ARTICLE REVIEW
By Aiman bin Mohamed (G1812349) and Muhammad Faizal bin Shafie (G1810083)
Craig M. Ross, Lynn M. Jamieson, Donald W. Mitchell (2008). Cross – Cultural
Understanding Through Youth Sports: Bridging the Tolerance Gap Through Youth
Development. Journal of Youth Development – Bridging Research and Practice, Vol. 3,
No. 3
Introduction
In the given article, the researchers have brought up an interesting title in pointing up the
common issues that are happening in every society nowadays. Globally, it is inevitable for
current society to have a diverse multicultural people living together as a community. In our
own community back in the days, there was only a certain number of foreigners, nevertheless,
due to globalization, nowadays people from different countries are migrating for several reasons
and their number is growing.
On this matter, there were three authors wrote some discussions to the issue, respectively, Ross
& Jamieson from Indiana University and Mitchell from Purdue University. The title of the
written article is Cross-cultural Understanding Through Youth Sports: Bridging the Tolerance
Gap Through Youth Development. The aim of this article is about highlighting the effort in
achieving the goal of these programs which were seeking to assist in the prevention or reduction
of stereotyping, violence, and hatred, through leadership and development training, recreational
sports, and tolerance training among youth in Kyrgyzstan.
Summary
After the event of 9/11, there are stereotyping towards Muslims of being associated with
terrorist especially Arab-like people. This program tried to eradicate the false perception of
people toward the muslim community as well as save the youth from being the victim of the
misunderstood society and to rescue the youth from the extreme radical ideology that supports
terrorism.
With the intention to solve the social problems suffered by the Kyrgyzstan community, a
constructive program conducted by the U.S. State Department’s USPORT. It focused on
leadership and development training, recreational sports and tolerance training. For tolerance
training, the youth is given the skills to be the peacemaker to achieve mutual understanding
and respect which is highly required in instilling cooperation between multi-ethnic regions
within the country. In bridging the gap with a productive and peaceful method, sports came into
the picture. With the help from sports activities, the youth have set aside their ethnicity
background and focusing on the common goal of a team which promotes unity and cooperation.
On the other hand, youth leadership and development training helps to inculcate the sense of
responsibility, self-esteem and communication skill as well as other productive soft skills.
Content
The major purpose of this article seems to promote cultural understanding and bridging the
tolerance gap among youths in the region of the Middle East through a holistic youth
development sport project. The project consisted of three phrases which included youth
recreational sport programming, youth leadership and development training, and youth
tolerance training.
The researchers clearly raised the urge for initiating an impactful project in dealing with
the cultural understanding and bridging the tolerance gap among youths throughout their
comments in the article by citing other researchers’ opinions. In order to justify why they choose
sports project for this situation, the researchers cited United Nations (2005) that suggests that
“by its very nature, sport is about participation. It is about inclusion and bridging cultural or
ethnic divides. Sport can cut across barriers that divide societies, making it a powerful tool to
support conflict prevention and peace-building efforts. When applied effective, sport
programmes promote social integration and foster tolerance, helping to reduce tension and
generate dialogue”. In addition, the researchers cited Hansen, Larson, & Dworkin, (2003) that
proposed youth sport activities are frequently associated with positive experiences related to
developing teamwork skills and forming community ties in order to further support their
justifications.
The researchers were very positive with the outlined project/ program by stating that the
ICCE completed a very successful sports diplomacy project/program entitled: Unity through
Sport (USPORT) or USPORT-Kyrgyzstan. To further support the statement, the researchers
also provided quotes that they obtained through interviews from trainers in the program as well
as youth participants after USPORT was implemented in Kyrgyzstan, demonstrate the impact
that USPORT-Kyrgyzstan is having on league players, trainers, and supporters in Kyrgyzstan.
Beforehand, the researchers managed to explain precisely how they design the project by asking
themselves a number of questions that fell into three categories as follows:
1. How can we reach the largest number of youth? How can we bring into our project the
most marginalized and disenfranchised youth who are most at risk of violence or being
recruited into organizations and movements dedicated to violent change?
2. How can we develop as many youth as possible in positive ways and involve them in
community projects? How can we identify and develop key youth who have the
potential to be future leaders?
3. How can we teach youth to be tolerant of ethnic and cultural differences? How can we
teach youth to value religious differences?
In regard to the first set of questions, the researcher concluded that the best way of reaching a
large number of youth is through a youth recreational sports program. Meanwhile, in regard to
the second set of questions, youth recreational sports programs are not just single events, but
ongoing activities in the context of which youth leadership and development training can take
place. Lastly, the researchers concluded that a youth tolerance training component was
necessary for this project. Overall, these are the steps they to design the project.
Nevertheless, the researchers are still not able to persuade readers successfully to their
agreement as they just acknowledge readers with only their personal comments and random
feedback from trainers as well as youth participants they collected randomly in the program.
By the way, the researchers failed to clearly describe how they should assess the effectiveness
of the project to promote cultural understanding and bridging the tolerance gap among youths
in the region after it was conducted. As a result, the researchers did not manage to come out
with well organised findings and solid evidences or reasonings. By offering neither research
clear and precise findings nor solid evidences or reasonings, the researchers potentially
increased the readers’ resistance to their arguments.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Craig M. Ross, Lynn M. Jamieson and Donald W. Mitchell (2008)
presented convincing research on cultural understanding and bridging the tolerance gap among
youths in the region of Middle East through a holistic youth development sport project.
Regardless of their failure to provide well organised findings and solid evidences or reasonings
to the research and to clearly describe to readers how they should assess the effectiveness of
the project after it was done, however they managed to describe the steps they took to design
the project clearly and precisely.