The Olympics: more than medals

By Megan Bakker
The Collegian

Students taking Kinesiology 111: The Olympic Games spend surprisingly little time talking about sports.

Instead instructor Mark Baldis takes a global view, focusing on world politics, history, and economics.

“I use the Olympic games as a lens through which to examine all those topics,” said Baldis. On the first day of class, he tells students that if they want to learn athlete statistics or even records “that class is taught every Saturday afternoon at any local bar.”

“I first thought it was going to be about the older Olympic games,” said business major Ryan Smith. “But it’s more about the politics … it puts it into perspective.”

While most students take the class for the upper-division general education credit, some students have more personal reasons.

“Because I’m Greek, I’ve taken a lot of Greek-related classes just for personal interest,” said kinesiology major Christine Tacotaco.

Baldis spends a lot of time talking about the Munich Olympics massacre and Middle East affairs because of its relation to modern world events. Baldis said Munich was the first terrorist event that got worldwide attention.

“What 9/11 did to raise consciousness about terrorism [in America], the Munich Olympics did for Europe,” he said. His goal is to increase student awareness of world events. He wants to show examples of history repeating itself so that students can learn from the past.

“Most people in our society, their understanding of history goes back to breakfast,” Baldis said.

“You learn countries try to use the Olympics to bring their own wants,” said Jacob Carrillo, a history major.

“There’s lots of politics involved, not just the sports.”

In addition to world politics, Baldis also relates the Olympics to United States history. His lectures cover the Civil Rights movement and Title IX issues. He points out that Tommy Smith, who raised the black power fist while on the podium in 1968, was from Lemoore.

“Quite a few Valley athletes have gone to the Olympics,” he said. The most recent was snowboarder Andy Finch, who won a spot on the 2006 team.

Baldis took over the class in fall 2001, and immediately moved the focus towards current events. Prior to his teaching it, he said that the class was more focused on the ancient Athens games and their origins.

Instead, Baldis spends only three lectures on ancient Greece, and then jumps to 1896 and the beginning of the modern Olympics. Ideally, he would like to cover everything from 1896 to now, but usually ends the semester somewhere around 1988.

Baldis also expects students to go beyond memorizing his lectures. He assigns several argumentative papers that relate to issues discussed in class. He wants students to support and defend opinions on topics like Title IX, drugs in sports, and whether countries that violate civil rights should be allowed to host Olympic games. The topics vary from semester to semester, but one thing remains constant.

“The biggest criticism I get is that I’m too hard on papers.” Baldis has high expectations of his student’s writing skills, and no sympathy when students complain that it’s not an English class. His favorite comment was when a student told him on a written evaluation: “I should not grade so hard and this is not an English – spelled I-n-g-l-i-s-h – class, so it was a little hard to take seriously.” Overall, though, students are positive about his grading system.

“I think it’s really nice. He’s pretty honest about how he’s gonna test everything,” said nursing major Tom Cano.

At the end of the day, Baldis says he wants to educate “in a way that’s friendly and enjoyable.” And, over the course of several semesters, his understanding of world events has grown as well.

“It’s really been an education for me, too.”

For those interested in following along with the 2006 Turin Olympics, the opening ceremony starts tonight at 8 p.m.

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