The civilization deprived of culture is corresponded by upbringing without education, which means pedagogy deprived of humanistic essence. Under the influence of «globalism», «physical culture» was expelled from school and «physical education» was introduced, which indicates the unity of the body and a positive character, the «spirit» being a synonym for character. The name «physical education» implies that it is the body that should be educated, whereas it is about a repressive model of physical exercises mutilating man both physically and mentally and turning him into a «citizen» suited to the nature of the ruling order. This is contained both in the principle mens sana in corpore sano and in Coubertin’s principle mens fervida in corpore lacertoso. The highest challenges of «sports pedagogy» – «overcoming the human», «perfectioning» and the like insist on the development of man’s physical powers, and not on the development of interpersonal relations and on the overcoming of the existing world. Hence «sports pedagogy» discards the principles without which modern society cannot be imagined: Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood. Basically, it is about a development of human powers reduced to establishing interpersonal relations which are the embodiment of the ruling spirit and involve a struggle with the idea of future. «Sports education» is marked by physical one-sidedness, which corresponds to the model of school that abolishes the right to individual difference and seeks to «produce» certain «profiles» of experts who meet the demands of a dehumanized technological development. Man’s submission to the established order is mediated by the development of technological processes, so the impression is being made that «technical world», as an autonomous phenomenon, is to be «blamed» for the established processes of specialization (an increasingly early selection and mental and physical mutilation of children), and not the capitalist order that turns science and technique into dehumanized and destructive forces. The whole system is marked by competition and elimination based on (destructive) performance. The most important task of «sports education» is not only to subordinate a child’s physical development, starting from an increasingly early age, to a particular sport, but to deal with the critical mind and subordinate his spiritual development to the requirements of the absolutized principle of performance and the maxim homo homini lupus. «Physical education» should contribute to the development of an aggressive and ruthless individualistic combative-productivistic spirit in young people – according to the spirit of the «New Age» (neo-liberalism). That is why Hobbes, Arnold and Coubertin are still relevant, and Rousseau, Goethe and Schiller are not. Instead of sociability based on solidarity and tolerance, there is a «sociability» reduced to a merciless struggle between the «opponents» for acquiring the highest social values and for survival. It is about imposing on children, from an early age, a Social Darwinist model of life, that is to say, about the reduction of the human community to a «civilized» menagerie, the teacher of «physical education» being the embodiment of the ruling «competitive» spirit of the order and the body technician, while the coach is the whip of capital. The acceptance of the order in which survival and social status are achieved through a ruthless fight is the basis of modern sports (physical) education. The spiritus movens of man’s physical activism is not his fear of repressive authority; it is his fear of being beaten in the increasingly ruthless struggle for a place under the sun.
Physical education was, and still is, one of the earliest forms of children’s repressive socialization. The ruling «pedagogical principles» have always served to support the bars of the cage, and not to make room for free individual development. Instead of being a means for developing versatile and creative people, «physical education» is becoming a means for physical, spiritual and social mutilation of young people. Just as upbringing involves a certain type of education, so education involves a certain type of upbringing. Education that produces «specialists» involves upbringing the aim of which is not the creation of a versatile and proud individual who will have a (critical and change-oriented) relation to the world departing from his (human) needs, but of specialty-idiots who (by their mutilated positivistic minds) become the ideal means of capital and alienated centers of political power for realizing their own interests. The instrumentalization of the body becomes the instrumentalization of man. The typical examples are the so called «top sportsmen», who are dehumanized (decultivated) «physical workers» ready to mutilate and kill their «colleagues» and mutilate and destroy their own organism – only to acquire «fame» and money. They become a spectacular embodiment of the supreme values of «sports education» and as such the «idols» of young people. As far as space is concerned, sports centers become modern temples and thus a means for man’s enclosure into the spiritual horizon of the capitalist civilization. In the gloomy barracks (which will become a model for the construction of gyms in schools and at universities) and with the help of militaristic drill, the vividness of spirit and imagination is lost. Sports stadiums and centers take man away from nature, and sport is an activity that destroys in him the feeling of belonging to nature. Even in those sports that take place in nature, nature is reduced to a «competitive space» and thus has a technical character.
The repressive pedagogy of «physical education» of the bourgeois society (which first appeared in barracks and includes jamborees) has become the model for the pedagogy of «physical education» in the countries of «real socialism». To an authoritarian system corresponds an authoritarian school to which corresponds an authoritarian «physical culture». In the so called «socialism», the role of school was to produce loyal «socialist citizens»; today, the role of school is to produce loyal «capitalist citizens». The purpose of the then physical culture was to produce, by way of a repressive model of physical exercises, an «average» citizen, who is «part of the community» and who obeys the authority of the ruling political will embodied in the state. The development of a «new» capitalism brought about the atomization of people, based on the fight for personal interests. Society is no longer a community of people the integration of which is dictated and ensured by the totalitarian political and economic power of the state (the ruling party), but a conflict of private interests according to increasingly ruthless «rules of the game», based on the principles homo homini lupus and bellum omnium contra omnes. The basis for ensuring survival and acquiring a social status is not only the loyalty to the ruling political will, but also the loyalty to the ruling principle of monopolistic capitalism «Big fish devours small fish!». By attacking the (authoritarian) «socialist collectivism», the ideologues of capitalism do not seek to overcome it by advocating an authentic community, but to deal once and for all with the very ideal of community based on solidarity and social justice. Instead of creating a humanistic civilization, school becomes an instrument for creating a capitalist civilization based on the absolutized principle of profit. «Physical education» becomes an instrument for adjusting life to the rhythm dictated by the increasingly faster operation of capital, increasingly higher risk of living, new requirements imposed by the development of technique and, in that context, increasing domination of the so called «intellectual» over physical forms of labour.
In contemporary capitalism the autonomy of the faculty as a scientific (pedagogical) institution has completely been abolished and it has become a tool for realizing the strategic interests of the ruling order. This can be seen from the changes in the names of the faculty: the «Faculty of Physical Culture» has changed its name into the «Faculty of Sport and Physical Education», or the «Faculty of Sport». As sport is becoming an increasingly important instrument for depolitization of the oppressed and for «making money», the pressure on the faculties to become «scientific» service to sports associations and clubs which «do business» according to mafia principles, is becoming greater. Professors, who have become «expert consultants» in sports organizations, use the authority of the faculties and their titles in order to obtain «scientific» legitimacy for the increasingly ruthless destruction of people in sport. Students have become hostages, and an increasingly important source of financing, of the interest groups which hold control over the faculties. The critical mind is abolished as well as the cultural heritage and an immediate relation between sports show-business and the faculty is being established. In this context, the difference between sport and physical culture is abolished and thus a possibility of establishing a critical distance to sport from the aspect of libertarian physical culture and of creating a humane physical culture. Sport is deprived of its historical and social essence and becomes a phenomenon sui generis, which by way of humanistic rhetoric («peace», «happiness», «progress», «beauty» …) obtains a mythological character. In this way, its propagators are no longer responsible for the consequences of sport when it comes to physical and mental health of young people and to the ruling (destructive) order produced by it. «Sports pedagogy», as it is taught at faculties, is not marked by a humanistic, but by a technical education. Instead of subjects which emphasize physical movement as an expression of man’s libertarian-creative nature, prevail sports and technical subjects, which use man and his body as a means for realizing inhuman ends. The faculties do not produce pedagogues, but experts for particular sports and body technicians whose «pedagogical work» is reduced to physical and mental mutilation of young people. Instead of humanization, physical and mental drill, based on (inhuman) science and realized by technical means, becomes the basis of contemporary pedagogical practice. Man is abolished as a biological and humane being, and reduced to a mechanical being.
As far as the division in physical culture, sport and recreation is concerned, it is conditioned by physical abilities, and ultimately, by the existing division of labour and the nature of the ruling (Social Darwinist) existential and value model, and not by the development of man’s playing being. We are dealing here, only apparently, with three value models based on physical powers. In this division, physical culture corresponds to the upbringing of children for the ruling order; sport corresponds to a «mature» phase in life in which man openly «fights for a place under the sun»; recreation is meant to preserve health and prolong life once man leaves the fight for survival. It is not a humanistic, but a functional and instrumental conception. Basically, sport, which has become the industry of death, is the supreme value challenge. As far as the «General Theory of Physical Education» is concerned, it is a way of putting under the same roof physical education in schools, sport and recreation. The idea is to build, by way of positivistic disciplines, such a «theoretical» bastion around sport which will prevent any «attacks» on sport from the point of view of the emancipatory legacy of physical culture, art, pedagogy, sociology, philosophy… The conflict between sport and physical culture is basically a conflict between a repressive civilization, whose sport is a condensed ideological expression and which is based on the Olympic (oppressive) principle, and a (possible) humanistic civilization based on the Promethean (libertarian) principle.
