Sport Development as process of Social Change
Alex John SM 487 Dr. Jones

Throughout the article Green (2008), highlights that for as long as sport has been around it has always been seen as a way to enhance the development of youth by establishing values for children at an early age. Additionally, sport has the power to bring people together, which in turn establishes peace and understanding. Coubertin (2008) states that in the late nineteenth century sport competitions were a way to develop young boys into respected men through the values of teamwork, unselfishness, and self-control. Sport has always been seen as a way to instill values that are seldom learned through other methods. Through participating in sports you learn at a young age the importance of sacrifice and hard work and when you are put in a proper setting to develop these values, it only adds to the salubrious socialization development of these young athletes to further their development of personal change. There is a general agreement that sport has value in terms of socialization but what those values are, are not always agreed upon. Watson (1977) states that parents from different social classes agreed that sport taught important values to their children, but they disagreed about what those values are. Working class parents felt that sport teaches teamwork and obedience to authority, while parents in white-collar occupations felt that sport teaches individual achievement and leadership (Watson, 1977). Green (2008) stats that, what is taken from prior experiences is what is wanted to become understood by the individual.
The early belief that sport teaches values has lead to the creation of programs that address a wide rango of social problems. For underprivileged and at risk kids these programs teach them values in order to fix the social problems they encounter. “Sport can be crucial to the social and personal development of young people. By participating in sporting activities they can learn to differentiate between good and bad behavior”, (Labour Party, 1997, p. 8). Since the early 1990’s sport has increasingly been considered a solution for the social issues. According to Greene (2008), there are three types of programs that can be categorized by their objectives to address a wide range of social problems. The first is to seek to bring sport to underserved or at-risk populations; 2. Replace or divert deviant behaviors with socially desirable behaviors and 3. To use sport to attract deviant or at-risk populations in order to provide other social welfare services. As stated by Green (2008), “while it is impossible to conclude that sport does or does not affect social change, we can examine the program types, their successes and failures to begin to begin to identify program elements common to successful programs”.
Green (2008) states that, sport for social inclusion programs are designed to reach specific populations that provide the purpose of sport development by increasing the number of individuals participating in sport, and by increasing the diversity of participants. Green (2008) termed this as the ‘integration programs’ since they are intended to reach minority populations with the goal of acculturating them to the principles and values of the sports culture. One based on the cult of performance, rules, and a sense of fair play, while instilling a strong sense of the social order. Here, sport is used as a tool to bring children and young adults together around an ambitious project in which they are able to learn a regulated, collective way of life, aiming to resocialize them (Ville de Lyon, 1991, p.82). Programs that provide sport participation opportunities with the expectation that the setting itself will pass on valued benefits are numerous. However, the outcomes of these programs are not always equally successful. Green (2008) states that winning or striving to win can and does bring