Using Sport to Teach History

By Sophia A. Niarchos
OYSTER BAY, N.Y. — “I think credit is due to Prof. Chris Ioannides,” said Prof. Alexander Kitroeff, referring to the director of the Byzantine and Greek Studies Center at Queens College. “I didn’t realize how well this course could work in teaching Greek history.”
Kitroeff, a professor of history at Pennsylvania’s Haverford College. was referring to the course on Athens and the Olympic Games he taught at Queens College this past semester.

“I thought we would be going into it as a sports course, but it actually became a study in Greek cultural history from the mid-19th century to the present,” he said. “I learned that teaching Greek history through sport makes it more palatable to students than teaching it through the study of politics, intellectual history and philosophy.

“Studying Greek history by examining Greece’s role in the Olympic movement also helps make her more relevant because she is cast in an international context,” he added.

With Greece only playing host to two official Olympic Games in the last 108 years, one might question giving her credit for playing a role in the totality of the modern Olympic movement. But Kitroeff points to many examples of her influence on the movement and of the characteristics this small nation displayed in response to events occurring throughout the Games’ recent history. The result was a study of Greece, not through its foreign policy, but in the context of world history in the last century.

Kitroeff explained that Greece’s role in the movement began on a positive note with official and uinofficial Games held in 1896 and 1906, both “excellently organized and well-attended,” that straddled poorly organized and less well-attended games in Paris and St. Louis.

In response to world events that threatened the Olympic Games in the ’20s and ’30s, he said, Greece played a role in reinstating ancient Greek symbols related to the Games, specifically, the Oath and the Olympic flame.

“When there was a debate about participating in the Berlin Olympics with the Nazis in power, Greece, out of concern for peace and the Games’ continuity, decided it would go. When Hitler approached the competitors, Spiros Louis, the marathon champion of 1896 who marched in wearing his foustanella, offered him an olive branch.

In the ’50s, road construction and archaeological excavations at ancient Olympia became important in the development of tourism in Greece, something most of the students seemed unaware of.

“The tragedy at Munich in 1972 and the Olympic boycott in 1980 led Greece to seek to become the permanent venue for the Olympic games.

“In addition, Greece was always represented on the International Olympic Committee since its inception in 1894,” he added.

Although the course at Queens College was organized around Kitroeff’s most recent book, Wrestling with the Ancients: Modern Greek Identity and the Olympics, which was completed in November, 2003, additional fodder for discussion was provided by the widespread media reports on the current game preparations that Kitroeff hadn’t anticipated.

“Although I try to bring current events into all the history classes I teach, I hadn’t realized how much coverage of the Greek Olympic games there would be during this course,” he explained.

So when there was speculation about the use of performance-enhancing drugs by Greek athletes, Kitroeff used that as a discussion topic about Greek character in the context of Greek national identity.

“I asked them whether they thought the government would do everything possible to get to the bottom of the issue or whether it would be ignored. Seventy-five percent thought the government would do enough to get to the bottom of it, but the remaining quarter thought that, because investigating the problem would detract from the Games themselves, it would not be thoroughly investigated.”

Reactions to negative articles about Greece’s preparations for the games seemed to be directly related to whether the students, all Greek-Americans, were born in Greece or in the U.S. Of the fifteen undergraduates – who ran the full spectrum from freshmen to graduating seniors – those born in Greece didn’t believe much of what was written by the media on the topic and were concerned about possible political aims. The American-born students were prepared to concede that the articles, though they may have been unfair, were truthful.

In addition to requiring a short paper either on Greece and the 1996 Olympics or on media coverage of the 2004 Games preparations, Professor Kitroeff also used role-playing as an educational tool to help students realize the position Greece found itself in as it sought to become the host country for the Olympics in both 1896 and 1996. Though they thought that Greece overdid it with the history argument for being chosen host of the centennial Games, they could see that using history and tradition in 1896 was very important.

“They grasped the idea that Greece neglected to present an international face, to show a modern side, that it needed to address smog and security issues as well as the corporate interest aspects of the Games in order to succeed,” he said, effectively summarizing the central identity struggle of the Greek nation, which “wants to be seen as advanced as possible” while keeping its “relationship with the ancient past.”

Interest in the Greek Olympics topic was also shown outside the Queens College classroom when Professor Kitroeff spoke at an early May event attended by 30-50 students as well as senior college administration, including President James L. Muyskens and Provost and Senior Vice-President Evangelos Gizis, as well as Consuls-General of Greece and Cyprus Catherine Boura and Martha Mavromati. The on-campus lunchtime event was sponsored by the Greek student club.

This Wednesday Kitroeff will also participate in a discussion on “The Impact of the Olympic Games on Greek Education and Culture in the U.S.,” at The Hellenic-American Heritage Council’s Third Annual Business Conference on Greece-U.S. Relations.