Lawmakers Pang Chuan and Kou Kam Fai want to promote Physical Education (PE) in local schools as a path for local sports development as well as cultivating sporting habits among local residents.
The idea was presented to the government via a spoken inquiry delivered recently at the Legislative Assembly during the period before the agenda of the latest plenary session.
Pang and Kou noted that, in recent years, the government has been determined to discover talented young sportspeople. The services responsible for sports affairs have deepened collaboration with several sports associations in the joint creation of the Macau Youth Sports Schools, as well as launching the financial support plan for the training of elite athletes, among other efforts.
The lawmakers said, “PE is an important component of education” citing the educator Cai Yuanpei who once said that “Physical Education is the basis of a healthy personality”. They noted that to support Macau’s economic diversification, in which sports play an important role, “we must give importance to the role of sport in strengthening the body, and also identify and promote the educational function of sport, that is, cultivating sporting habits among students and young people to improve their physical condition, shape, characters, and develop a good spirit, and improve students and young people’s understanding of sports activities and the sports industry, to encourage them to engage in sport.”
The lawmakers hope that reinforcing PE in primary, secondary, and higher education curricula will lead to students discovering and later developing their skills in the sport of their choice.
But the lawmakers want more; they want to “increase public knowledge and participation in sports, making sport a lifestyle.”
They claim that, only in this way, Macau can produce well-trained and knowledgeable sports professionals to support the industry and make Macau a “City of Sports.”
In the speech, Kou noted that different countries and regions of the world “have taken the organization of major sporting events [by] a major brand that becomes an important means of building the international image of cities,” noting six of the largest international marathons in the world in Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York as examples.
The lawmaker also gave the example of Beijing, saying it has “strengthened its international influence through the organization of major sporting events,” such as the Asian Games and the Olympic Games, adding that Macau, as a World Center for Tourism and Leisure, must follow these national and international examples.
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