National Education and the Paris Olympic Games – 🔴 Info Libertaire

It is appropriate for a State which serves its own interests to legitimize itself by acting for the good of the people.

The growing sedentary lifestyle of French people, particularly young people, fueled by an exploding addiction to screens, is currently defined by health stakeholders as a health emergency.

Never mind, the government got to work to save the good people and had an idea: promoting physical and sporting activity will be the Great National Cause of the JOP year (this is timely) : Move every day!

“With, to do this, a simple marker: encouraging each individual, regardless of age or level of physical fitness, to practice 30 minutes of physical activity every day, on foot or by bike, in yoga or in dance, this What matters is moving! »

Workers who take the RER at 6 a.m., unemployed men and women who have plenty of time, mothers of isolated families, students who regularly skip a meal, children in vulnerable situations: break the cycle of precariousness: get moving!

Ignorance or contempt whatever, we should not expect anything from Macronie but this farce is revealing of a favorite of liberalism: the notion of empowerment which refers everyone to their problems and their responsibility and whose solution would be found in the will .

If teachers are missing in front of students, lots of little hands have been found to write proposals and projects so that teachers can echo the Olympics in their classes.

Let’s take a look at the “Eduscol” site, owned by the State and essential for anyone who wants to comply with what the institution expects.

From the Generation 2024 label, a tool to strengthen and multiply the bridges between school and sport to the GNC 2024 label (Great National Cause), everyone will find something to participate in this momentum towards the JOPs and to highlight their establishment which will then appear on official publications.

From kindergarten to university, we will go through physical activity or singing, through plastic arts or video, but games will have to pass!

Sound resources and specially arranged scores allow students and teachers from schools, colleges and high schools to perform vocal and/or instrumental interpretations of the Olympic anthem, while the Generation 2024 site offers a choreography of the dance of the OJ. Others will discover Olympic and Paralympic sports, meet athletes, participate in Olympics between establishments, visit future Olympic sites and still others (sales, boilermaking and electricity sectors of a high school) have created an “academic flame” presented to the Rector of the Academy of Versailles.

It is not possible here to list all the inventiveness demonstrated by the ministry.

“Secularism is a principle of freedom, freedom to believe or not to believe. It is at the foundation of our society and our school which must protect students from any ideological, economic and religious proselytism. » (Education.gouv)

Kindergarten teachers will, however, be able to obtain a “first games” booklet on the very prolific Eduscol site, the educational interest of which cannot be found but the Danone visual is very recognizable when it comes to introducing our students to “eating well”.

With the “ocean relay” kit you will find a coloring of a sailboat in the colors of the Banque Populaire or photos of the skipper Armel Le Cléac’h saturated with the same brand.

Very early on, students are asked to internalize that water sports and money go hand in hand.

The Responsible Supporter Kit will allow one to make cardboard supporter glasses (“from 6 years old”) and the other to make their own little ashtray from recycled material (“from 18 years old”) ). With cigarettes and this ashtray before the age of 18 will we be responsible or irresponsible?

Elementary school teachers were directly tasked with distributing an educational kit and a two-euro commemorative coin to all their students (i.e. 4 million)… Asking teachers to distribute money while one of their first demands is the increase in their remuneration as well as those of the resources allocated to the School can leave one wondering. How will distributing money to students promote the practice of sport at school or elsewhere? In addition, cash is prohibited at school because it is a source of discord, but perhaps we want to prepare our students for business practice?

A booklet of around ten pages accompanies the piece, four are devoted to texts written by Emmanuel Macron, Amélie Oudéa-Castera, the Minister of Sports, and Gabriel Attal when he was Minister of Education, 6 pages are devoted to games “to become unbeatable” about the Paris Olympics, such as crosswords and charades.

The booklet for the CP student who is just or not yet a reader is the same as that for the CM2 student soon to be in middle school… still no pedagogy in sight but a communication operation worth 16 million euros.

It is also interesting to look at the historical data displayed in the booklet “At the Heart of Games” intended for elementary school students. Three personalities, with supporting photographs, embody the history of the Games.

Pierre de Coubertin is presented as the founder of the modern Olympic Games, who was committed, among other things, to the development of the practice of sport at school. While he is a unanimously contested figure, the little student of 2024 will know no more than that of 1920 about racism, sexism, colonialism and the baron’s connections with Nazism.

The evil spirits will be able to console themselves, the presentation of the baron is followed by those of Alice Milliat embodying here the conquest of the participation of women in the Olympic Games and of Ludwig Guttmann founder of the Paralympic Games.

In this same booklet, the choice of five events from the history of the games and their treatment denote ideological choices. The victory of Owens, a black American in 36 in Berlin, the raised fists of Smith and Carlos in 1968 in Mexico, the common flag of the two Koreas in 2000, the recognition of the rights of refugee athletes in 2016 recall humanist struggles and their context is specified.

The fifth event is treated differently: “The Games were sometimes the scene of acts of violence. At the Munich Olympics (1972), Palestinian terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage to demand the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. The outcome of this hostage-taking was tragic: 11 Israeli athletes were killed. » The verdict of the reader unaware of the context will probably be final.

As for the exclusion of Smith and Carlos by the IOC, there is no mention of it either.

This is the ambition of the Macron government.

Remember that sport and physical activity are not equivalent. Sport is a constructed historical social fact, born in the 18th century in Great Britain in the great schools. It spread in Europe at the same time as the bourgeoisie established its economic and cultural domination. For sociologist Jean-Marie Brohm, sport is governed by authorities which set the rules of the game in a relatively arbitrary manner while adorning themselves with a veneer of universality, and therefore objectivity. Therein lies the eminently political character of sport: creating rankings based on the standards that its leaders decree, while making them appear immutable. But Jean-Marie Brohm’s analysis does not stop there. According to him, this institution of modern sport is based on four pillars which are none other than those of capitalist commercial society: performance, hierarchy, bureaucracy and advertising. Indeed, competition, surpassing oneself – and above all others -, the celebration of winners and contempt for losers, in a word the cult of individual performance undoubtedly constitutes the basis of the system of neoliberal values ​​which supports the regime current capitalist.

Popular, sporting practice is already a little less popular: statistical surveys show that it remains unevenly widespread in the population, to the detriment of women and members of the working classes, precisely. The obstacles to this practice are as much cultural as material.

In France, 10% of students will never go to the swimming pool due to lack of infrastructure or means of transport. In Seine Saint Denis, one student in two does absolutely no activity outside of PE lessons and upon entering sixth form, seven students in ten do not know how to swim due to the few time slots allocated.

The Olympics and major sporting events in general are closely linked to money and trade. They could not take place without the funding they provide.

Here again the mystification is gross: while health is identified as a national cause, the champion of “junk food” Coca Cola is among the official partners of the event.

An international study published in The Lancet in February 2024 concluded that “a sedentary lifestyle is leading humanity to an anthropological turning point and that prevention efforts focused on individual behaviors or on isolated changes in the built or food environment have had little impact on the prevalence of obesity, in part because healthy foods and the practice of sport and other active lifestyles are not affordable or accessible by people with low income or limited independence.

Finally, studies have shown that hosting sporting events did not have an immediate or delayed effect on the practice of sporting activities by populations (Journal of Physical Activity and Health, 2023).

This year, when nearly 691 million euros are being cut for National Education while public education is failing and the 93 is asking for an “emergency plan”. Public spending for the JOPs, initially estimated at 3 billion, is currently estimated at 4 or 5 billion.

While some angry establishments returned the “booklet and coin” packages to the sender, elsewhere students were able to run to the bakery with their coin, other coins are currently selling for several hundred euros on Leboncoin.

The students of the Anatole France school in St Denis are simply smoked by the interchange in the Pleyel district and 3,000 students will be evicted from their accommodation at the Crous to accommodate partners and volunteers of the Games.

Prices for the athletics finals at the Stade de France have been set at 85 euros for seats located at the very top of the stadium, in the corners, then at 195 euros for those just below, and the vast majority will be sold at 385 and 690 euros per unit, so for students already victims of capitalism there will remain retransmissions which will continue to enrich shareholders.

The media and schools will have sung the romance of national unity during the Olympic truce because “the strength of Olympism, (…) what motivated us to organize the Games in France is respect and tolerance. »

With the objective of making Universal National Service and uniforms compulsory in schools, recruitment into the service of the powerful will reach another level.

Zelda

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Source: Oclibertaire.lautre.net