Reading Baron Pierre de Coubertin: issues of gender and race

Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, Spring-Summer, 2008 by Dikaia Chatziefstathiou

Baron Pierre de Coubertin, like many other Frenchmen, wanted revenge for the defeat and the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian war. As a descendant of an aristocratic family, Coubertin might have felt a special responsibility 'to seek revanche for the debacle at Sedan' (Guttmann, 1992, 8). As with many young aristocrats, Coubertin initially considered a military career. After spending some time at the French military academy at St. Cyr, he was persuaded that becoming a soldier would not suit him. He subsequently decided to attend classes at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, where the social theories of Frederic Le Play attracted his attention (Guttmann, 1992, 8). In 1883, he joined the Unions de la Paix, founded by Le Play, and he wrote many essays that were published in Le Play's journal La Reforme Sociale. Although Coubertin studied history, literature, education, sociology and many other subjects, he focused his attention on education, and in particular on sports education (pedagogie sportive) (Hill, 1992). Coubertin thought that the defeat in the Franco-Prussian war was not a result of the lack of military skills of Napoleon III, but of the physical inferiority of the average French youth.

In the early years of the nineteenth century, at a time that Napoleon I occupied much of Germany, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn had developed an extremely nationalistic form of gymnastics, the 'Turnen'. Jahn added a patriotic motive to what German educators had developed at the end of the eighteenth century: to unify the divided German Volk and to eject the hated Napoleonic invaders from German soil (Hobsbawm, 1992). Turnen became the basis of physical education in German public schools, as well as the dominant sport in private clubs and sports associations (Guttmann, 1992). Coubertin suspected that German soldiers were much fitter than the French, and that if the latter wished to confront the Germans successfully, they had to improve their physical capacities. Therefore, he concluded that the solution was a sport-based educational reform (Muller, 2000), unlike his contemporaries who suggested a theory-based educational reform (Hoberman, 1995).

Accordingly, he travelled to Germany, England, the United States and Canada to inspect the leading approaches personally (Kidd, 1996). While studying the German approach, he concluded that there were probably better paths to physical development than the rigid routines of German physical education (Guttmann, 1992). In the United States (1889) and Canada, he visited the early programmes of intercollegiate athletics, and he was impressed by the excellent facilities that the colleges and universities had made available to their students. In Universites Transatlantiques (1890), he wrote enthusiastically of what he had seen (Guttmann, 1992), but still he had not found something that impressed him sufficiently to advocate its implementation in the French context (Kidd, 1996). Therefore, Coubertin travelled to England, knowing that the English were passionate about sports, as at Eton, Harrow, Winchester and the rest of the Public Schools, boys were practising for many hours daily the activities of rowing, running, jumping and ball games (Hoberman, 1995).

Coubertin's enthusiasm for English sports education escalated, when, in 1875, he read a French translation of Toro Brown's School Days (1856), a novel in which Thomas Hughes romanticised his memories of Rugby School. In his study L'Education en Angleterre (1888), Coubertin, at the age of twenty-five, wrote of Arnold, that he "could not have been English if he had not loved sport" (Guttmann, 1992, 9). Nonetheless, Guttmann (1992) and Hoberman (1995) argue that Coubertin was misled by Hughes and thought that Thomas Arnold had been a fervent advocate of sports. In fact, Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby school from 1828 to 1842 (Hill 1992), was far more interested in boys' moral education than in their physical development (Guttmann 1992). No matter what the real focus of Arnold was, Coubertin admired the combination of physical health and character that was reflected in the sport of the English youth. After visiting Rugby school in 1883, Coubertin was totally convinced that the British approach to sport in education would help invigorate France (Kidd, 1996). In one of his memoirs, Une Champagne de Vingt-et-un Ans (1909), Coubertin described his visit to the chapel of the Rugby school as 'pilgrimage' and Arnold became for him an inspirational figure (Guttmann, 1992).

His openness to English and American influences brought Coubertin into conflict with his Anglophobic countrymen (Guttmann, 1992). Pascal Grousset, organiser of an extremely nationalistic Ligue Nationale de l'Education Physique, insisted on having French sports with French names. For instance, when league members showed a big interest in playing football, he desperately and persistently wanted to rename the sport la barrette. In this climate of disapproval and chauvinism, Coubertin was steadily and frequently publishing papers urging the French to emulate the English, as a preparation for revenging the defeat by Prussia (Guttmann, 1992). Working closely with educators from progressive schools, such as L'Ecole Monge and L'Ecole Alsacienne, he propagandised athleticism, a dominant element in the British secondary education. Additionally, Coubertin organised of reorganised a number of sports associations, of which the most important was the Union des Societes Francaises de Sports Athletiques (USFSA), which was founded in 1890 by Coubertin and his friend Georges St.-Clair. In a letter from Coubertin to Brookes in July 1892, he indicates that he was using the union as the base for reviving the Games. The union had reached sixty-two member societies with about 7,000 participants and this made him believe that the revival of the Ancient Olympic Games was close. His studies of classical history, as well as his experiences from travelling in different domains comparing educational programmes, had convinced him that 'sport' and 'character' were the ingredients for the successful development of youth. In ancient Greece this combination was achieved, through a triple unity in Athens gymnasia: between old and young, between different disciplines, and between people of different types (Hill 1992).