Olympic education: a critical ethnography of two Chinese primary schools

ABSTRACT

The implementation of Olympic education in schools is a requirement for any host country of the Olympic Games, including the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in China. However, there are no strict requirements for host countries in terms of what their Olympic education programme should look like or how they must be implemented. Rather, each country is left to develop their own version of Olympic education. In the context of the recent 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in China, we draw on a four-month critical ethnographic research project that explored the implementation of Olympic education programmes in two primary schools in Beijing, China. Utilising Foucault’s notion of governmentality, we demonstrate how three key technologies of government were employed by schools to perform in and through Olympic education: technologies of discipline that governed students to be ideal representatives for their school; technologies of filtering whereby certain students were selected to gain “glory for their school”; and, technologies of sign systems that helped create a unique and visual identity for the schools. These technologies were used to govern schools to perform their own unique “brand” of Olympic education and achieve their governmental ambition to promote themselves within the broader, competitive Chinese public education marketplace.

KEYWORDS:

• Olympic education
• 2022 Beijing Olympics
• technologies of government
• primary schools
• critical ethnography
• governmentality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 These plans include: The 2001–2010 National Health Plan Outline, the 2001–2010 Olympic Movement Promotional Plan, Olympic Education Action Plan for Beijing Schools, Beijing 2008 Primary and Secondary School Olympic Education Programme, and the 11th 5-year Educational Plan (2006–2010) (Brownell, 2009; Wang & Masumoto, 2009).

2 China has different types of model schools, such as football model schools and basketball model schools. The designation of “model school” means that the school is excellent in the relevant field.

3 The Beijing National Stadium designed for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

4 In Beijing, schools usually open hobby lessons for all students. Such kind of lesson is taught once a week, and each lesson lasts two hours. Students choose the lesson according to their preference, and usually outsourcing teachers are in charge of the lesson.

5 One external provider, Cindy, gained access to the school to teach students Olympic knowledge.