ABSTRACT
The involvement of universities and colleges with the modern Olympic and Paralympic Games dates back to the late nineteenth century, when founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin was inspired to start the event after visiting several institutions, mostly in England, Ireland, the United States and Canada. 1 Coubertin joined the liberal, republican classicist intellectuals by writing in the journal La Reforme Sociale (the combined organ of two organisations, the Société d’économie sociale and the Unions de la paix sociale), where his first thoughts and expressions about l’education athlétique and la pédagogie sportive were expressed. Both organisations were founded and led by Frédéric Le Play, a sociologist and social philosopher of the mid-nineteenth century whom Coubertin admired. Le Play’s work had raised much criticism but also received much recognition for its emphasis on the methods of ‘fieldwork’ and ‘observation’, with the modern meaning of the terms, in sociological research (MacAloon, 1981). Pierre de Coubertin related strongly to Frédéric Le Play because they both shared a desire to reform French education.
