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hut to point to certain implications. Emphasis on competition in education
has at least two dangers. The first is the growth of a 'win-at-anyprice'
attitude with the attendant risks of manipulating the rules, violence
in play and the adoption of corrupt practices. (I recall a major scandal
at one public school when during the night before an important cricket
house match one of the housemasters was discovered watering the
wicket. The malpractices can be less innocent than that).
The second danger is the demoralisation of defeat. If there are
winners there must be losers - (not all games can be draws and if they
were we should find it even more difficult to win £ 70,000 on the Pools).
If winning means so much then losing must be degrading by just so
much.
The Public Schools in the 19th Century to a large extent avoided
the worst effects of competitive sport by means of several devices. The
development of a win-at-any-price spirit was checked by a code of
conventions which was even more powerful than the rules of the game.
Law 12 paragraph (1) of Association Football still requires the referee
to penalise "ungentlemanly conduct". Gentlemanly conduct was indeed
the concept which governed the game. As the game developed and was
taken up by players not familiar with the taboos and conventions of
the Public Schools the Football Association found it necessary to introduce
more and more stringent penalties. After the penalty kick
had been introduced in 1891 some teams of ex-Public Schoolboys refused
to play with that rule just because it seemed to cast aspersions
upon their sense of honour. They were forced to come to heel (sic) but
the phrase 'gentlemanly conduct' remained and, I venture to think,
the ideal enshrined in the rule still persists. I am not sure how the Russian
or French or Spanish have translated this rule but they must have
indulged in considerable mental exercise to find what it meant. I note
with interest that the A.E.W.H.A. have not included a rule about
'unladylike conduct'. They have merely given the umpire power to
penalise 'misconduct' spelt with one «s».
Some governing bodies of sport were so afraid of the win-at-anyprice
spirit that they forbad those forms of competition which intensify
the competition. The Rugby Union and the H.A. and the A.E.W.H.A.
forbad and still forbid Cup and League competitions.
Curiously perhaps the English still have a reputation for a form
of gentlemanly conduct in sport. Reg Harris, the retiring cycle sprint
champion wrote some two years ago, "We have a reputation for being
'nice' about sport, but everyone laughts at us behind our backs. It is
time we realised this and did a little hard work." Perhaps the first thing
we need to do is to decide whether'gentlemanly conduct'has any meaning
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