think that the financial aid they get is something like a college scholarship would be in the United States.

And then, finally, there are sports where there are national teams. And those are sports where the best provincial athletes are further recruited to a national centralized team, which will train either in Beijing or in training centers around the country.

RAY SUAREZ: The way I understand it, these schools basically make the athlete into a ward of the state for as long as they remain in the system. Is there an advantage to families who were able to place a child into the national sports system?

SUSAN BROWNELL: Education is really highly valued by Chinese parents. And for that reason, well-educated parents and parents from white-collar backgrounds are usually not in favor of their children joining a sports boarding school.

So most athletes come from peasant backgrounds or worker backgrounds, except maybe for a few sports which are very popular here, such as badminton and table tennis, it is said will be able to recruit children from white-collar backgrounds more so than other sports.

Certain sports are called “the bitter sports,” such as weight-lifting, long distance running, race walking. And those sports are considered to be sort of physically uncomfortable. And those are the ones that typically are — the athletes almost all come from peasant backgrounds.

So basically, in China, the sports system is seen as a means of social mobility. I know there’s a stereotype in the Western media that it’s a system that ruins lives, but, in fact, the perception in China is that, in most cases, it’s a ticket to a better life, especially for peasants who are given a residence permit once they make the provincial sports team.

And this is really a big advantage in life for a peasant who comes from a rural background where he’s held to that background through the residence permit system, a rural residence permit.

 

There are some things about China that I do not want to adopt, there are some ideas that I do. Project 119 should be looked at by our U.S. politicians. Instead of eliminating the physical education programs in elementary schools, especially the more impoverished areas, they should be investing more money into the programs. As of Today, China has more gold medals than United States. Their percentage for gold and silver medals is around 80% whereas our percentage of silver and gold out of the total amount of medals won is around 63%. In order for United States to reclaim their status, they are going to have to invest more money into schools that can recruit and train potential Olympic winners. Now I am not saying that all potential winners come from the inner cities but without an adequate physical education program in the inner cities, we are definitely missing out on a number of potential Olympic winners.

I love Micheal Phelps’ story because he was a child who used swimming as a positive outlet for his bundled up energy.  I know plenty of children who could and would benefit from a structured swimming, gymnastics, golf, tennis, rowing program. In order to prepare for the global games, we are going to have to adopt a more global view of education and not just reading, writing and arithmetic. We are going to have to embrace a more progressive way of ensuring that all children are given the opportunity to explore their Olympic dreams.

Leave No Future Olympian Behind!

 

As I watch the Olympics, I have been paying close attention to most of the competitions. I see Serena, Venus, Cullen Jones and the USA basketball team but where are the African American gymnasts?

I cannot tell you the number of times that I have seen little African American boys flipping on dirty mattresses or the concrete like the Olympic gymnasts last night. They didn’t have a spotter or the proper equipment. They use the fences or the monkey bars on the playground as parallel bars. These boys have a natural ability to flip without having received one class! In other countries they seek out children like this and work with them for free until they are ready for the Olympics.

With the demise of a “good” physical education program in the inner city schools, will inner city children ever have a fair chance to compete in the Olympics? To show what they can do?

Let’s get this straight, this is not a slap against our current athletes. They are excellent at what they do and they are representing the United States quite well. But at a time when we don’t want to leave NO CHILD BEHIND, why are we  leaving behind potential award winning Olympians?

This is not about coming from a single parent household either because Michael Phelps- Gold Medal Olympics swimmer was a product of a single parent household and his mother put him in swimming at an early age because he was rambunctious. Look at the phenomenal results of channeling that rambunctious energy into a sport.

In the inner cities, you see many basketball and football programs but what about the  tennis, gymnastics, swimming, kayak, fencing, golf etc. programs? Are African American children ONLY suppose to play basketball and football and run? We even have an indoor ice skating rink in our urban neighborhood and guess who practices in it? Suburban schools. No one thinks that AFrican American children can play hockey or ice skate?