Page 77 - Olympism in Socialism

sports throughout their life. This process is
continued at vocational schools and universities.
There are also sports which form a part of the
integrated curricula.
Extra-curricular sports are aimed at
extending and deepening the basic physical
training acquired at school and at promoting
special abilities and skills. At present about two-
thirds of all the GDR’s school children regularly
take part in the activities of school sports groups
or sports groups of the DTSB in addition to
regular lessons in sports. The following example
illustrates how children’s and youth sports are
organised in the GDR.
Belzig—an idyllic small town in the country of
Potsdam—is a town like many others. It is the
centre of a rural district covering an area of 913
square kilometers with three towns, 61 parishes
and altogether 36,623 inhabitants. No
international sports event has ever taken place in
this district and no Olympic participant hails
from there. Yet, sports are very popular here also.
Let us take the secondary school named after the
great German working-class leader Ernst
Thaelmann. Seven hundred girls and boys attend
it. They come from 17 different places—some on
a school bus and some on bicycles. Besides
exercise books and text-books, gymnasium kits
are part of the necessary equipment. The
integrated curriculum for all schools in the GDR
provides for two hours of compulsory sports
lessons per week, and in the case of 4th, 5th and
6th forms even three hours. In the 4th form the
share of sports lessons in the total number of
lessons per week (28) is therefore more than ten
per cent. Moreover, eighty per cent of all schools
have school sports groups in which 63 per cent of
the girls and boys take part regularly.

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