|
|
Sports as a tool to reduce violence and crime?
by Xiana Garcia
Sports have been referred in the Your City Summit by several of the official speakers as a valuable way to reduce urban crime and violence. However, many objections can be made about this point, since the argumentations given appear to be myopic generalizations.
Athletic life has many positive features from the moral point of view. It requires discipline and fair play and it teaches children to respect the rules. By working in a team, either with other players or a trainer, young people are able to understand the principles of collaboration and community spirit. At the same time, the dynamics of sports (“sometimes you win, sometimes you loose”) help them learn how to overcome frustration and the importance of self-improvement and self-challenging. Nevertheless, the opposite thing can happen as well: the excessive competitiveness and desire of victory can lead people to selfishness, impertinence, the utilization of their peers and the breaking of the rules.
Sports are also known as a healthy way of spending one’s leisure time: they are an active alternative to a life of inactivity and boredom. Sports keep young people fit and many times engage them into healthy lifestyles, not only balance nourishing but also drugs abstinence (including tobacco and alcohol) and late night parties. But who says “sport” is always synonym of “health”? We know that the luxury life of many successful sportsmen (yes, in this case it’s usually men) mixes them with savage parties, prostitution, substances use – and sometimes abuse. Raise your hand who doesn’t know about Maradona. But not only that: competitiveness can make people put their own health on risk, not to have fun but to win, through several doping practices.
Finally, one of the main reasons why sports can reduce crime and violence among young people is because exercise channels their energy, diverting it from guns and drugs to balls and courts. However, there is a big difference between jumping up to a hoop in a basketball match and knocking down someone’s head in a wrestling fight. At the same time, instead of promoting self-consciousness, sports fanaticism can transform individuals into a mass that express its aggressiveness in the “justifying” framework of team supporting.
Sports, as everything else in this life, are a double-sided coin. If we wish to use them as tool preventing crime and violence, field-based observation and analysis must be held and specific methods must be used for the implementation of sports to community life in a way that maximizes their positive effects.
| |
|
SHARE YOUR VIEWS:
|
|
Ewok 25/07/2008 08:19 wrote:
I always appreciate an analysis that looks at "both sides of the coin". It signifies a mind that is willing to accept the oppinions of others in an effort to reach a compromise or a mutual understanding. Its precisely the kind of approach that seemed to be lacking at the Your City conference itself, with the officials more intent on delivering their oppinions then on recieving any kind of response. It made it very hard to percieve any potential effective outcomes from our brief and somewhat lacking interactions with such authorities.
Looking at both sides of this coin I feel compelled to suggest that the situations described where negative avenues for the youth are encountered is not only limited to sport. Most if not all of the mediums that are used to access and develop the youth in a similar way present the same negative paths. Music for example is a worthwhile method of offering positive outlets for talent and skill development but also, and I dont think I need to go into too much detail, can be a dangerous road to put anyone on given the popularity of harmful and destructive lifestyles portrayed and often promoted by many mainstream or commercially successful artists.
I dont want to push this point to far, I think its obvious. I believe that analysis and observation already play a part in this approach and methods are in place that take this into consideration. My goal is always to combine one method (e.g. Sports) with another (e.g. Music) so that negatives from one can be counterbalanced by positives from another. Capoeira for example provides both. Breakdancing might be considered to be another combination. This kind of collaboration is inspired by the very core of community, to find common approaches to problem solving and develop mutual understanding.
|
|
Login to post a reaction
|
|
Terms of Use | Disclaimer | Privacy Policy |
|
|
|
|
|
