Home > The Development and Growth of Sport
Public school athleticism
Early in the nineteenth century, public schools began to appear for the upper classes. These schools played a huge part in the development of modern sport.
Boys took the rural sports into the schools and adapted them in line with tthe sporting traditions of the upper-class gentlemen. Hunting was substituted for games such as hare and hounds and cross country running. Sports were increasingly used for eduacational pruposes. Football is the best example of the transformation whereby 'mob' football was transformed in public schools and became an organised regular game with rules.Sport was used as social control in the reformation of public schools, which lead to a concept known as 'muscular Christianity' - the idea that competing in athletics could develop moral understanding. Public schools were the first bodies to give sport rules.
Rationalism of sport
The development of sport began to spiral from 1860 onwards. Due to industrialisation most people lived and worked in urban areas and the influence of rural elements in sport decreased. Boys left public schools and played roles in developing sport at Oxford and Cambridge universities. National sports were developed, rules were written and governing bodies were set up.
Sport in the twentieth century
The twentieth century saw a steady move away from participation in sport to watching sport through specatorism and increasingly through the media. Spectatorism generated money, which led to the professionalism in most sports. Sport as become a mass consumer spectacle now linked to commercialism.
See the resources section for handouts, screencasts and presentations on the history and development of specific sports.