Читать книгу Alternative Models of Sports Development in America. Solutions to a Crisis in Education and Public Health онлайн

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In contrast, school systems in Europe were primarily reserved for academics. Extracurricular activity would take place outside the school doors, allowing for greater integration and participation in sports by members of all socioeconomic classes and academic backgrounds via a community-based club system. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in various European countries it was the student body that established sports clubs outside the schools and independent of school officials, but that is where many of the similarities end. Unlike in the United States, European school officials felt no need to place such student clubs under their supervision, as the students and parents typically cooperated with school authorities and for the most part kept the activities separate and did not let them become a distraction from education. Another and more compelling reason for student clubs, including athletics clubs, not being under the supervision of school authorities is that throughout the bulk of the European education system separate high schools existed and still exist for students of different social and academic classes. This makes populations in most European schools rather homogeneous as compared to the American system, at least in public schools, which in the United States are typically more diverse. Due to this homogeneity, students and parents felt no need or obligation to further associate with the same people from their schools in extracurricular clubs or in interscholastic athletics, but certainly there was a desire to associate, through sports and other activities, with others in their central community whom children might not interact with during the school day (Stokvis 2009).