The strange phenomenon of students engaging in violent fights just so they can post videos of the clash on the Internet is something for parents to deal with, not Canadian lawmakers, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said today.Thank heaven for small mercies but one of the consequences of our new age is the presumption that we can eradicate all of our aggressive tendencies and punish any thirst to be competitive from our nature. We are at constant war with our own biology. We punish our young for aggressive behavior and try to substitute the thirst to complete with non-contact non-aggressive forms of play like skipping, rather than providing outlets to challenge or direct our children’s aggression. We punish our children for excellence by banning winners and extol those who lose by giving rewards to all.
And Opposition leader John Tory agrees with him. Orangeville District Secondary School in Orangeville, a small town north of Toronto, is the latest to have its students featured in fight videos posted on popular websites like youtube.com.
“As parent, I think it is completely reprehensible,” McGuinty said. “The only word that comes to mind is it’s sick for people to attack each other as some form of entertainment, either for themselves or for others to somehow, in some perverse sense, enjoy later.”
And while police in Orangeville say they can’t lay charges because the fights were consensual, McGuinty made it clear he believes it would be wrong to outlaw consensual fighting in order to stop the teens. “Rather than resort to the Criminal Code at the outset, I think parents ought to understand what it is their children are doing, and ought to provide them with the appropriate guidance and direction,” he said.
Opposition Leader John Tory, whose riding includes Orangeville, said he agrees that the problem is for parents to deal with, not legislators. “There are some things that government just can’t legislate,” said Tory. “I think if it gets out of hand and trespasses over the existing Criminal Code line, then police will deal with it.”
Our elementary school phys-ed programs have substituted dancing and gymnastics for football, field/floor/ice hockey and soccer. Basketball, hockey, football, soccer and baseball have all been banned at the downtown elementary school all of my children have attended, and not just in phys-ed class but from the playground at lunch and recess too.
The risk of injury can be high and the education gurus tell us that it brings out and develops aggressive qualities in our children, as well as fostering an unhealthy spirit of competitiveness. Skipping and dolls are still allowed on the playground but I hear rumors that danger lurks there too. Even a doll or a rope can be weapon.
I don’t think it's such a strange phenomenon nor do I think its sick for people to attack each other as some sort entertainment. Actually, it’s a sport and one of the oldest of Olympic sports. It is called boxing. I suppose it’s not so odd that Premier McGirlieman has never heard of it. He probably knits for entertainment.
I have a son who boxes. I worry about head injuries. He worries about stats/points and dreams about executing the perfect right, left, right combination into some other woman’s son’s head. Originally, I signed my son up at boxing as a last resort and punishment for being suspended for fighting at school with his best friend. Funny thing happened with the boxing. My son became the most passive and self-assured young man I have ever met...as long as he goes to the club a few times a week.
But passivity hasn’t been the only benefit for either him or I. He has developed a confidence and a real sense of ease within his own skin that it rare for someone his age to display. He has developed discipline and learned when to rein in his emotions and channel his anger so that it works in his best interests rather than against.
The benefits of boxing don’t end there. My son is in superb physical shape and if he wants to continue to spar or fight he has to keep his license in good standing with the provincial bodies that regulate the sport – that means regular drug testing. Fail your piss test and you will not be sparring and everyone knows your using (including your mother). It’s one of the few win-win scenarios for a parent.
Then there’s the sense of fraternity which has filled a void in his life that the loss of his father has created. Though that has been a bit of a mixed blessing as the gym has a wide range of ages so my son is receiving a far more colorful of sex education than I would have chosen. For example, after my son had been going to the gym for about six months he pulled me aside and stated he needed to talk to me about something.
After much humming and hawing, he broke down and asked if it really was okay to masturbate with a shop-vac because it can take both wet and dry. It’s a moments like these that I am often drive me to curse the dead. I asked where he heard that bit of foolishness, and he told me the guys in the gym were discussing which vacuum cleaners worked best. I told him about Richard Gere, and then I warned him to keep his hands off my Hoover upright.
I have another son who is counting down the days till January 1, 2007 when he can join his older brother at the boxing club.
4 comments:
ROFL - Richard Gere! IMO individual martial sports do make you more relaxed and self-confidant in ways that team-jock sports do not because of the independant nature of the effort. A weird crossover is waterpolo (and swimming) which is very individual yet you are a member of a team, but you pretty much fight alone - and agains the water as well. Yeh I played 'polo and got my agression out that way, later in college I fenced foil and saber.
I thought Richard Gere had some sort of accident involving rodents, not household appliances.
CT - Egad, never heard about the rats, how very Danish of him, but seriously, the story I remember from the 80's concerned the vaccumed sealing of his hoover on his member.
DC - actually all of my children have swum competitively, both the LA & Youngest have been ranked #1 in the city at one time or another. The LA has approaching Olympic times and then she just got bored and can't bear to swim anymore....teenagers. But she has signed up for water polo come the winter.
Waterpolo can be nasty_ they check your fingernail-length at the poolside but not toenails. I was never that great maybe because with my vision the ball was just a distant fuzzy yellow thing, so I played defense.
What I'm grateful for now is that with a vision corrected snorkel mask I can swim all day long, looking at fishies, and turtles and coral on Maui or wherever. California water's too damn cold up north here.
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