Value conflict and fair play, and a sports education worthy of the name

Sociologists of education have often traced the variety of attitudes and beliefs thatpeople have taken up in amateur and professional, elite and recreative sport and attempted to show how they differ in and between these groups with respect, for example, to age, gender andsocial class. Functionalists have argued that cultural practices like sport operate in societies as do the living organs that contribute to the health of the body. In complete contrast, sociologists of a Marxist and neo-Marxist persuasion have traditionally regarded sports as potent negative ideological forces that serve to divert the working classes’ attention from their parlous and exploited state. Moreover, anti-racist and feminist scholars have held up sports aspernicious conservative forces that promulgate and maintain racist and sexist dispositions.