A Justice Site
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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: August 27, 2004
Reviewed:
Latest Update: August 27, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
Shared Reading: Sportsmanship, Honor, and Fair Play
- Introduction
Why I chose to share this reading.- Focus:
Main point of this reading.- Reading
Full identification of source for reading AND excerpt.- Concepts:
Concepts and Key Words.- Discussion
Discussion questions.- Conceptual Linking to Substantive Courses
What this has to do with our class.* * *
- I wanted to share this reading with you because it's a wonderful example of how narrative is an essential supplement to other forms of methodology. There were two incidents at the Olympic Games that should be looked at side by side. Phelps offered his position, voluntarily, in the men's medley relay race to Ian. Hamm was asked by letter to give up his gold metal to a person that the officials had incorrectly scored. After that incorrect scoring Hamm performed with the person in question and way outperformed him. I know. I watched. I want us to have at least a little background on these two separate issues and consider what they mean to sports, adversarialism, and fair play, as well as team work and community, in general.
- I would like us each to consider what we would do, and how we would justify our decision in both these instances. THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. Consider what the officials might do. What Paul Hamm might do. What different officials like F.I.G. might do.
- fair play: Just off the wall, fair play means to me that we recall that this is a game, that we recall that performances are never consistent, since they are always tied to the social context in which they are played, and we recognize that error is simply a part of human life. That doesn't tell us how to handle it when we encounter it.
- Flexibility and narrative allowed into "rules" Practically none. One runner in hurdles race tripped another, both highly respected runners. The committee officials would not allow the race to be rerun. Can you ever re-run a race?
- performance as"interdependent with social context" The roar of the crowd, the breathless silence, the glimpse of a competitor in a different swimming lane, what you ate for breakfast, a snide remark on entering the stadium, all are part of the social context. In that sense, the performance is socially constructed. Because our athletes work hard and long at their skills and their consistency, the social context probably contributes less to their actual performance than it would to yours or mine. But it is part of the whole in which performance occurs.
- Gymnastics Group Asks Hamm to Give Up Gold NY Times article on Hamm's Gold medal in gymnastics all-around. Backup.
- On Hard Road to Glory, Phelps Was Not Alone NY Times article n Phelps' Gold medal and his letting Ian Crocker swim the 400 medley.Backup.
- One runner in a hurdles race tripped another, both highly respected runners. The committee officials would not allow the race to be rerun. Can you ever re-run a race? What does that suggest?
You can't re-run the race in the sense that the context has changed by the preceding events. The runners aren't the same anymore. Once, Hamm has been told that he has won the gold, both his own perspective and the perscpective others have of him have changed. Maybe that's why he performed so much better than the Korean on the high bar. Or perhaps the Korean didn't perform so well on the high bar because he had lost the gold. These aren't questions we can answer.
We can change the dominant discourse in which we see the Olympics as needing incredible skill, talent, discipline, and good luck. The fact that one wins a gold medal over another does not mean that he/she will always perform better than the other. A race is just that, a performance just that. Not all races, all performances are repeatable exactly as they occured. Would it be possible for the record books to simply record errors and admit that no race, no performance is the "final word" on who's the best?
- In the gymnastics division the defending gold medalist on high bar was given a score lower than the crowd believed he should have. There was an uproar. The officials came, consulted, and forced a change in the score. The uproar went on for tne minutes. Paul Hamm had to wait throughout that uproar for his own performance on the high bar for which he won a silver medal. What does the social construction of performance say about this event?
The noise, and many people scurrying around is alone upsetting. The crowd seemed to want to award a medal to the Russian involved. How would all of that affect you if you were about to perform? Can rules help?
- There is at least one critical difference between Hamm's situation with the Korean, and Phelps' situation with Ian Crocker?
Phelps and Ian Crocker were on the US team. Phelps' concession of the right to swim in the medley did not deprive him of a medal. The FIG asked Hamm to give up his medal, and not to a team mate, and not of close friendship. The International Olympics Committee is opposed to giving second medals to make up for intentional or accidental mis-scoring. Why do you suppose that is? Consider our courts' preference to leave judgments as they are so that people can finally get the case over with and trust that it's done.
Conceptual Linking to Substantive Courses:
- Agencies:
Sample linking: Ways in which underlying assumptions of assimilation affect services offered and clients' ability to access and use those services. How does this reading illustrate the need for social agencies, for more generalized agencies, for what Bolman and Deal would call "leadership" AND "management"? How does this reading suggest ways in which we could be more effective in rendering help, and what is the reading's relationship to a "safety net" for those who need help?
- Criminal Justice:
Sample linking: Ways in which some groups are underrepresented in the unstated assumptions of our theories. How does this reading serve to illustrate adversarialism, mutuality, retribution, revenge, illocutionary understanding, the definition and operation of the criminal justice system?
- Law:
Sample linking: Extent to which laws are made on the assumption that we are all essentially assimilated to the dominant culture. How does this reading help us see the need for contextual readings in law? How does it relate to our natural instincts to seek some kind of natural law? What facts and principles does the reading offer for discourse that could clarify for Others validity claims presented by an Obscure Other?
- Moot Court:
Sample linking: Ways in which to make validty claims of harm understood by those who have never experienced many of the world's different perspectives. How can this reading enlighten our praxis in terms of different kinds of discourse, like instrumental, illocutionary, governance?
- Women in Poverty:
Sample linking: The culture of poverty and assimilation. How does the reading deal with our underlying assumptions about poverty, especially poverty of the exploited, the NOT- male? What does the reading suggest of the interrelationship between our society and its children, generally cared for by women, often poor?
- Race, Gender, Class:
Sample linking: The extent to which silence has been imposed by these affiliations so that domination and discrimination have entered our unstated assumptions in interpersonal relations and the structural context arising from them. What does the reading tell us about exploitation and alternative ways to deal with one another? What does it tell us about institutionalized -isms and our denial of complicity? What does it tell us about our common humanity?
- Religion:
Sample linking: The spiritual component. Humans are spiritual creatures, creatures that recognize moments that go beyond ourselves to God, Allah, Isis, Gaia, the Universe, or a deep sense of responsibility to create our own meanng. How does the reading fit into our ability, our need to create such meaning in life?
- Love !A:
Sample linking: What's the aesthetic link in this reading? How does it bring us closer to one another as humans? What does it tell us about our need for love, unconditional love, not rewards for doing well or being well, but caring and acceptance for being who we are?
