4 ms·

A solution would be to allow violence in a controlled environment, rather than suppress it completely. Boys like to fight. Instead of denying it, why not nurtu

by TriinT 17y ago

A solution would be to allow violence in a controlled environment, rather than suppress it completely. Boys like to fight. Instead of denying it, why not nurture it in a responsible manner? Get the angry teenage kids out of the cities and suburbs and give them a real challenge. Martial arts, full-contact, hiking, rock-climbing, white-water rafting. Whatever works to keep them busy and physically tired. Most kids don't like to learn. Only a very few teenage boys can be entertained with math and programming puzzles. But if you give the majority of teenage boys some macho stuff to do, they will most likely embrace the challenge.

LogicHoleFlaw 17y ago
You've just described the Boy Scouts, in many respects.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- TriinT 17y ago
  I was thinking of the boy scouts on steroids, so to say. The boy scouts are too well-behaved. A little bit of boot-camp atmosphere would be interesting.
  - ninguem2 17y ago
    Well, there's the armed forces, but the consequences are not so pretty.
    - LogicHoleFlaw 17y ago
      Enlisting is a hell of a lot better option than gang-banging.
      - TriinT 17y ago
        I wholeheartedly agree.
    - TriinT 17y ago
      The armed forces are for kids older than 18. I think 13-18 y.o. teenage boys with too much testosterone could use a sort of "boot-camp lite" thing. Instead of shooting weapons, they could focus on less deadly stuff which is equally macho. Say, survival training, martial arts, extreme sports, etc. This would probably never work in Europe because it would bring back memories of Hitler's youth. I am totally pro-freedom and anti-fascism, but I think that leaving teenage boys bored in the cities and suburbs with nothing to do is dangerous. The amount of money spent on teaching them how to fight, rock-climb, whatever, would perhaps be saved in less prisons and criminality. Giving a teenage boy something challenging to do can be a huge self-confidence booster. Moreover, it can allow him to use his aggressiveness in a productive manner.
      - dfranke 17y ago
        Why not weapons? With a competent instructor, the accident risk is lower than for any of your suggested alternatives.
        TriinT 17y ago
        I have nothing against weapons. I actually like them. However, a camp for teenage boys where there's weapons training would be a PR disaster. The feminists would complain that it was a men's conspiracy to impose the old status quo. The far left-wing whackos would compare it to Hitler's youth. I believe that teenage boys can be taught how to shoot, and that they can be trained to use weapons in a responsible manner. An old drill instructor would be required to keep the kids in check, though. Much of this PR nightmare could be avoided if there were no weapons. Martial arts would be OK. By keeping weapons out, you could sell it as an extreme sports camp, rather than a boot camp for teenagers ;-) Image is everything.
        anamax 17y ago
        > Much of this PR nightmare could be avoided if there were no weapons. At what cost in effectiveness? If you don't tell the loons to get stuffed, your life is run by loons.
crescendo 17y ago
I can't remember where I read it now, but there was a very well reasoned argument positing that this is essentially why we have sports. A sport is a means of venting primal violent and competitive urges in a way that's controlled and (usually) not harmful to civilized society, so they claimed. This violent expression works directly for those playing and vicariously for those watching.
abefortas 17y ago
Providing an outlet for it might be pretty much the same thing as encouraging it. Now, if you could reliably identify kids who needed the outlet and have them do it, but leave the rest of us alone, that would be fine. But I shudder to think how I would have turned out if I was subjected to the kind of thing you're proposing. I was a pretty impressionable kid.
- TriinT 17y ago
  Even though I grew up in the 1980s, I still enjoyed a rather Tom Sawyer kind of lifestyle which most kids can't enjoy anymore. Fighting at school was routine. Never got seriously hurt because the fights were outlets, and we had no desire to truly harm each other. I learned how to shoot and hunt from my uncle who's the only member of my family to have served in the military. I spent my teens doing martial arts and fighting full-contact with guys twice my age. I was also a pretty impressionable kid, but I think this kind of martial training was educational. I have not become a Marine or anything. Instead, I became a grad student with a burning passion for differential geometry and mathematical physics ;-) It may happen that, in some cases, providing an outlet is the same as encouraging. In my case, it was a wonderful way of spending my youth.
jamesbritt 17y ago
"Most kids don't like to learn. " Sure they do. Most kids don't like to learn stuff they deem stupid and useless.
- TriinT 17y ago
  That seems like a geek fantasy to me. Just because you like to learn, it does not mean other people are like you. Through my school years, I never saw evidence to back the claim that most kids like to learn. Maybe in early grade school when kids want to know why stars twinkle, why the sky is blue, and where babies come from. After a certain age, their curiosity dies. That may be sad, but let's face it: the world also need doers, not just thinkers. For each, his own.
  - dgordon 17y ago
    "After a certain age, their curiosity dies." Dies, or is killed?
    - TriinT 17y ago
      Being curious is easy. Acting on it is harder. You may wonder why the world is the way it is, but then you realize that reading about it takes a lot of time and effort. Most people are lazy. It happens that school is a great curiosity-killer, but people kill their own curiosity as well as soon as they discover that the answers to their endless questions affect their daily lives very little.
  - jamesbritt 17y ago
    "That seems like a geek fantasy to me. Just because you like to learn, it does not mean other people are like you." Sure. I never claimed that. I'm basing this on experience with people I knew growing up (some of whom were geeky, most not), plus the children of friends and family. Kids want to learn to play guitar, hot-wire cars, assemble weapons, throw strike-outs, pick up girls (or boys), pick locks, cheat on tests, tape up their hockey sticks; the list is near endless. It may be that, once they became adults, that passion fades (or, more likely, gets stifled), but that's a different matter. My experience is that, up until people enter the workforce, they are generally interested in learning about things of value in their world. "That may be sad, but let's face it: the world also need doers, not just thinkers" Doing without thinking is a nightmare. If you find someone doing that, slap them. (So to speak.)

by TriinT 17y ago

LogicHoleFlaw 17y ago

You've just described the Boy Scouts, in many respects.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
TriinT 17y ago
I was thinking of the boy scouts on steroids, so to say. The boy scouts are too well-behaved. A little bit of boot-camp atmosphere would be interesting.
- ninguem2 17y ago
  Well, there's the armed forces, but the consequences are not so pretty.
  - LogicHoleFlaw 17y ago
    Enlisting is a hell of a lot better option than gang-banging.
    - TriinT 17y ago
      I wholeheartedly agree.
  - TriinT 17y ago
    The armed forces are for kids older than 18. I think 13-18 y.o. teenage boys with too much testosterone could use a sort of "boot-camp lite" thing. Instead of shooting weapons, they could focus on less deadly stuff which is equally macho. Say, survival training, martial arts, extreme sports, etc. This would probably never work in Europe because it would bring back memories of Hitler's youth. I am totally pro-freedom and anti-fascism, but I think that leaving teenage boys bored in the cities and suburbs with nothing to do is dangerous. The amount of money spent on teaching them how to fight, rock-climb, whatever, would perhaps be saved in less prisons and criminality. Giving a teenage boy something challenging to do can be a huge self-confidence booster. Moreover, it can allow him to use his aggressiveness in a productive manner.
    - dfranke 17y ago
      Why not weapons? With a competent instructor, the accident risk is lower than for any of your suggested alternatives.
      - TriinT 17y ago
        I have nothing against weapons. I actually like them. However, a camp for teenage boys where there's weapons training would be a PR disaster. The feminists would complain that it was a men's conspiracy to impose the old status quo. The far left-wing whackos would compare it to Hitler's youth. I believe that teenage boys can be taught how to shoot, and that they can be trained to use weapons in a responsible manner. An old drill instructor would be required to keep the kids in check, though. Much of this PR nightmare could be avoided if there were no weapons. Martial arts would be OK. By keeping weapons out, you could sell it as an extreme sports camp, rather than a boot camp for teenagers ;-) Image is everything.
        anamax 17y ago
        > Much of this PR nightmare could be avoided if there were no weapons. At what cost in effectiveness? If you don't tell the loons to get stuffed, your life is run by loons.

crescendo 17y ago

I can't remember where I read it now, but there was a very well reasoned argument positing that this is essentially why we have sports. A sport is a means of venting primal violent and competitive urges in a way that's controlled and (usually) not harmful to civilized society, so they claimed. This violent expression works directly for those playing and vicariously for those watching.

abefortas 17y ago

Providing an outlet for it might be pretty much the same thing as encouraging it. Now, if you could reliably identify kids who needed the outlet and have them do it, but leave the rest of us alone, that would be fine. But I shudder to think how I would have turned out if I was subjected to the kind of thing you're proposing. I was a pretty impressionable kid.

TriinT 17y ago
Even though I grew up in the 1980s, I still enjoyed a rather Tom Sawyer kind of lifestyle which most kids can't enjoy anymore. Fighting at school was routine. Never got seriously hurt because the fights were outlets, and we had no desire to truly harm each other. I learned how to shoot and hunt from my uncle who's the only member of my family to have served in the military. I spent my teens doing martial arts and fighting full-contact with guys twice my age. I was also a pretty impressionable kid, but I think this kind of martial training was educational. I have not become a Marine or anything. Instead, I became a grad student with a burning passion for differential geometry and mathematical physics ;-) It may happen that, in some cases, providing an outlet is the same as encouraging. In my case, it was a wonderful way of spending my youth.

jamesbritt 17y ago

"Most kids don't like to learn. " Sure they do. Most kids don't like to learn stuff they deem stupid and useless.

TriinT 17y ago
That seems like a geek fantasy to me. Just because you like to learn, it does not mean other people are like you. Through my school years, I never saw evidence to back the claim that most kids like to learn. Maybe in early grade school when kids want to know why stars twinkle, why the sky is blue, and where babies come from. After a certain age, their curiosity dies. That may be sad, but let's face it: the world also need doers, not just thinkers. For each, his own.
- dgordon 17y ago
  "After a certain age, their curiosity dies." Dies, or is killed?
  - TriinT 17y ago
    Being curious is easy. Acting on it is harder. You may wonder why the world is the way it is, but then you realize that reading about it takes a lot of time and effort. Most people are lazy. It happens that school is a great curiosity-killer, but people kill their own curiosity as well as soon as they discover that the answers to their endless questions affect their daily lives very little.
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  "That seems like a geek fantasy to me. Just because you like to learn, it does not mean other people are like you." Sure. I never claimed that. I'm basing this on experience with people I knew growing up (some of whom were geeky, most not), plus the children of friends and family. Kids want to learn to play guitar, hot-wire cars, assemble weapons, throw strike-outs, pick up girls (or boys), pick locks, cheat on tests, tape up their hockey sticks; the list is near endless. It may be that, once they became adults, that passion fades (or, more likely, gets stifled), but that's a different matter. My experience is that, up until people enter the workforce, they are generally interested in learning about things of value in their world. "That may be sad, but let's face it: the world also need doers, not just thinkers" Doing without thinking is a nightmare. If you find someone doing that, slap them. (So to speak.)