28.09.2022
I was delighted to be booked again by Drum Kempo Ju Jitsu and Fitness in Ireland on a consultancy basis. The level of self-protection training offered by this school is inspiring. Like all the best in the field, the teacher is constantly researching and updating his own continued professional development. This 12-hour course focused on the revamping of his anti-bullying programme.
Today’s lesson began with a look at the legal situation regarding self-protection and 9-14 year olds. In England and Wales 10 years old is the legal age of criminal responsibility. In Ireland it starts at 12 (this is also the case with Scotland). With this in mind, children need to have a full understanding of what is legally recognised as self-defence.
The problem here is that it is contested how far a child’s mind has developed in order to understand how this can be applied. It makes sense to advise children (and adults) to do their best to avoid a violent situation and early training should involve looking for obvious danger signs. Bullies can be roughly categorised as predators, although they often blur the lines into social violence if someone becomes a bully because they feel their status has been challenged. It’s a tricky area that needs further discussion. Evasion techniques are good and should be first taught to new pupils. They should also be transferred into exit/escape procedures that can be repeated as a teacher continues into hard skills/combative work. However, a child also needs to know their basic rights. We don’t want a situation where it could be argued a child could have fled an assault and therefore is being penalised for not doing so. They are the victim or they might have made a judgement call to protect another person. The laws on self-protection are there to protect a person who is trying to prevent a crime.
Another area we put forward was a means to douse unhelpful preconceptions regarding self-protection. Often children around this age group and older will be understandably sceptical or cynical regarding what they can learn. This is largely due to the huge amount of misinformation and disinformation that has permeated mainstream opinion by fictional media, outdated ideas about social norms and even the martial arts subculture. Individual personalities and motivations can also have an effect. I see a broad spectrum of naysayers with one end consisting of overly confident people and the other under confident people. Those who are overconfident have either had some prior experience either through training in another system or having always felt physically superior in their peer groups. These are the deluded. At the underconfident end we have individuals who have decided that they will never have the courage to defend themselves and might take a postmodern view that none of it will work. Both, as a means to dismiss your teaching, will put forward various hypotheses usually starting with “What if they have a knife?” These sabotage attempts need to be addressed before anyone says them. It doesn’t mean it stop them or there won’t be others not listed, but at least you are addressing them to show your awareness of the scepticism/cynicism.