In today’s world of school shooting like Columbine and numerous other school shoot outs, much study has been conducted in the school systems about violence in the schools. One of the major findings is that school bullying is a major cause of the violence. The violence is not carried out by those who are the bullies but by those children who feel they are bullied.
I am a product of the late 1950s and early 1960s, school generations where school bullying was never considered a major problem. I am not saying that the kids of my time did not have fights, we did fight both on and off school grounds. It was a proving ground for all of us to grow up in. I was an overweight kid who had a father in a responsible community position. Any misbehavior on my part was dealt with rather quickly and usually at the end of a paddle of either the school principle or by my father or both.
When I was in Junior high my 7th grade year, I was bullied by several students in the school. Most were in the 7th and 8th grades. One of the best methods of handling the bully situation came from my PE coach. He encouraged me to learn how to box in the ring using gloves and punching bags.
He encouraged us as a PE class to learn to box. In my art class, I had a student that was stronger and in my eyes bigger than me who loved to bully me. He would want my lunch money or he would want me to do his work for him. Well the day came that a scuffle broke out in the class room between me and this bully. The couch was called to the office and we were turned over to him for our punishment. He made us run laps around the football field to start off with but then he decided that we would have it out in the boxing rink on the next Friday. It was staged as the Friday afternoon bout between myself and the school bully.
We had a great turn out for the fight. There were 80 students who witnessed the fight. We had boxing instructions and gloves and were told to box. What amazed me is that I was the more aggressive fighter and the bully ended up giving up. After the fight, no one again tried to bully me. The bully lost his power over the other students.
So to make a long story short, maybe we need to put PE back in the curriculum and allow the coaches to teach boxing to those students who feel they are bullied. It sure beats putting policeman on campus and metal detectors in the school doors. Let’s teach our children self respect and respect for one another rather than making excuses and burying our kids.
