Post by jwbulldogs on Jul 10, 2012 1:14:23 GMT -5
I have 2 student in my dojo that both have experienced weapons being brought to school that someone brought to hurt them. These are the nicest kids. I don't know how old they were when it happened but they are 10 and 12 now. Someone had posted a question on yahoo. I think it was Possum, but I'm not sure. He said something to the nature of when do you teach certain techniques to your students are to children? Many of us replied that you don't want to teach kids how to hurt or harm others. Afterwards I began to question this. I was in class teaching. I don't recall what or how it came up, but I mentioned that if the had a knife we handle it this way or something about a knife. Then the kid began to tell me about the kid the brought a knife to school to cut him. You can see in his eyes that this bothered him. Usually this kid always has a smile on his face unless his 12 year old brother is fussing at him. Both of his parent are there watching the class. I was thinking that he probably wasn't supposed to tell anyone about that. This made me question even more when do I teach a student certain things? Since i had the class broken up into several groups that day I moved around to work with each group on whatever I had given them. While working with the group his older brother was in something about a gun came up. I don't remember why or how. Then the brother kind of pulled me to the side and told me about the guy that brought a gun to school and told him that he was going to shoot him. I'm wondering what school was this? He didn't know that his other brother told me about the knife. I began to wonder if the 8 year old was going to have a story for me too when I go to her group. I asked about the school and found this happened in different schools. They didn't attend the same school. They were being home schooled when I met them. I assume this is why they are being home schooled. The 8 year old girl didn't have a story. Thy often stayed after class to get some more help and it came up again in front of their parents. The parents confirmed those incidents. I normally don't teach weapon defense to children. But this made me question if I should. I now most of my children come from the rough parts of town. They have probably seen weapons in their schools. They likely hear gun shots often in their neighborhood. They probably have seen gang fights. Maybe it is something I should consider. I didn't teach my children these things when they were that age or older. But I didn't expect for my son to see those things after I took him out of public school and put in in private school. The biggest issue I thought that he might have to deal with in private school was fitting in with children whose parents made more than us and could afford more and with drugs. These kids had big enough allowances and could afford drugs.