Franklin Roosevelt, one of our great presidents, once said there is nothing to fear but fear itself. These words are vague, ambiguous and catchy at the same time. They make a good philosophical conversation. What does this message really mean, as “it don’t make no sense” to me when I first read them when I was a youngster? I think what he wanted to say was that we should be strong, stand up to our enemies and be brave enough to deal with adversarial situations, whether they are real or imagined. Again, it’s so cryptic that you could interpret it many ways.

Just this week, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) closed all its schools for one day on Tuesday because of the threat of terrorism upon its faculty, staff and students. LAUSD is the second largest school district in the nation. It is made up of over 1,000 schools and half a million students. The threat of a gun and bomb attack was posted on the internet, routed through Germany, but was believed to be of US origin. It came in the wake of a shooting about two weeks prior by a couple radicalized by the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The consequence was horrendous beyond reason and words. This husband and wife team killed 14 people and injured 22 others at a county office in San Bernardino County, just about 60 miles east of the City of LA. Apparently
neither the shooters nor the victims knew each other.

No tragedy happened in the LAUSD this week. So most people believed it was a hoax. But was it? We’ll probably never know for sure.

I don’t have an answer to deal with international or internal terrorism. I am not proposing anything that will make sense fighting blinded but determined murderers who are hell-bent to kill school children with guns and bombs. But I do have a minor suggestion to empower your young children with confidence to deal with bullies, whether they are in the school playground or the world at large, and to a small extent as Roosevelt would like it, to deal with fear itself.

This idea was seeded many decades ago when I was a counselor for a middle school (grades 7, 8 and 9). It was later confirmed, at least to me and my wife, about ten years later when our two children started grade school.

My employer was a middle school located in the Seattle area. It was academically considered average. So were the education and income level of the students’ families. “Normal” was the atmosphere in the school yards – that was a sugar-coated way of saying it had its share of bullying by a small number of kids. Nothing spectacular ever happened that would attract the TV stations, but there were pullings and pushings, and periodic scraped faces and bloody noses.

The school had funding for an on-site nurse, who was a very kind lady. So all minor injuries were taken care of in her office, and all hurt egos repaired in the counselors’ or the principal’s offices.

I was stationed at that school for two years. After about six months on the job, I’d discovered a pattern, which was confirmed by the more senior and seasoned counselors and teachers. There were only so many bullies. So the perpetrators of rough acts tended to be repeat offenders. Oddly enough, the victims tended to be repeat victims. And if they had not been intimidated before, they tended to be the “fearful” type, if I may borrow Roosevelt’s vocabulary.

My unscientific and unproven theory is as follows. It seems like the primal animal instinct is at work here — i.e., the predator (bully) senses out the prey (the fearful) and attacks. We don’t want to teach our kids as predators – I hope not. But we can teach them to be non-fearful, hence not becoming a potential prey. How do we do that?
Answer: Basic martial arts skills.

I know, martial arts are not for every family, but I think we should give a kid a choice, a chance.

Here’s my own personal story in that area. I grew up small in stature and I still am. Despite the lack of physical size I was not picked on in school, on the street, or was involved in a fist fight. I went to an excellent primary school and later an even better secondary school where bullies were non-existent. That’s hard to believe nowadays, isn’t it? That was in Hong Kong many decades ago. It was a slightly different world then.

Fast forward to age 39. By then I had been in the US for 20 years. I figured I was going to be 40 years old soon. I haven’t exercised much in my life until then. I couldn’t live on youthful energy any more. I needed to get into a regular physical routine to maintain my health. So out of the blue I signed up for a Judo class. Judo means the “gentle way” which I thought I could deal with better than Thai Boxing or Parkour. Well, later I found out, Judo was “gentle” until you got thrown like a rag to the ground. By then, it was too late. I already liked that sport. So I continued for many years.

When I was fairly proficient in Judo, my Sensei (teacher) asked me to help teach a kids class, which I gladly agreed to. Here’s where I found something much more enjoyable than seeing the kids learn the fighting skills.

Observation 1. Kids who are good at Judo, big or small, almost never get into fights, or initiate fights in school. They’ve already proven their worth in the Dojo (martial arts school). They don’t need to beat up on weaker kids to feel good about themselves.

Observation 2. Kids who are small and timid at the first few classes of Judo almost always go through a gradual process toward higher confidence. As they learn basic moves to protect themselves, they make more eye contact with people and they talk more steadily and logically to others. When they do that at school, the bullies usually leave them alone.

I would extrapolate the second observation a little further. I believe that if a kid is not afraid of rougher and/or bigger kids at school, they probably won’t be of other ruffians when they grow up. Martial arts are not about fighting violence with violence. In my book, it’s deterring violence with confidence.

Having said that, what if a person comes up and points a gun at you? Quoting my beloved Sensei’s advice, “You run like hell.”

*** The End ***

 

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