Introduction

Our collective cultural and social values both ground and guide us in the world.

Cultures that survived through the ages have a strong sense of values, which they adhered and adapted to meet new challenges.

People both advocate and resist the change of values through time. The process of change can be both peaceful and violent.

Today we live in a world of great and rapid change and our actions are beginning to lose their grounding in our cultural and social values.

It is not change that makes me uncomfortable, but rather when the system for creating change loses a particular value-base. I think immediately of the way ISIS is trying to bring change to the world. I also think of the Boston Marathon bombing on 15 April 2013, the abduction of 276 school girls by Boko Harman in Nigeria on 15 April 2014 and the recent shootings and bombings in Paris on 13 November 2015 or in Brussels on 22 March 2016; moreover, I think of the sowing animosities and division according to race, culture, religion and nationality by the Republican candidates for the United States presidency.

Much is being said about value-based education and there is a great struggle for it throughout the world. My question today evolves not simply around particular values that comprise value-based education but the process of selecting those values, institutionalising theses values and how those values can guide us and our youth through periods of dramatic change.

What are our agreed upon universal values and what can sport and our local and world sporting institutions do in defining and promoting those values, in our now globalised world?

To find our way forward, let’s look back at individuals who have been visionaries in their times.

Respice – the importance of values and education

Aristotle

Aristotle, one of the great Greek philosophers (384–322 BC), considered a holistic education necessary if we are to produce a society of happy as well as

productive individuals. Together with his teacher, Plato, Aristotle was a passionate advocate of a (liberal arts) education which, over and above learning skills,

emphasizes the education of a person as a whole and most importantly the development of one’s moral character.

For him, happiness is the ultimate end and purpose of human existence. For Aristotle: “happiness depends on acquiring a moral character, where one displays the virtues of courage, generosity, justice, friendship, and citizenship in one’s life” and these virtues involve striking a balance or “mean” between an excess and a deficiency.Accordingly, the ultimate value of one’s life which determines how well one has lived up to one’s full potential as a human being is: Happiness! Aristotle tells us that the most important factor in the effort to achieve happiness is to have a good moral character – what he calls “complete virtue”.¹

Pierre de Coubertin

For the “father of the Modern Olympic Games”, Pierre de Coubertin, the future of our civilisation does not rest on politics or economics but depends wholly on the direction given to education. Being primarily a pedagogue, his main focus was to reform education. One of Coubertin’s ideas was a Modern Sport Education. In 1925, as one of the founders of the World Pedagogical Union (Union Pédagogique Universelle/ U.P.U.), he compiled a “Charter of Educational Reform”. In 1926 he founded an “International Center of Sports Education” (Bureau International de Pédagogie Sportive/B.I.P.S.) with the aim: to combine sport, education and worldwide peace and ethical moral values together with physical training, and thus sport as being the basis and the initiating source (Müller, 2008).

Nelson Mandela and African leaders

Looking at the African continent, education and values have always been equally appreciated by great leaders and identified as vital for the survival of our humanity.

“Education is not a way to escape poverty; it is a way of fighting it”, said Julius Nyerere, first democratically elected President of Tanzania.

“Let the West have its technology and Asia its mysticism. Africa’s gift to the world culture must be in the realm of human relationships”, said Kenneth Kaunda, first democratically elected President of Zambia.

“We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race, we all share the same basic values”, said Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General.

For Nelson Mandela education was the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. He considered equality of opportunity through education as the key to emancipation, a principle yet to be realised in South Africa, or elsewhere.

Madiba had a lifelong respect for education: He studied law, at the University of Fort Hare under the threat of death sentence in a Pretoria prison. On Robben Island, he organised educational seminars and workshops in prison. He also participated in sport, such as the Olympic Summer Games organised by prisoners during his time as a high security prisoner being forced to work under the harsh conditions of the lime quarry of the island. During his life, he stood for values, for justice and equality and believed in the power of sport to change the world, unite people and break down barriers and he stood for the ideals of the Olympic Truce (Keim and Bouah 2013).

What do these men mean for the world today? Many things actually, which will become clearer with deeper reflection. Perhaps we feel some kind of nostalgia by reading the works of Aristotle, the philosopher, Coubertin. the father of the Modern Olympic Games, and Mandela, who dedicated his life to the struggle for freedom and democracy and to the public good.

What all three have in common is the affirmation for the importance of education and the principle of leadership through values. Can they be our conscience? And can their wisdom be a mirror from the global South back to the global North? Mandela identifies the lack of values of human solidarity as one of the serious challenges in our world today.

The values of human solidarity that once drove our quest for a humane society seem to have been replaced, or are being threatened, by a crass materialism and pursuit of social goals of instant gratification. One of the challenges of our time, without being pietistic or moralistic, is to re-instil in the consciousness of our people that sense of human solidarity, of being in the world for one another and because of and through others (Mandela, 2004).

Interestingly, today, in congruence with Aristotle, we have the World Happiness Research and the World Values Survey, both global research tools which explore people’s happiness and values and beliefs respectively, how they change over time and what social and political impact they have. By monitoring and analysing set indicators, they give an annual indication on a country’s support for democracy and gender equity, tolerance of foreigners and ethnic minorities, the role of religion, the impact of globalisation, attitudes toward family, work, environment, politics, culture, identity, diversity, and subjective well-being and happiness.

In congruence with Coubertin, we have OVEP today, the Olympic Values Education Programme of the IOC, which integrates sporting values and physical activity into a cultural and educational framework in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.

Finally, in congruence with Mandela, we have an awareness of the values of reconciliation, unity in diversity, peace building, equality and the power of sport as a tool for peace building.

Prospice – the importance of values and education

Values are defined as ethics, morals, principles or standards of behaviour, or one’s judgement of what is important in life.²

Types of values include, for example, ethical/moral values, doctrinal/ideological (religious, political) values. In addition, there are personal and cultural values, which exist in relation to each other. Personal values reflect a person’s sense of what ought to be, what is right and wrong, whereas cultural values are a set of shared, common values. Values shape the behaviour and influence the choices made by an individual or a group (Roth, 2013).

Values-based education

In the early 90s there was a wide discussion suggesting that education should be more evidence-based (Wiseman 2010 and Guyatt et al., 1992). However, some authors expressed their concern about the expectations of policy makers of what evidence can and should achieve in professional practices such as education (Biesta, 2010). Based on our experience in the field, I would personally endorse values-based education over evidence-based education.

Vinita Rikhi defines values-based education as “the training of the heart”, which consists of developing the right feelings, emotions, values, ethics and morality. However, values-based education entails a cognitive component. It promotes critical and reflective but also creative thinking and responsible behaviour. It develops empathy, interpersonal skills and a sensitivity to the “good”.

According to Rikhi, values-based education respects the autonomy of the learner and is concerned with the holistic development of one’s personality, including his or her intellectual, social, emotional, spiritual and aesthetic dimensions. It enables the learner to realize in thought and action the right values such as respect, peace, honesty, truth, responsibility, solidarity, cooperation, tolerance linked with the highest ideals for life.³

Universal values

An interesting question to explore is the question of universal values. Human rights and universal values are seen as almost synonymous. Universal values such as freedom, peace, human dignity and rights are values that many human beings consciously hold in common. These values are enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was drafted by representatives of many nations and ratified by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris. The Declaration developed from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global statement of what many people believe to be the rights which all human beings are inherently entitled to.

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “everyone has the right to a standard of living with adequate food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services”.⁴

In September 2000, 189 United Nations Member States and at least 23 international organisations agreed to the Millennium Development Goals, which made a commitment to reduce extreme poverty and to make such rights as education, basic health care and clean water a reality for all by 2015. All the States that signed the UN Millennium Declaration reaffirmed certain fundamental values as being “essential to international relations in the 21st century”: freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature, and shared responsibility (Schrijver, 2008: 88). However, the majority of our world population are still far from enjoying these rights and the recently published Sustainable Development Goals poses similar challenges, asking governments in rich and poor countries to live up to their commitments.

In this age of globalization, universal values are more crucially needed than ever before. Globalisation has brought great advantages, but also great challenges, such as the north-south divide, refugee crises, dislocations and xenophobia, to mention a few.

As we communicate with our devices across the world, as social media brings us closer together, we also need to figure out how to live as a global community. We can only succeed in this, if we share global values which bind us together.

But recent events such as these in Paris and Brussels, ISIS attacks and the Republican US election campaign demonstrate that we cannot take our global values for granted. They also display that, although we may claim to believe in such values, we have not planted them effectively in our respective societies.

These recent events made evident that our values are under attack and we are all greatly concerned about our future, that the possibility that the fabric of international relations may be starting to crumble, and that globalization and internationalisation may be in jeopardy (Annan, 2003). These developments are in themselves a challenge to our universal values, at a moment when we need them most.

The recent global events have left many disillusioned and led them to mistrust and even fear fellow human beings with different beliefs, cultural heritage or skin colour, instead of feeling empathy or solidarity towards them. As a result, people turn to their own groupings, instead of allowing themselves to be open to others, to exchange with and learn from one another. This is, again, a challenge to a universal value system, as it leads to suspicion, discrimination, hatred, violence and even terrorism.

This is a time to reassert our universal values and to strengthen them, to be clear about what we mean by them, who we want to be and where we want to go; to enter into discussions about our individual and collective understanding of our values, including universal values, within a cross-cultural context.

We must, however, also take into consideration that universal values and ethical and moral codes, such as the Bill of Rights in our constitutions, do not necessarily correspond to our reality. They are mostly an ideal of who we want to be, an aspiration of what we stand for, a standard by which moral failings can be judged and an indication of what we want to leave as a legacy to the next generation. As such, universal values are to guide us in our exchanges and dialogues with each other inspiring us to follow them in a way that reflects our respective traditions and cultures, as well as our global quest of building a better society together.

At the international level, this means that we need structures and a system of cooperation displaying our universal values and institutions that are strong enough to uphold their universal values in their interaction with others. At the same time, they need to be flexible enough their to assist people in realising and applying these values to their local situation.

Those who promote such values have a special obligation to live by them and apply them in their own lives, communities and societies, and create in their own environments a fertile ground for them to grow and thus to contribute towards more inclusive societies and a more peaceful world.

The value of peace

To promote and sustain an awareness for peace is a challenge. One of Coubertin’s great achievement was to combine sports, education, and the idea of world-wide peace: “The Olympic Games will be a potent, if indirect factor in securing universal peace”.⁵ He also promoted sport and peace education in schools; thus, the concepts of peace and peace building need to be briefly considered.

According to the United Nations (UN) document An Agenda for Peace (UN, 1992), peace building consists of a wide range of activities associated with capacity building, reconciliation, and societal transformation.⁶

Building peace is seen as a long-term process which includes all activities to build and promote peace and overcome violence (Pfaffenholz, 2003). Some authors, like Galtung (1964), distinguish between negative peace, referring to the absence of violence, and positive peace, as the restoration of relationships and the integration of human society through the creation of social systems that serve the needs of the whole population. Galtung proposes a holistic approach to peace building in the form of “3 Rs”: Reconstruction of people and places, Reconciliation of relationships, and Resolution of issues and animosities (Galtung, 1998). Developing peace therefore includes identifying and understanding the notion and nature of factors obstructing peace within a cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary context.

An interesting task in this regard is to compare Western and the South African concepts of peace. The term peace originally derives from the Latin word pax. In the West, it is generally understood as a “political condition that ensures justice and social stability through formal and informal institutions, practices and norms” (Miller, 2005: 55) or as “a contractual relationship that implies mutual recognition and agreement” (ibid: 56). In IsiXhosa, one of South Africa’s 11 official languages, the word for peace is uxolo, which covers a state of inner tranquillity and an atmosphere of peace, but also implies the promotion of forgiveness and healing (Keim, 2014).

Development in the context of South Africa, for example, can be described as multi-stakeholder efforts with actors working together for the growth and positive advancement of the whole. There cannot be sustainable development without positive peace.

Over the years, it became more and more evident that if 80% of the global community is poor, it is not possible to live in a world of peace (Ruckelshaus, in Sanders, 1994: 57). In the 90s, authors like Brown called for a “new social vision, a social vision of what society could be like, guided by considerations of human values and enhancement of the quality of life of all people” (Brown, in Sanders 1994: 57). Thereafter, the Millennium Development Goals picked up on these thoughts in their call for the development of a global partnership, focusing on reduction of extreme poverty, hunger, child mortality rates, and diseases and the promotion of universal primary education, gender equality, improving maternal health, and ensuring environmental sustainability by 2015. Lately, with the call to collaborate on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, these objectives have been redefined. In this context, the role of sport has been highlighted in this regard by local, national, and international organisations including the UN.⁷

However, there is still a lack of awareness that well-designed educational sport development initiatives, be they practical or theoretical in the form of lessons or courses, research or community outreach projects, “hold significant potential to help drive the Agenda 2020 and the attainment of the SDGs and related development goals” and that “sport can be used as a highly effective tool applied in a holistic and integrated manner with other interventions and programs to achieve optimal results” (ibid: 13).

Discussions need to begin and where they have already started they must continue at the local, national and international level. Two such examples are the Roundtables for Sport and Peace in Boston 2015 and in New York 2016 or the Cape Town Peace Conference initiated by the Foundation for Sport, Devel- opment and Peace, which addressed the following questions:

• What are the challenges young people face in navigating a world of increasing turmoil?

• What are the opportunities for Sport and Olympic values education to address the challenges facing youth, communities and nations?

• What can we learn from examples around the globe of successful sport for social change, cultural exchange and peace building initiatives?

• How can we join together globally in order to use Sport and Olympic values education to create positive alternatives that celebrate diversity and counter violence and divisions, and move towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

Olympism and Olympic values

In this present age of globalisation, of rapid change and uncertainty, we have as sport people a distinct advantage in the sense that we have at our disposal and are able to participate in clubs and federations as well as national and international bodies, such as National Olympic Committees (NOCs), National Olympic Academies, the IOC and the IOA. We also have an active Olympic Movement and a new roadmap with Agenda 2020.

This is therefore an opportunity for sport and for the IOC to advocate for global partnership and to create a real foundation to promote Olympism and the Olympic values.

Attracting more and more entities and committed partners into this network,

– such as Olympic and sports bodies, civil society and educational institutions, governmental departments, businesses and the media – will provide further exposure, physical and human resources, and access to communities and societies, to progress the SDGs and Agenda 2020.

I believe that Olympism has a chance to realise the objectives we are globally struggling to achieve, as it has the right foundation and is part of an organisational and international culture.

Olympism already blends sport with education and culture. It encompasses a way of life based on respect for universal and Olympic values and ethical principles as outlined in the Olympic Charter, which states very clearly that the “Fundamental Principle of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity”.

In addition, the three core values of Olympism are “excellence, respect and friendship”, which are also focus areas of the Olympic Games and the Youth Olympic Games. Other Olympic and Paralympic Values include: fair play, joy of effort, balance between body, will and mind, vision, courage, determination, patience, inspiration, equality, and sport people as role models.

Those who promote these values, such as the IOC with the OVEP, the IOA, and you, as sporting role models, have a special obligation to live by those values and apply them in our own lives, on and off the playing fields, in their own communities and societies, and thus to contribute in your own way to a more peaceful world.

In the next presentation, we would like to share with you a practical example of a Coaching Development and Olympic Values Education Course in South Africa, which took place this January, as a multi-sectoral collaborative approach including the Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport (DCAS) of the Western Cape, the Foundation for Sport, Development and Peace in South Africa, the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Values Education Programme (OVEP) and the United World Wrestling (UWW).

Before we do that, I would like to go back to Aristotle who said:

Friendship is one of the most important virtues in achieving the goal of eudaimonia (happiness). While there are different kinds of friendship, the highest is one that is based on virtue (arête). This type of friendship is based on a person wishing the best for their friends regardless of utility or pleasure [...] [It is] a complete sort of friendship between people who are good and alike in virtue.⁸

I wish you personally that you find these friends as I did in this very place 30 years ago and that you will uphold in your daily life these Olympic universal values along with your personal and cultural values.

I would like to end with a quote by Nelson Mandela: “A fundamental concern for others in our individual and community lives would go a long way in making the world the better place we so passionately dreamt of.” (Nelson Mandela, Soweto Address, 2008)

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1. http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/aristotle/

2. (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/value)

3. http://www.slideshare.net/vinitarikhi/v-25058196

4. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/.

5. http://www.bl.uk/sportandsociety/exploresocsci/politics/articles/olympictruce.html

6. http://www.un-documents.net/a47-277.html

7. http://www.un.org/sport2005/a_year/mill_goals.html

8. http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/aristotle/

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