The ethos of sport as a silent partner in PE curricula

The purpose of the modern schooling and its curricula has originally been the citizenship education based on the unity of nation-states. Also sports of society have played a significant role when constructing the nation-state, in this case the European and Nordic country of Finland. Nowadays a new practice of citizenship (post-national citizenship) goes beyond the parameters of the nation-state. In this article we reviewed whether physical education (PE) curricula maintain sentiments representing modern values connected to the silent partner, the ethos of sport. By the ethos of sport we refer to the underlying hidden sentiment, representing modern values, that still informs the beliefs, customs, and practices of sports among PE. Thus, our presumption is that the concepts sports and physical education are not interchangeable. Using certain heuristic aspects of citizenship we traced the transition from the nation-state citizenship into the post-national citizenship in PE curricula. We argue that PE curricula rather than promoting post-national citizenship, maintain sentiments representing modern values linked with presumed homogenous Finnish culture and given gender roles, in particular.