Football is more than a game. We are not the first to mention this. In our case, we would like to stress how football can also be used to connect across cultural borders, a lingua franca of sorts, and the value this has for positive communication and building rapport in the classroom- an essential part of learning. Needless to say this is not for everybody, but as a dominant aspect of daily life, football stories have a way of touching even the (historical) lives of almost everybody. Moreover, the educational principle is that learning happens best when connected to one’s own lived experience. it opens the mind for learning and improves retention of communicated information.
Evidently, football itself also is composed of significant pedagogical and didactical aspects. Learning to play; and learning to play together. As a sport discipline, playing the game well requires physical exercise, group tactics, the capacity to deal with loss and core values surrounding the game in the area of mutual respect among contestants as well as toward the referees when emotions run high. Football is also known for triggering levels of passion among spectators, which can drive violence and conflict.
Football clubs, mainly through their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes, but also in other domains, collaborate closely with schools and other educational institutes. Centering heritage, history and citizenship in these efforts is a new kid on the block, with promising results!
A day in the life of FC Town
Today, in one of the schools in town, students start their special week-project on War and Peace, with a special class on FC Town. The teacher has been supported by FC Town’s heritage department and was provided with some unique objects from their collection. A wartime almanac from when the town was occupied yet football competitions continued, a pair of football boots used during that time, a medal provided to that championship team, as well as historical photos and accounts of players who have lived through that period, be it as collaborators, members of the resistance and/or as war victims. This package of objects and personal stories from the local club interest students who are not very engaged in history. Through group work, the students are extra motivated to continue their historical investigation. Understanding past conflicts, in particular viewed through the lives of ordinary people (even football players!), helps them to focus on current events in the world. At the end of the session, the teacher announced that FC Town has also invited the students for a visit to the club to present their findings at the end of the project-week.
Forms
At Football Makes History, we recognise Education as one of the Key Practices for engaged heritage work. With regard to this practice, we want to know: How can football clubs bring their history and community into educational spaces? On which themes can school educators work in a way that also supports football clubs’ core values and educational ambitions?
In our network, we have identified two forms in which this can take place. First of all, there are clubs, often through their museums and/or CSR work which offer educational activities on history and/or civics through formal and non-formal education. Secondly, various engaging resources are being made available to support the teaching of football history and educators develop and use resources to bring football into their history/civics classrooms.
In this open article we discuss several examples of Football in the Classroom by football clubs. We hope they may inspire other football club communities to reflect upon their practices and/or to try out new actions; and we are open to add your reflections and/or suggestions to this article as well!
Form 1: Offering educational activities
Clubs that connect with young people through education, often collaborate with local partners. These could be teachers, their schools, museums or other organisations who connect well to the clubs’ values. Of course, football clubs cannot replace school, but there are interesting ways in which they can complement them!
One interesting example is to combine their lessons with a visit to the football stadium. Walking into these unique structures is often already a magical experience for school children. Eintracht Frankfurt is one such football club. The club museum offers schools – from elementary school classes to advanced courses in upper secondary school – a whole range of museum-pedagogical topics that enable problem-oriented teaching at the museum as a place of learning. Pupils of primary school age compare the contrasts and similarities between the beginnings of football in Germany and modern professional sport today, and recognize the different social and living conditions in the city today and then. The children experience by touch which soccer shoes, balls and jerseys their great-great-grandfathers played soccer with. For children in secondary schools, the Museum does several tailor-made activities, touching upon themes such as religion, migration and violence (in society). These workshops have a great appeal to the visitors. Every week school groups come to the stadium. They often visit the museum for one workshop, and then embark on a stadium tour.
It is always good to keep developing educational programmes – sometimes an outsider perspective helps with that. In 2023, students of the MA Applied Museum and Heritage Studies of the Reinwardt Academy, carried out a special visit to the Eintracht Frankfurt Museum in order to get to know these workshops and co-design new didactical approaches. One of the new ideas was to invite school kids to study the club museums’ collection of fan group patches, get to learn more about underlying values and identities, and create their own jeans patch. The museum went on to develop this workshop!
The NAC Breda Museum in The Netherlands works together with the provincial heritage office (Erfgoed Brabant) by facilitating an educational programme for primary school children called “museumschatjes”. The organisation of Erfgoed Brabant works as a matchmaker between schools and the museum. This is of great help to the museum, which is run fully by volunteers with very limited time to plan educational activities. During these visits to the club museum, the museum’s volunteers work with the school children, showcasing unique objects from their collection.
More football clubs take part in educational projects which are run by third parties. Two examples which connect citizenship education to the efforts to fight racism, antisemitism and discrimination in football are: Fair Play (run by the Anne Frank Foundation in The Netherlands) and Show Racism the Red Card (run by a dedicated foundation in the United Kingdom). In both these contexts, the football clubs are offered a complete package to conduct an educational activity at the club premises, including workshops, materials and expert trainers.
One special programme which has been developed in Germany uses football clubs as contexts to include children in democratic citizenship education. The Lernort Stadion programme has developed into a country-wide network with many clubs involved.
Does your club offer educational activities to young people? Has it developed its own materials and approach, or does it collaborate with existing programmes? If not, on which themes do you think the club could develop educational resources?
Form 2: Football as a topic in history education
Football has been around for more or less 150 years. With football being played pretty much all over the world, and every week for much of this period, it can provide incredible perspectives into how world history has been experienced locally. In many cases, the large public attention it has been receiving gives us insights into social, cultural and political dynamics across history and today.
As a game which is played in nearly every locality in the world, football gives communities a way to express themselves. As a cultural force that is profoundly large in numbers of supporters, followers and people involved, as well as rich in recorded history, it is like a layer that rests upon social, economic and political history. In a short video, author David Goldblatt sketched out why it could, and indeed should, be used in the school teaching of history.
In our Football Makes History project, teachers have worked together to develop lesson activities on many different themes. They have tested these lessons, peer reviewed their approaches, and these are – and will remain – available for free on this very website. A good way to explore these resources is the Football Makes History Handbook (2021).
There are many different themes in history education which can be addressed through history education. For example, when looking at climate change and industrialisation, we have published a series of educational articles linking football to the development of railways.
One other prominent topic is the connection which teachers can make between football and the Holocaust. Through a curated set of educational personal stories, this complex history can be explored through the lens of the lives of football players.
Already in 2014, two history teachers in Wales initiated the project The Football History Boys where they write about football history with a keen eye on how it can be used in education. More history teachers are actively developing this field!
Denver Charles is Head of History and Citizenship at Magherafelt High School Belfast and has the special utility that football has to address the complicated and contested history of Northern Ireland. Geir Ove Halvorsen, a history teacher at Valle Hovin Upper Secondary School (Oslo, Norway) is a pioneering teacher in this regard as well. He has connected football to the teaching of local history, the second world war, and human rights history. Over in Denmark, history teacher Jakob Fihl-Jensen (Køge Gymnasium, Copenhagen) wrote an entire history textbook based on the game called Fodbold Bogen (The Football Book). It is an educational book and with a website for history classes in Danish, where core concepts such as national identity, social history, globalization and gender are discussed through the history of football. Dutch history teacher Hellen Jansen built a special project connecting Europe to football, as well as local football club FC Den Bosch.
Did your history (or civics) teacher bring football into education? How was this done? And if not, how do you think it can be done?
3. Engaged Heritage Work for Football in the Classroom
Football clubs are very interested in the possibilities of bringing their heritage into history classrooms and are happy to welcome pupils and students into their stadium for lessons, but as a sports organisation, run by sports professionals, the educational focus is strongly aimed at well-being and health. If there are connections to heritage, it is enabled through a high level of awareness of the importance of dealing with the past to instill democratic values in the present and future. At the same time, when such historical contexts (for example related to the Holocaust and genocide, or authoritarian and totalitarian regimes) do feature in the football club’s educational efforts, the ‘fun learning environment’, which appealed in the first place, lingers.
What makes Education a key practice?
Let’s go back to FC Town, and the school class whose lessons connected to football and local history and society. The students went on to present their work at the club during a special visit, and the teacher received very positive feedback from parents, including some who have been very sceptical of the idea of connecting with football. The teacher published the approach online and received messages from interested teachers abroad who wanted to adopt the approach. FC Town published a blog about this experience and planned a meeting with local teachers to see how to expand this programme further.
FC Town’s cooperation with local schools, like all examples mentioned in this article, is more than just history class with extra fun. When clubs and their communities work on history and citizenship education together, they:
- Contribute to historical and civic awareness of young people who otherwise might not take an interest in the subject;
- Stimulate the development of knowledge among all involved;
- Can dig deeper into the club values and culture;
- Provide inspiration to young people beyond ‘just’ the sport dimension, while at the same time strengthening the sense of club identity and community.
What are your examples?
Our initial examples are based on a limited series of conversations conducted in the context of the Erasmus+ Project Football Makes History: Schools and football club museums unlocking local heritage education – mainly with Dutch and German partners. We hope to continue to collect more examples! Please use the contact form to share with us your example of socially engaged remembrance work at your football club, and we will work to add it to this very article.
Support available
Did you find the examples inspiring, and are you curious about what you could do to organise new meaningful remembrance activities at your club? Get in touch through the contact form. We look forward to hearing all about your initiative and providing hands-on advice, references and more.
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