ANDhe fundamental role of the State in a nation is human development based on education and health; sport from the educational system contributes in these two lines; at the same time, it provides a space for participation, inclusion, equity and equality; contributing to the promotion of values and social cohesion.
In the case of Olympic organizations, their mission is high performance that constitutes a stimulus for the educational system and is complemented by the massive participation of students, selecting the best talents to be taken to high competition and represent their country. in national teams. For example, in countries like the United States, France, Spain and Cuba, there are the same Olympic structures that the Dominican Republic has. However, in none of these nations can these structures interfere to replace the school or the role of the State in the massification of sport.
Overcrowding: Exclusive State Responsibility
In our country, we have experienced an involutionary process in the sports education field, because in the middle of the 20th century, sports in schools had an organization that ranged from the local, municipal, regional and national levels, which, to a large extent, is the supreme interest of the National Development Strategy Law 1-12, which orders a process of restructuring and organization from the educational campuses.
At present, this structure does not exist, because it has been replaced by the Olympic institutions that do not have the human resources or the economic means, whose mission is high competition. In the Dominican Republic, the sports sector has assumed tasks that strictly correspond to the State.
Sport is a transversal axis that contributes to the educational system as dynamism, enthusiasm, stimulation and a series of values that are produced within the school. This leads to all children, adolescents and young people feeling a deep identity for their school and community. However, in our country an unusual phenomenon has occurred and that is that the national sports model is outside the educational system and has assumed the task of being responsible for the massification of sport.
The confusion has reached a point where the statutes of many federations establish that they are responsible for the overcrowding of their sport. This socio-sports reality took on more force when in the year 2000 the Dominican State began to deliver monthly subsidies to sports federations.
From that moment on, two events took place that accelerated the process of decoupling education and sport. First, the State delegated the responsibility of operating the sport and second, the centralism of the federative sport. Since then, sport has been systematically removed from educational facilities.
Let’s illustrate with a high priority discipline like swimming and its multiple benefits. Its practice is non-existent in the national territory. What is the fundamental reason why this discipline does not have results to exhibit in the local and international order?
It is that the only way that this federation can operate correctly is that the State assumes it as public policies, since this sport needs highly qualified personnel, construction of swimming pools in part of the national territory and maintenance is high cost.
To get an idea, in Belgium children from six to seven years old must have their swimming certificate to stay in the educational system. This is an example of the strategic vision that must be taken with certain sports.
The Dominican State is responsible for spreading the widespread practice of sport. According to official data, 30% of the Dominican population gravitates in the pre-university and university system, the educational campuses are the center of public policies and the massification of national sport.
In the way our sports system is structured, it not only generates a lack of accessibility for our children, adolescents and young people; also, the absence of sport in a large part of the national territory and discrimination due to the way it is executed, capturing talents for high performance, without minimum guarantees for their development.
In a conversation with the neurosurgeon and former president of the Dominican Olympic Committee and Member of the Medical Commission of the International Olympic Committee, the prestigious Doctor José Joaquín Puello Herrera expressed that sport outside the educational system is deformative, with nothing more to add.
