Education in the Chinese national sport system: experiences of professional wushu athletes

Abstract

Within the Chinese national sport system, the government provides resources and funding to train athletes from a young age to become high-performance competitors. Though athletes are well supported to excel in their sport, during their years of intense physical training, athletes generally receive little to no formal education to prepare them for life outside of sport. The sacrifice of forgoing formal education to compete in elite level sport is not uncommon for athletes within centralized sporting systems and has been widely documented; however, there is little research that focuses on the impact of the team’s educational systems from the perspective of the athletes. To add to the growing body of research in this area, the authors utilized in-depth interviews to examine professional wushu athletes’ education experiences whilst training on their team. Thematic analysis of the findings revealed that athletes who committed themselves to sport training in the Chinese national system had to negotiate a number of factors related to time, motivation, social influences, and resources when it came to education and academia. Findings highlight the ways in which these athletes experience and come to terms with limited academic opportunities, preparation and support from their team and the training environment.

Keywords:

• Chinese sport
• wushu
• education
• elite athletes
• training

Notes

1. The ‘Reform and Opening up’ refers to the economic reforms led by Deng Xiaoping, the nation’s leader after the Mao Zedong era ended. Economic reforms include reforms within China that involved the decollectivization of agriculture, the privatization and contracting out of industry, and the opening of China to foreign investment. The ‘Reform and Opening up’ policy has led to high levels of economic growth over the past three decades in China.

2. This manuscript is derived from the work presented in the primary author’s master’s thesis published by San Jose State University SJSU Scholar Works. Portions of this work were thus presented and published in thesis form in fulfillment of the requirements for the M. A. degree from San Jose State University (Zhang 2014).

3. Student-athletes are students who pay money from their own pockets in order to train at the school, as opposed to professional athletes who are selected by the school’s administration and paid salaries to maintain a professional career as a wushu athlete.

4. Middle school in China is seventh grade to ninth grade.

5. High school is from 10th grade to 12th grade.