The sporting ideal, the lasting legacy of the ancient Olympic Games to modern sport, harmoniously combines values and ideals that fully satisfy, from any point of view, the virtues of body and soul. The major concern of any well-ordered society is to protect the education and socialization of its youth by following a process of moral education in order to teach moral values. These values represent fundamental convictions that often guide the individual’s behaviour (Rokeach, 1973). They refer to an individual’s conscious or unconscious pursuits and contain an element of criticism/ judgements concerning what is right, good or kalo k’agatho. Moral behaviour is based on values which stand out for their content and intensity. The content determines the importance of this behaviour and the intensity of the behaviour’s importance. The evaluation of the intensity of an individual’s values “unavoidably” creates a ranking of those values, which shapes each individual’s value system. The structural elements of the value system of different individuals may be the same, but they place different importance and ranking in their value systems.

Within the framework of Olympic culture in classic antiquity (4th and 5th century BC), special emphasis was given to competition and the ideal of kalokagathia. As mentioned in Plato’s Republic, sport serves educational objectives for the development of personal virtue, intellectual achievement and political harmony (cf. Reid, 2007, 2011). For the Republic, sport was a state issue, its object being to create a new human model, the kalos k’agathos, which harmoniously combined physical beauty with moral perfection. The ideal of kalokagathia, despite the fact that it remained in a latent condition during the Roman era and the decline of the Olympic Games (AD 394–1896), was a source of philosophical and ideological inspiration for the revival of the Olympic Games.

With the revival of the Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin was convinced that sport would create better men. The fact that social sciences bloomed during the same period as the revival of the Olympic Games, inspired physical educators to introduce sport in schools, in order to promote the ideals of the Olympic Games. Today, although there are several research findings that establish a relationship between ethical problems and the practice of sport (Shields, Bredemeier, LaVoi & Power, 2005), there are many scientists who confirm that sport promotes positive values (Shields & Bredemeier, 2008).

Moral education and moral character

The philosophical and ethical base as developed by Aristotle and Kant, is the cornerstone of sport’s ethical development. Anyone wishing to achieve excellence, education’s main objective, should become familiar with the values and cognitive procedures that lead to moral choices. Should a moral dilemma arise, this will lead to a complex series of mental negotiations, which will give the opportunity to someone to rank the values and ideals at his/her disposal and plan the moral actions that will lead to excellence. What someone needs for developing a moral character is the “will to achieve moral behaviour” (for more information, see Orr, 2013).

Theoretical approaches to ethical development (see Kohlberg, 1969, 1973; Haan, 1978; Rest, 1984) note that the development of moral character is based on intended and motivated moral behaviour. The objective of moral education is to guide and teach moral behaviour and values. Kalokagathia, however, as a “value concept” could easily be defined as an “absolute value” that represents the fundamental conviction of people who practice sport and can be ranked as to its content and intensity. Kalokagathia as a value concept cannot easily be defined by research, the result being that there are no findings that examine kalokagathia as a value within the framework of sport practice. For this reason and in order to better present moral education through sport, we should focus our attention on two important elements for building a moral character, moral desire and moral will, two elements which are at the core of kalokagathia, particularly when we are “seeking” moral perfection.

According to Blasi (2005), moral desire (a) reflects values, relations or conditions of human existence, (b) includes moral convictions, attitudes and ideals, which are partly identified by moral reasoning, (c) is part of the development process influenced by socialization and unique individual procedures for coming closer and (d) gives moral meaning to action by strongly influencing behaviour patterns.

Wishing to do something does not mean, however, that we will do it. Moral will is required. To say “yes” to someone’s moral desires means that we should say “no” to other competitive desires. Strong will is required, which does not always depend on effort or training. Moral will is composed of a series of interlinked and executive skills, which refer to the ability to concentrate, to demarcate clear objectives and dissect them into smaller and achievable targets.

Moral desire may generate moral virtues, while moral will may activate the virtues of effort, such as persistence, self-control, resilience and courage. These virtues are not inherently moral. They become moral, however, when they are used to achieve moral goals. According to Shields and Bredemeier (2007), moral education focuses on the development of moral desire, whilst character-building is a broader concept that includes all the components of moral character, as well as performance virtues.

Sport and moral desire

There is a lot of research in sport exploring moral desire as a component of character-building. By studying the moral values of an individual, we can know his moral desires better. Sport, like any other social institution, imparts values both through its structure and its culture. Sport rules, for example, have been carefully designed to help human beings to make the best of their abilities within the moral values of impartiality, dedication, competitiveness and fair play.

The fact that values are taught through changes in sport, depending on the time and the occasion, also means that sport reflects and conveys values. It was only a few decades ago that sport included the value of antiracial discrimination. At one time, most sports supported conventional gender roles, often overemphasizing to a dangerous level the values that were traditionally associated with femininity and virility (see Ryan, 1995 and Messner, 1992 respectively). It would not be an exaggeration, however, to accept that sport unavoidably supports the authority of the dominant classes, by socializing youth through values that perpetuate the proposed and prevailing situation.

Researchers exploring the sport values make extensive use of social, historical and psychological approaches, which focus more on value ranking by those who practice sport. Some researchers (e.g. Blair, 1985), using the Webb scale (1969), showed that when children have games as their first objective, they first choose impartiality and recreation, but when they have professional direction, they place greater value on winning and less on impartiality. Lee, Whitehead & Balchin (2000), using the Youth Sports Values Questionnaire, noted that young people who practice sport place enjoyment and personal achievement at a higher level than winning.

Sport and moral will

The second dimension of the moral character is self-control or moral will. Will power is a morally neutral quality, which becomes part of moral character to the extent that it is guided by moral desire (Blasi, 2005). It seems logical to assume that sport participation contributes to the development of skills that are useful in sport and in school, such as setting objectives, delaying (expectation of) satisfaction, thinking and attention-focusing. Longitudinal studies that examined the impact of sport participation on academic performance showed that it increases educational level (Marsh & Kleitman, 2003), reduces early school drop-out rates (Mahoney & Cairns, 1997) and positively contributes to self-esteem and social self-perception (Marsh, 1993).

A third way of exploring what was noted above is to examine young people’s subjective experiences when they participate in sports activities. As Larson (2000) underlines, when young people were asked to talk about their experiential situation when participating in sports activities, they identified experiences that combined challenge, attention-focusing and increasing intrinsic motivation. These experiences are essential in developing initiative – a combination that defines moral will quite well – and can be defined as the individual’s ability to focus attention and effort in order to achieve a difficult goal (Larson, Hansen & Walker, 2005).

What we can confirm is that several long-standing pieces of research have shown that sport inhabits powerful environments that can influence a series of processes directly or indirectly linked to moral will. In order to better explore and justify the relationship between sport and moral will, however, special attention should be given to the selection bias. Moreover, we need more research in order to determine the way in which the specific characteristics of different sports (e.g. coach behaviour, team particularities) interact with the individual characteristics of people involved in sport (such as gender, age, prior sporting experience, etc.). A research field where all these complex issues are explored is achievement motivation theory.

Achievement motivation and moral education

Research in achievement motivation (Nicholls, 1989) may shed more light on the role of education in strengthening moral desire and moral will. Nicholls organized his theory on the basis of two distinctive achievement motivation models, task-oriented and ego-oriented. People who focus on a project are internally motivated and define success according to the effort they have made for developing skills and self-improvement. Ego-oriented people perceive winning as success and their involvement in sport is based on demonstrating ability and superiority over others (Van de Pol & Kavussanu, 2012). Duda and her co-workers conducted an outstanding study which showed the empirical relationship between achievement motivation, on the one hand, and fair play and legitimacy judgements regarding aggressive sport behaviour, on the other (Duda, Olson & Templin, 1991). Since then, several studies have proven the relationship between motivation and moral character-building (for more information, see Shields & Bredemeier, 2008; Van de Pol & Kavussanu, 2012).

Regarding the relationship between sport and moral behaviour, it is worth stressing that the general conclusion of research is that education should focus on task-oriented motivation and discourage ego-oriented motivation. It has been shown that people who are task-oriented stand out for their fair play, high moral behaviour and altruism (Kavussanu, 2006), whereas people who are ego-oriented have low levels of moral rationality and are vulnerable to non-sporting, aggressive and antisocial behaviour (Sage, Kavussanu & Duda, 2006).

Conclusions and notes

In conclusion, regarding the relationship between sport and moral education, we can note that sport practice does not automatically lead to mature collective reasoning and value adoption. A steady involvement in sport during primary and secondary education, as well as the creation of a rich sports environment seems to have a beneficial effect on the development of moral character. The amount of research which demonstrates that sport practice has a positive influence on academic performance is not negligible. On the other hand, we should not ignore research findings which indicate stronger moral values, based on encouraging moral desire and moral will. We believe that it is important to stress that coaches and physical education scientists should include in their educational programs goals and strategies that contribute to the cultivation of values and the moral development of sportsmen’s character. Furthermore, any research activity aimed at studying kalokagathia as a “democratic” and absolute value, within the framework of moral education, for creating and strengthening moral behaviour patterns, would be a welcome challenge.

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TRAVLOS Antonios, "Sport and moral education: Is kalokagathia a value today?", in: K. Georgiadis(ed.), Olympic values: Respect for diversity, 54th International Session for Young Participants (Ancient Olympia, 15-29/6/2014), International Olympic Academy, Athens, 2015, pp.131-139.

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