Educating Copacabana : a critical analysis of the "Second Half", an Olympic education program of Rio 2016

The Second Half Program (SHP) is an educational sports program running in Brazil. It began in 2003 and was one of the Olympic educational proposals described in the Rio 2016 Olympics bid. Using sport as a tool, the SHP aims to deliver moral education and to promote citizenship in order to counteract "social exclusion" and "social vulnerability". Our analysis of official SHP documents and interviews with key actors in several SHPs reveals that the SHP illustrates the view that merely participating in sport will instill moral and Olympic values. Thus, although it represents a clear advance in government sports education policies, both its organizational methods and the lack of a clear pedagogy seem to limit the scope of the SHP to sports teaching. It thus fails to reach the broader scope that should be approached in an Olympic educational program.