By Kiki Perikleous
Konstantina Gongaki, Professor of Philosophy of Sport at the School of Physical Education and Sport Science of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, in an interview with Politis describes how Olympic education education can cultivate moral principles and channel children’s desire to learn about a better future in sport, helping them become ambassadors of peace, cooperation, fair play, and friendship.
Why does a young person turn to delinquency?
Youth, beyond the values it inherits, shapes its own needs and theories. Youth has always been not only an object of education but also a subject of action. The first factor influencing how a young person confronts cultural crisis is their personality, shaped mainly by their relationship with their parents. Parental acceptance or rejection creates the positive or destructive pattern upon which their psyche is built. The second factor, the value system, comprises the moral principles that guide society. If society functions with respect and justice, these values are reflected in education and, through it, in the citizen and society as a whole. But if society promotes competition, intolerance, and injustice, then values act in reverse, like a boomerang against itself.
In criminology, “delinquency” refers to illegal behavior that violates legal and social norms. There is, however, also “adolescent delinquency,” since the most aggressive students belong to the 16–19 age group. At this age, the young person is experiencing an intensification of erotic desire, a need to repudiate the parental model, and a strong drive toward autonomy. The “ego” has formed through imitation, identification, and opposition to parental figures, and to prove autonomy they often adopt an oppositional or rebellious stance toward their parents. Paradoxically, the more extreme the rebellion, the deeper the ties it reveals, ties the adolescent struggles to break. They react with intensity, violence, and anxiety, and in extreme cases they may even turn to self-destructive acts.
How important is the role of the “ego”?
Dramatization (acting out) is common in adolescents, who are overwhelmed by intense libido amplified by puberty. The “ego,” which plays a key controlling role, can overflow, especially when the environment, mainly parents, makes adaptation to reality difficult. Adolescent delinquency often emerges from this internal imbalance and dramatization. Weak characters use delinquency to affirm an uncertain autonomy. Thus, they may resist the harshness of the world even through delinquent acts, unconsciously projecting onto others their own experiences of hardness. Adolescents who do not yet feel secure in their sexual identity seek support in peer groups, drawing strength from same-sex solidarity to cope with the anxiety of forbidden desires.
Beyond innate traits, a decisive factor shaping delinquent or problematic behavior is domestic violence. Other significant factors include uncertainty about the future and social dead ends, such as authoritarian school structures, demanding schedules, pursuit of additional knowledge, reduced personal time, and the replacement of direct relationships with technology. These limit the young person’s ability to socialise and force them to seek individual solutions to collective problems. Lack of physical activity restricts the adolescent’s contact with themselves, causing excess energy to compress until it explodes irrationally.
How can we cultivate moral principles to control delinquency?
For example, Olympic education can cultivate moral principles and promote control of delinquency, opposing violence, doping, racism, and nationalism, only when a corresponding value system exists. “Olympism,” according to the Olympic Charter, is a philosophy of life that balances virtues of body and spirit. Olympism is the creation of a way of life based on the joy of effort, the pedagogical value of good example, and respect for fundamental moral principles. As an idea, it is learned through Olympic education, which is not limited to schools but expresses society’s values. If society values humans not for who they are but for their usefulness, athletic activity will reflect this principle, and Olympic education cannot influence morally corrupted or unhealthy consciences.
"General education profoundly affects the quality of Olympic education. If society adopts predatory tendencies, the Olympic idea will lack strong roots. Humanistic education is essential for shaping values that will be reflected in all social activities".
There is, moreover, room for introducing bold, innovative issues in education concerning the quality and humanistic character of sport. Instead of imposing ready-made ideas, promote open dialogue and critical thinking. Thus, new perspectives can develop, and elements that encourage nationalist division, physical abuse, or advertising propaganda at the expense of human worth can be removed from sport.
The spirit of Olympism is not confined to supporting teams or participating with religious devotion. Students must become protagonists, as schools shape children’s consciences, and children understand the ethical messages of Olympism more clearly. Their clear conscience must not be overridden by commercialism, fanaticism, or profiteering. Olympic education channels children’s desire to learn about a better future in sport, helping them become small ambassadors of peace, cooperation, fair play, and friendship. Yet corruption in parts of the sports world links Olympism with negative associations.
What is the contribution of Olympic education to reducing delinquency?
Social conflicts in Greece today manifest in many areas, not only among students, and in some cases have taken unpredictable dimensions. Violence is not limited to marginal student groups but has become widespread across all social strata and student categories. In modern, post-industrial societies, social conflict is now generalised, and behaviors of marginalisation and deviation increasingly overlap.
“Olympic education” therefore cannot, by itself, eliminate the injustices or weaknesses of the political and social system; rather, it functions complementarily. It can contribute to addressing youth delinquency only if general education and the existing value system support it. It can acquire a credible role only if Olympic philosophy gains deep, institutionally established substance. At present, however, it does not reach either delinquent youth or young people with “normal” behavior, while the social and educational systems show signs of crisis and inadequacy, and sports facilities in schools and neighborhoods are limited.
Generally, adolescents who deviate from “acceptable” behavior are trapped in childhood experiences of abandonment, discrimination, and abuse of power, patterns they perpetuate. When they consciously understand these early weaknesses and anger, they no longer need to exert power over others.
Olympic education and athletic activity can offer healing environments under humanistic conditions, recognising every contribution and avoiding strict ranking or selective evaluation. Implementing this requires a new athletic ideology from the State: recognition of each individual’s uniqueness, emphasis on sport’s recreational character, improved facilities, less fragmented student schedules, and a shift in mentality so that sport focuses on community, the body, and nature rather than winning and competition.
"The State must realise that competitive and conflict-driven tendencies in modern societies have serious consequences on social cohesion".
Youth delinquency rates are rising. These young people are not visitors from another planet—they are our children, our creation and our mirror. Through their delinquency, they sound the alarm for the society we have built. “Olympic education,” as a component of a fundamentally renewed educational system, would offer much to every young person, especially to troubled children, acting as a sounding board for their psychological and physical turbulence, and as an observatory of their tensions, conflicts, and fluctuations.
By harnessing adolescents’ desire to belong to peer groups, young people could be integrated into sports teams where they could release excess energy while feeling creative and capable of growth. Youth must not be treated merely as a pool for discovering new talent; through Olympic education, self-esteem, self-control, and self-restraint can be strengthened, helping tame the self-destructive and impulsive reactions of adolescents.
Can sports and the Olympic spirit help young people?
Incorporating Olympic education into a primary-prevention strategy, with preventive measures to address delinquent behavior and techniques to help youth disengage from such problems, would be highly significant. Tolerance of hooliganism, logic of hatred, and the association of the city with a “jungle” nurture a phenomenon that can gradually become a Cronus devouring his own children. Conversely, restoring physical, social, and emotional balance is essential for effective support of delinquent youth. Balance, both personal and institutional, safeguards the equilibrium and well-being of political society and its members. Moreover, policies that protect social cohesion and citizens’ fundamental rights are necessary to counter social degradation, which causes serious dysfunctions and fuels delinquent behavior. But since life does not operate smoothly or automatically, vigilance is needed to support efforts toward establishing a new and better social order.