They aren't as violent as they seem and are relatively safe. They promote team efforts and likely produce lots of oxytocin, which is very healthy for the brain. Competitions could include MMA, which would be epic. I think BJJ is much better training than just wrestling. I personally would want my future (possible) kids to train Muay Thai and BJJ growing up - would you want them to? It also instills confidence and high self-defense skills.
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I wrestled in high school and a year in college. Do jits now. My kids will wrestle then do jits later. Wrestling sucks, it is miserable, you learn to really grind and build that mental toughness that I believe is important in life.
Think about your average BJJ class, you actually have fun, wrestling practice sucks ass.
I mean... can you define "not as violent as they seem"? Because it seems like two people just fucking wailing on each other. Most of the people who elect to take these kinds of classes give a shit, and will participate accordingly. I can vaguely remember being in middle school gym class, and some kids take it real seriously, and some don't care at all. But since they're all forced to do it, there must be huge liability issues the moment a kid gets hurt because they suddenly were facing their 7th grade bully who hit puberty a little faster and so weighs 20 lbs more and has an extra 4 inches on them, and gets badly hurt because the kid is a little too "overeager."
Teenagers are absolute little shits - expecting any of them to show restraint, or to be capable of it, is asking for trouble. Asking a badly underpaid PE teacher to effectively supervise and motivate (not to mention teach) hundreds of kids a day in a combat sport also seems pretty aspirational.
At every MMA gym I have trained at has had kids sessions that have turned out very well. You definitely wouldn’t be able to have a normal PE teacher teach the classes, it would have to be specialized instructors.
Bullying has no place in these classes. But, you have enough pads for protection and with the right technique, you can overcome much.
Teachers aren't paid a fraction of what they should be, anyway. I doubt you're finding room in budgets for kids to learn combat sports when most of them aren't capable of basic algebra.
I mean, you can tell me "there is no place for bullying" until you're blue in the face, but you could say that about a lot of things, including, you know... bullying in general. But it still happens.
So we have now established that there is no budget to hire instructors to teach proper technique, no budget for the right equipment, and no reasonable ability to provide enough oversight to prevent bigger kids from bullying smaller ones. Seems like the answer of "why no combat sports in schools" is pretty obvious
I'd say it's for a similar reason why you don't see boxing as part of the typical school curriculum. There's just too much potential for injury when you combine an effective, but dangerous combat sport; dumb kids / teens; and unprepared / untrained staff to teach them. Heck, I've trained BJJ for years and I've still gotten injured and have gotten roughed up with spazzy white belts. Also, I can see most parents not wanting kids to do combat sports that involve getting hit in the head. One last thought is BJJ, muay thai, MMA etc. is still pretty niche. At least from my experience maybe 50% of the people I meet have a lot of misconceptions about combat sports and less than 10% have ever seen an MMA fight outside of random YT highlights.
To be fair though I do want my kids to get exposure to BJJ at least and potentially striking in a controlled practice. Like the way adults train is definitely different from the way kids classes are run so I can see your point too. If you really wanted kids can just do shadowboxing, light contact sparring, or positional BJJ.
I think a better alternative would be implementing just general self defense classes. All things considered 1 vs 1 unarmed combat is pretty rare. I'd imagine an attacker would be armed, there'd be more than one, or they wouldn't fall "rules". Like if I bust out my closed guard on the sidewalk against a group of 2+ attackers I'm getting pummeled. I feel a better curriculum would be more on 1) how to avoid situations like this and 2) high yield moves to exit the situation.
Yeah the first school that comes to mind with a boxing program is the US Naval Academy, but that is at the college level and many people will see combat, so it is good training.
I have been up against a spazzy white belt kid. We were doing arm bar training and I tapped and he thought it would be funny to crank it after I tapped and I about punched this kid in the face and he was just laughing. Such disrespect. I was much bigger than him as well, but anyone can crank an armbar.
Yeah you’re right about street fights. A lot of the time it is multiple people or they have a weapon. I’ve been in two street fights and luckily they didn’t have a weapon and I used BJJ and Muay Thai to defeat them. One left in an ambulance, the other left to go to jail.
Overall though the discipline, camaraderie, and training in BJJ, Boxing, and Muay Thai proves valuable life lessons and lifelong friends.
why not also add cooking, filling taxes, personal finance, chess, etc. etc. and end up having kids putting 100 hr weeks at school haha
the school is the bare minimum, parents have the responsibility to decide what to prioritize/exclude from their children education
even for the sake of it let's assume that combat sports are good for self-confidence, etc., why would we exclude sports that improve cardiovascular health? why shouldn't we add also sports that improve flexibility to avoid injuries? why wouldn't we add yoga to reduce stress on kids? if you keep going this really gets to a point where those kids would all be training for the Olympics
but the US education is still mediocre, in other countries there are high schools focused ezclusively on PhyEd., so there exists the possibility of having more sports in your curriculum.
There was also an experiment in an US High schol in the 70/80s where they put a high school on an extremely athlethics focused programme but it was dropped cuz parents don't want to see their kids abused or bullied for not being able to do 1 push up :( how dare they, let my Jimmy be 230lbs at 12yo
You’re right - elementary school students on the IB track should have the option to do 100hr weeks. lol
Love that from JFK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Fat_(song)
I said to my friend the 1 thing schools shld rlly teach kids is (personal) finance and related things like tax filing and basic investment knowledge like what index funds are and he just laughed and said we need people to keep being stupid so we can keep our jobs and have an edge
Most kids can't do basic algebra. Lets get them over that hump before we start teaching them about bond yields and index funds. All of that is easily learn-able online, anyway, for anyone with 15 minutes of spare time.
And we can easily make tax filing basically no more than signing your name at the bottom of a form for almost everyone. The only reason we don't do this is because of lobbying from the tax advice industry.
I'm talking abt HS kids
At OP, I get your point. Probably a lot of red tape involved. Overall point is, if you had to design a school curriculum from the ground up today, it would be vastly different from what is currently taught. First problem would be, you would have to retrain the entire teacher/workforce for that type of learning, or basically bring in new teachers. So what do you do, fire a bunch of teachers on tenure? Second problem is, most teachers if they were good at those subjects (such as personal finance) hate to say probably wouldn't be a teacher in the first place.
right, but instead of losing time training mediocre teachers, imagine having ex-Navy soldiers as teachers a la Jocko teaching Jiu Jitsu or Goggins doing the running class
those kids will go places fr fr no cap on my momma
Yeah exactly! That is what a I am thinking. Most coaches I have met in MMA / BJJ / Muay Thay / Spec Ops are great leaders and inspirational. They will change your life.
I get the point. The argument would probably be why "force" kids to learn combat skills; but in theory we already "force" kids to learn stuff, just most people think learning math is a universally good idea and we could drop some other classes in favor of more useful current skills (say, cut down history for a technology class).
I think the problem is more the student is unwilling to learn so the teachers have become mediocre in reaction to that (see note below). A different way to look at the problem would be, if school was no longer mandatory, how many students would actually go; and how many would actually good if you made the lesson plans at school more dynamic and able to incorporate more things like physical training, technology or business planning?
There are definitely some kids who are willing to learn (even probably more if you made school more relatable) and there are also some kids who are just there, literally coasting through school and then go on to coast through life. The best way to do it would probably be have schools that are for high performers (teach the things you are talking about) and "regular" schools, but we most likely already have that in some form. Also, this was the set up, you'd have parents who would probably force their kids into the high performer school just to tell their friends or to try and set there kid up.
At the end of the day, I know everyone has to go to school in the US. The problem isn't the school, its parenting. A lot of these problems would be solved if parents were better. I know that tough, I know parents are dealing with a lot these days, but school shouldn't be the crutch for you not helping your kid.
Note: (A lot of people forget the recent history of teach; we use to have the best and brightest as teachers, but when the US government decided that all students should have school, they had to expand schools but they didn't expand budgets, so they began to pitch teaching as a profession for "women" so they could pay them less; basically, more teachers but less average pay).
i keep showing kid Muay Thai and BJJ videos on youtube to my five year old, but whilst she enjoys watching them she said no way shes doing it. i think shes just a bit lazy though as shes not super keen on the ballet lessons shes doing either lol.
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