Educational Alternatives, Volume 14, 2016

Abstract: Club-based sports life has always offered space for exerting a deliberate educational effect on the social group of children and youth. In the beginning of the modern sport in Victorian England, this purpose became one of the main tasks of sport. From that time, the educational value of sport has been in focus of many political documents of European Union as well as of the Czech Republic. Especially, the socialization and improving young people personality are stressed. The article concentrates on children‘s and youth organised sport where space for educational influence is very convenient. The sports in which regular competitions are organised were surveyed. The data from sport statistics were used (year 1988, 1997 and 2014). It is, above all, the commercialization, privatization and individualization of sport that has caused significant structural changes in the participation of Czech adolescents in its organized forms. Statistical data reveal that there has been a total significant drop in those who are involved in sports clubs under the supervision of coaches and are, therefore, exposed to long-term systematic educational action.