An interesting school idea.....

[red5angel]

Yesterday I was home sick and saw a bit of some show on tv. It was about some guy who runs a Shaolin school of somekind. Anyway, I guess he takes kids who are problem children and teaches them martial arts and respect. Not only does he take them into his school but he takes them out to show them some of the bad neighborhoods.
He treats them with a lot of respect but make sthem treat him with respect. Very cool idea. Not sure on any details though, I was groggy. Just remember the instructor was a black guy and I got the feeling it was in a major city here in the US.
Good idea anyway........

[dezhen2001]

sounds like the movie "only the strong", where mark dacascos teaches everyone Capoeira :)

Maybe it's a good idea? What does everyone else think?

david

[red5angel]

I saw that movie!
this guy seemed to have a good system. He was teaching them self respect. He wasnt afraid to establish who was boss but he was real upbeat with them , and treated them like adults, not children.

[NafAnal]

was he bald and sorta looked like a goblin?

[red5angel]

uh no, he was thin, black, and he had long hair.

[Budokan]

I remember seeing a news story about the guy who is "bald and looks sort of like a goblin" too. Not this other guy, though.

[Chris McKinley]

I teach at a school run by Judo champion Pat Burris. He regularly takes at-risk youth and gives them a positive training environment where they can learn about boundaries, courtesy, mutual respect, and trusting and respecting authority. I can't say enough good things about him and his program; a real class act.

[Mantis_Hand]

I spent a year working on the adolescent ward at a local psych hospital and brought this up with the Unit Director. She looked at me like I was insane.

"You want to teach a bunch of violent, troubled kids to fight?" She asked.

I tried to explain to her that with the proper training and philosophy it could tansform them and rehabilitate a lot of them. Most of the kids came from severely abusive homes and had little in the way of self esteem and confidence and based on my personal experiences with martial arts and the way they made me a better person mentally, I figured they could come away with the same personality shaping benefits that I got from CMA. The Unit Director was convinced that they'd just turn around and start kicking each others asses with better efficiency.

Maybe she was right, I never got the chance to try.

[wu_de36]

I think there's a cut-off level of when it might be "too-late" to intervene with MA training. After being convicted of violent crime, maybe.

For borderline kids in schools, it might not be such a bad idea.

Chuck Norris is a huge supporter of this with his Kick Drugs Out of America program.

http://www.kdooa.org/ edit: .org, not .com... doh!

There is documented research out there which measures aggression levels of children studying martial arts, using the mental training (i.e. codes, ethics morals, meditation, etc) as the control.

Both show an increase in aggression at first, especially in the beginner/intermediate areas, but aggression drops quickly afterwards in the classes which use the mental aspects of MA as well.

If there is a pressing desire for it, I will dig up the sourc3es for a term paper I wrote on it a few years ago.

[NafAnal]

Yeah he really did look like a goblin, not sure if we're talking about the same guy budo, was his name sugar ray saomethingorother. his style seemed to love nasty finger locks....

[Rolling Elbow]

Yes,

he also jumped around and had a cool uniform on..i think he did lots of cool demos where he AND his son jumped around and wipped around their bradd pony tails....

GIMMICK!

Nice idea and i am sure he is decent but how many Shaolin masters do we really need..illegitimate ones i mean. The guy still looked VERY commercial.

[Colin]

I saw on the tele,video,can't remember where!!
A guy from New York who teaches shaolin kung fu of some sort to under-privileged kids.
He was black and had a red suit????
I remember that he called out the hand techniques while the kids were in horse stance, sort of like "tiger claw" and all the kids shouted and did a fu -jow.
It seemed that this guy was really doing some good for these kids. So all power to him!

C.