Abstract

Today, fair play is one value with an important extension outside the sport sector into many areas of public life, business affairs, and the environment at large. Fair play is no more only an attitude for personal human interactions; it has become a value which leads to many personal-environmental relationships including the protection of exploitation of material resources and of our nature on a global level. Fair play has also been focused as a part of value education in the context of school curricula and particularly as value education in physical education and school sports. There exist also examples of fair play as a cross-curriculum subject how the spirit and the notion of fair play fit in different school subjects as one Olympic ideal and as apart of Olympic education programmes (cf. Naul & Holze, 2011). Thus, the following four strands of modern value education at school may be highlighted: 1. Mutual respect is demanded as an inter-personal behavioral pattern, as a matter of non-discrimination of gender, ethnic, religious and political differences among participants and their peoples with the benchmark of fair play for any personal interactions inside and outside the sports ground, as well as in any school education context and in any other life-setting of children and youth (in particular – general education and religious education). 2. Harmonious education of body, will and mind should grow as eurhythmics character building through physical activities and sports in accordance with their rules and in cross-curricular combination of PESS with the subjects of fine arts, poetry and music (Olympic education). 3. Sustainability of natural resources and protection of the environment at large has become a new topic in the range of value education, particularly in different school subjects of science education (e.g. biology, chemistry, geography) and in some new teaching subjects, such as policy studies, economy and ecology. 4. Health enhanced PESS with the promotion of a healthy lifestyle has become a major item in many new European PE curricula, as well as demanded and promoted by the IOC on the occasion of the implementation of the OVEP programme. However, a sound value education outside Olympic education efforts, but inside the general school curriculum, is insufficient in many EU countries and overdue. We have to make sure that fair play is not in the shadow of new Olympic ideals and is taken more seriously for the purposed of new physical education, including Sports. Verf.-Referat