Grammar School Boxing

Did anyone even have boxing as a sport in highschool?

Did you have to go to school and fight other students in a boxing match?

I sure did, I dreaded going to school on those days... I got knocked out once.

Maybe that's why I don't hesitate to pull punches these days...

Boxing was not an elective either, the teachers picked the matches and the students stood around cheering their favorites.

(Leroy stood a whole head taller than me and was a south paw...)

Well, that is one way to maintain the current demographic in the state, since many parents would not move to a state that had mandated boxing matches in school.

There was over 35 years ago.

Now you can't even have jacks or coloring competitions because losing is considered, by some, too traumatic an event for young children to endure. I am not advocating boxing (especially mandatory) by no means, but a good sports competition is good for growing children I think. Some children play rough and some get hurt that is part of life and builds self esteem and develops physical motor skills.

You’ve touched upon one of my "hot button" issues. (Before I continue, though, I will agree that not allowing competition of any kind in schools is a bit too much. I’m definitely not in favor of that policy.) My own point of view is that of a 60-year-old man who, as a nonathlete when he was a boy, endured the hypocrisy that was mandatory sports-centered P.E. The adults who came up with this nonsense claimed that they were concerned about those students who were physically unfit. They were lying. In all the years I was required to take P.E., I never so much as even heard the words “exercise program” or “bodybuilding.” It was only about sports, and often there was not even any instruction as to how the games were played. I hardly got any exercise at all. What I did receive was a lot of humiliation that was so bad I still remember which periods I had P.E. in junior high. I learned to fear coaches and athlete classmates.

Three years ago I spoke to a former junior-high classmate who had given me the impression at the time that he was cool and didn’t have a care in the world. He was an intellectual fat guy. My impression had been wrong. It was all a front. He told me that when he was in his twenties, he had to seek psychological counseling to overcome his bitterness over the terrible way he had been mistreated for years in his P.E. classes.

Anyone who does any research on the way nonathletic boys were treated in these classes will hear some real horror stories. I have an online friend who lives in the UK. He, too, was forced to take the British version of sports-centered P.E. Again, no physical fitness programs were offered for the nonathletic boys, such as my friend (who had a scrawny build). He recently told me about the time that his P.E. class was divided into two opposing teams to play a game of cricket. He was blamed for his team's loss, never mind that he had not wanted to play the game and was not even interested in cricket. When the game was over, one of his teammates deliberately smashed his face with a cricket bat and broke his nose. The punk was merely suspended for a few days. He should have been sent to juvenile detention for committing assault. When he returned to school, he showed how remoseful he was by shoving my friend into a locker. Sports builds character?

Fortunately, I didn’t have to take P.E. in high school because I was a band student. I heard that the P.E. classes were even more hellish for nonathletic boys, especially those who were physically weak (as I was) or overweight, than they were in junior high. So, if I had been forced to take P.E. in high school, I probably would have rebelled.

In the last two years I’ve become a friend to two middle-aged guys who were physically handicapped when they were boys. One of them had been in a car wreck at the age of 4. As a result, he could not run and could walk only with a limp. The other had been born with an eye defect that left him without depth perception. Despite the fact that they were physically handicapped, they were forced to take P.E. anyway! Common sense dictates that they should have been exempted, but they weren’t. The fact that they were living in different states when this was going on leads me to believe that this incredibly boneheaded policy was nationwide. Both of them were subjected to bullying by athlete classmates in their P.E. classes, and none of the coaches cared. The fact that they were physically handicapped through no fault of their own didn’t matter to these guys. When he was a senior, the friend of mind with the eye defect finally retaliated against one of his tormentors by slamming his head against the wall. Guess who the coach punished. Why, my friend, of course! Not the bully. After all, he was an athlete. But at least the bullying stopped.

I’ve been delighted to learn that there is a movement to reform P.E. by providing genuine fitness programs for nonathletic boys instead of subjecting them to the institutionalized bullying that was mandatory sports-centered P.E (and still is in some school districts). (Incidentally, I favor the retention of the sports-centered P.E. for the school athletes and other students who want to participate in sports as an ELECTIVE.) For over two years I’ve been working with a personal trainer on a bodybuilding program at a local health club. I’ve seen for myself just how much I and other nonathletic guys of my generation were shortchanged by the traditional approach to “physical education” when we were kids. The difference between my boyhood P.E. experience and my health club experience has been as great as night and day. I’ll make an observation that I’ve already made in another thread of this website’s forum: I get more exercise in a single workout session with my personal trainer than I ever did in a whole YEAR of mandatory sports-centered P.E.

Thank-you Wm for your thought provoking reply...

In grammar school I played mostly on the girls team which was usually girls against the boys. We often won also. I was able to skirt (no pun intended) sports everywhere but at home. My dad used to make us boys work, like, building several rock walls, forestry like cutting trees and hauling firewood splitting logs and gardening, like raking soil and tossing stones and weeding the garden all summer. The lawn took me two days to mow every two weeks. So even though I was exempt from sports I was stronger than the captain of the basketball team, actually twice as strong (I could do twice as many one handed push-ups) .

Event today I am as admirably fit as could be though my back does give me discomfort and I am a few lbs overweight. Boys would challenge me to fights in grammar school and I would win much to the other bullying students surprise. Even boys twice my size I could get them down and hold them there.

Ole Leroy had a jab that connected and took me down on one occasion. I only fought Leroy once and he was not really an enemy of mine.

I had my ears boxed and was punched between study halls because I was gay. The effeminate gays got much less trouble from other students than I did. I was bold about my homosexuality.

None of this really left me with issues other than I don't put up with bull and sometimes I am a bit hair trigger (which i try to curb as much as possible). I can make assumptions, be very wrong and feel completely remorseful over things.

I guess I do intimidate people even big people find out I can take care of myself. I have been in many fights in my life and I either always win or it is a tie (fingers crossed).

I hate to lose and I am a real poor sport. Rather than just concede I often complain and make a big stink and for this reason I avoid competitions. Most people think I am insane (perhaps in my viking blood) and I prefer they think of me that way. It is a protective mechanism that keeps people at a distance.

I guess sports and competitions can build character and I am a real character. I don't know how I every survived myself, but, I feel the worst is over and the rest is just smooth sailing. I could be happier but others less fortunate keep me down to earth. I feel highly empathetic and non prejudice toward people in general. I guess I would not trade my life for another. My parents were truly great and school left some scars but I left an indelible impression on my classmates that someday they may admire me for my strength in adversity.

You're welcome.

Your comments are very interesting.

I now wish that I had been raised on a farm or had done some kind of physical labor, as your father had you do when you were growing up. Even though I never had an interest in sports, I was ashamed of being physically weak; but I didn’t know what to do about it because my father was not physically active. He did have a casual interest in sports as a spectator, but (fortunately) he never forced me to play sports. Today I really enjoy working out at my health club. Even though I’ve started out late in life and I have diabetes and sleep apnea, I still have the opportunity to develop my physique to an impressive extent.

I’m very sorry that you were bullied because you were gay. I’m also glad that you were able to fight back. The bullying of children in schools is a sore point with me. I don’t think any child should be bullied. I should have been taught how to box -- not for the purpose of participating in boxing matches, but to be able to defend myself from bullies. If I had learned boxing in conjunction with bodybuilding, I would have developed a lot of self-confidence -- which fact alone probably would have caused most of the bullying to cease, since bullies frequently target kids who lack self-confidence. Also, I would have been in an excellent position to “meet” my worst bully after school.

You say that the effeminate gays at your school got less trouble than you. That’s interesting. Perhaps you got more trouble because you defied the stereotype of the male homosexual being effeminate. Many people are comforted by stereotypes and are disturbed when they are broken.

To give you just a little bit of information about my background so you’ll know where I’m coming from, I’m a straight 60-year-old family man who looks more than 10 years younger. I must admit that when I was a teenager, I thought all male homosexuals were effeminate -- which does not mean that I ever hated gays, because I never did. I once had a gay friend (who died of AIDS nearly twenty years ago) before the “gay lib” movement had even started. He was one of the nicest guys I ever knew.

When I was a teenager, physical weakness in a boy was considered to be effeminate, which means that I wrongly deprecated myself. This is really ironic because one of my friends who graduated from high school the same year I did told me just last year that the biggest and strongest boy in his grade was gay. But this guy was never bullied because no one would have dared to get into a fight with him.

Over the years I’ve noticed that both the male homosexual population and the male heterosexual population have a range of superficial masculinity from effeminate to rugged. In contrast to the “drag queen” image, I’ve seen pictures of rugged homosexual men who show no signs of superficial effeminacy. On the other hand, there are heterosexual men who have feminine mannerisms, but end up getting married and fathering children of their own.

Of course, there are gay athletes, even football players such as the former college player Brian Sims and the recently retired Esera Tuaolo, who once played in the Super Bowl. I hope you will understand where I’m coming from and not be offended, but I’ve gotten tired of nonathletic boys being called “fags” simply because they don’t like sports. I’m amazed that even today nonathletic boys are called “fags” by classmates of theirs at school. Nonathletic boys are often called wimps, yet moral cowards come in all sizes and shapes. Some men who have athletic backgrounds are wimps, morally speaking.

I had great parents, too, who taught me by their example (in other words, not by lecturing) to respect other people.

Sorry, but I just can’t let this go by. I may have already said this in the “Welcome Sports Haters!” thread. One of the greatest heroes of World War II was a Swedish businessman named Raoul Wallenberg, who was running an import-export business with a Hungarian Jew, who informed him of reports of the worsening situation of the Jews in Hungary. (As you probably already know, Sweden was neutral in WWII.) Wallenberg, who came from a rich and influential family, prevailed upon Swedish government officials to send him to Budapest under diplomatic cover to carry out rescue operations to save people’s lives. These rescue operations were funded in part by the United States. He saved the lives of more than 10,000 Jews from the German Nazis and their Hungarian fascist accomplices, the brutal Arrow Cross movement. Surviving several assassination attempts, Wallenberg repeatedly put his life on the line for others.

When the Red Army had driven the Germans out of Hungary, Wallenberg and his chauffeur (a Jewish coal miner whose life Wallenberg had saved) were abducted by agents of Stalin’s brutal secret police to a notorious prison in Moscow, where Wallenberg disappeared into the Soviet gulag. According to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Wallenberg was once brought before the Soviet Foreign Minister, who offered to let him live as a free man in the Soviet Union in return for publicly denouncing the West. Sticking to his principles, Wallenberg refused the offer (even though his own government had forgotten him) and returned to the gulag. The date of his assumed death is disputed.

Wallenberg was a highly educated man who could speak at least five languages fluently. During the 1930s he had earned a degree in architecture at the University of Ann Arbor, Michigan. (I once was told that their Architecture Department is academically strenuous.) In 1982 Wallenberg became only the third foreigner in this country’s history to be granted honorary American citizenship status by the government of the United States. The late Tom Lantos, the Congressman (Democrat of California) who introduced the bill to grant citizenship status to Wallenberg, had immigrated to this country after World War II. He was one of the many Hungarian Jews whose lives Wallenberg had saved.

This extremely courageous and compassionate man, according to his half-sister, “detested competitive team sports.” Of course, I’m not saying that there’s any virtue in not liking sports. (Heinrich Himmler, who was the head of the Nazi S.S., after all, was bad at sports when he was a boy.) I’m just saying that he didn’t need to “prove his manhood” by participating in sports. He’s a great hero for us all, especially boys who get bullied simply because they’re not good at sports or don’t like them.

RexRed, I disagree with the claim that sports builds character in the sense of promoting moral development. I agree with the former NFL player Joe Ehrmann, who is now a minister and a high-school football coach. He said, “Sports don’t build character; coaching builds character.” And I hate to say this; but I doubt that Ehrmann, with his enlightened views, is representative of the majority of high-school football coaches in this country. I suspect that the majority are not morally opposed to any of their players bullying nonathletic boys at their schools. I truly wish I could believe otherwise.

A childhood friend of mine who played football in high school and is still a big fan recently told me that most of his teammates had looked down upon the nonathletic guys at their schools as being inferior to them. I serve as a moderator of a small, obscure website’s forum (small potatoes, I know) where a high-school football player who started posting in the forum last year admitted, without any prompting from any of the other members, that most of his teammates referred to their nonathletic male classmates as “fags.” To his credit, he would speak out against this. What is disturbing to me is that in both instances, most of the players had this sorry attitude. Is arrogance of this sort a sign of character? Of course, you know what happens when some people view others with disdain simply because they happen to belong to a particular group (in this case, nonathletic boys), don’t you?

In my first lengthy post in this particular topic of yours, I gave examples of school athletes who clearly lacked character, as I understand the meaning of the word. Visit the website www.democraticunderground.org and do a website search on “jock bullies.” Of course, pages listing links will be displayed. Some of these links, such as those mentioning “shock jocks,” will not be relevant. But if you take the time to check these links, you will discover that a number of the DU forum members were bullied by “jocks” or witnessed such bullying when they were in school. Actually, there are quite a few of these posts. Are all of these people lying? I don’t think so. This is not name-calling. This is physical bullying of a demeaning, sometimes violent nature. And it has long been tolerated in the schools because of the privileged status that athletes enjoy.

I don’t believe that the majority of, say, high-school football players bully other students. I have a few close friends who played football in high school. But I believe that a sufficiently large enough number of “jocks” do bully other students at their schools so that it is a problem. Some of the promoters of school sports make some of the most ridiculous claims I’ve ever heard in my life. One of the most absurd that I’ve heard is that sports teach empathy. Ah, come on! Machismo denigrates empathy as a trait to be desired in men. Give me a break! Do bullies have any empathy? Is bullying a sign of character, let alone empathy?

I certainly don’t denigrate anyone’s enjoyment of a sport either as a participant or a spectator. There’s nothing morally wrong with playing a game. I’m convinced, though, that there are negative aspects, morally speaking, of the culture that is associated with certain sports. Each sport has its own distinct culture, and they’re not all the same. (And as far as their status in the schools is concerned, some sports are more equal than others.) And I do emphasize the fact that the culture that is associated with a sport is NOT inherently a part of it. Cultures can be changed. The problem I have is with those who say that athletic kids are a better class of people than nonathletic kids. I hear this all the time. This denigration of nonathletic students reminds me of racism. In fact, it is a form of bigotry. Nonathletic boys constantly have their manhood questioned. Ironically, some of the most anti-intellectual institutions in this country are junior high and high schools (not all of them, but many and perhaps most of them).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44310083/ns/health-childrens_health/

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44623486/ns/world_news-europe/t/young-boys-cage-fighting-uk-prompts-outcry/#.VMayHf7F-So

Father says, "They were not cage fighting."

Comment: Certainly looks like a ******* cage to me moron!

Since when are children this age old enough to decide what is right and wrong?

Their brains will still be growing for another ten years!!!!!!!!! This is Stockholm syndrome!!! I bet the father belittles his son for not winning too!

The parents brains apparently stopped growing in their adolescence!

There are two types of extreme people in this world.

There are muscle bound idiots and intellectual weaklings.

Muscle bound idiots are usually in sports and/or marshal arts and cannot read, write their name properly or perform the simplest of addition but they are built like brick **** houses.
Intellectual weaklings are usually skinny nerds who do not bath or even bother to brush their teeth.

SHAME ON YOU ENGLAND FOR LETTING THIS HAPPEN WITHOUT EVEN CHARGING BOTH THE PARENTS AND THE SHODDY IMMORAL SPORTS CLUB!! WORSE THAN PEDOPHILES! THE LOWEST OF ALL LOWS!

Keeping them off the streets? THIS IS WORSE THAN THE STREETS!
Pimping out your children to make a ******* buck!
Nasty low life scum for parents and sports club owners!

To steal away an innocent childhood for your entertainment! Kids grow up and have to face this ugly world soon enough without you pushing them headlong into the brutal realities of this often inexplicable and terrifying life. Childhood should not be hoods...

They say one of the boys looked like he was crying, this was not the look of sadness, I saw the video before faces were blanked out! This was the look of panic, utter and absolute terror!!!! We have grown men killing themselves due to combat stress in wartime and you think an immature 8 year old can handle PTSD any better?

Human services should take these abused children away for their parents! Children are not dogs to put in a cage and teach them violence for their parents egotistical and sick entertainment!

And the USA is no better with parents teaching 11 year old girls how to shoot firearms!!!

AND, TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT!

Parents! Just because you can screw and make babies does not give you the right to screw up their lives for your sick maniacal pleasure!

How about some strong laws protecting children from their hillbilly, redneck dirt-bag parents please???!!!

The club owner bitch say this helps make money to keep kids off the streets.

This kind of violence epitomizes the streets!!! People taking to physical violence to settle disputes is barbaric and degenerate.

The truth is, this is so her child abuse club can exploit children so she can make a buck off their misery, panic and terror!

So the parents don't want to file charges, how about the state getting some moral backbone and stepping and filing them!!!??? How about the state do your ******* jobs protecting the next generation?

This is child abuse and reckless endangerment of young minors no matter how much lipstick you want to smear on this pig!

These parents will turn their fa**ot son into a man one way or another huh? (cynical but probably exactly the case)

WRONGNESS!

Yes I had many fights and love to be in the Ring at least once in a week, currently learning MMA techniques for upper body strike to improve my skills in the combat fight.

i myself have done this