“SPORT OR STUDY?” – STUDENTS’ AND PAR- ENTS’ OPINIONS IN THE LIGHT OF THE RESULTS OF A QUESTIONNAIRE SURVEY

Abstract

Introduction: Juvenile competitive sports have been shown to benefit health and sports commitment in adult- hood. Unfortunately, the number of students participating in competitive sports is decreasing, and the school has not been able to handle the special sit- uation of students arising from sports for decades.
Objective: My research is to present the relationship between school and sport in light of students’ and parents’ opinions. The author would like to draw everyone’s attention to the „sport or study” dilemma, who can influence the life and career of an athlete’s child or young person.
Material and methods: In addition to studying the literature, my method of investigation was document analysis and then the evaluation of data from a questionnaire survey (N=285). Re- sults: Both parents and students con- sider learning and sports important, but public education and schools find it difficult to deal with students’ prob- lems arising from competitive sports and are unable to support the sports

activities and fulfilment of academic obligations of elite athletes with direct means. Students are more likely than parents to believe that learning is im- portant, but school doesn’t have to be strong. They feel that how much they learn depends only partly on their par- ents. Parents of sports students know less about conflicts at school due to sports than students. Students feel that the class teacher’s behaviour is less supportive than their parents. Parents believe that their classmates look up to their competitive athlete children, who tend to see their attitude as indifferent. Discussion and conclusions: Most of my hypotheses turned out to be true, with students and parents differing on only a few issues. Based on my research results, I consider it worth considering further strengthening the public education-type sports school system, even by reintroducing the cen- tral head quota system.