re: #75 Obdicut

There’s also the problem that if everyone gets trained in self-defense, the ones who are already violent assholes are going to use that training to attack others. We could solve that by having philosophically perfect trainers, but a depressing number of martial arts trainers I know are of the Cobra school rather than Mr. Miyagi.

Aggressive violent students must get kicked out. Of course they already have the advantage over the untrained. By dint of ferocity. So we are left with a disadvantged set of nice kids in any case.

Lets not make the perfect the enemy of the good okay? Self defense classes are focused on defensive methods, and short on attack skills. Aikido is a good example. But even straight boxing class can emphasize blocking, weaving and distancing over the hitting skills by a wide margin. One has to assume a certain amount of responsibility for teachers at school to judge who should continue. Attack/counter attack skills can be left out of the early curriculum.